Tag Archives: New York City

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Throwback Thursday: The Roosevelt Island Tramway in the early 1980’s!

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I found a couple of videos online the depict The Roosevelt Island Tramway around 1980.  (The picture below of the tram arriving in Manhattan dates from 2006, as I couldn’t find any vintage public domain photos.)

The first video I am linking to here was posted by Richard Cortell; he completed it as a long ago student project for The New York Institute of Technology.  Parts of the video are quite dark, but it’s still a terrific glimpse in New York City’s past.

The second video is also Cortell’s; this one is dated 1980.  It focuses more on life on Roosevelt Island — the tram is seen only at the beginning and end.

I’ve never been on the tram — or to Roosevelt Island.  But just seeing it brings back memories of my early childhood.  My Dad used to occasionally take me on trips to New York City, and I remember seeing it depart from 60th Street and Second Avenue in Manhattan.  I was pretty damned awed by it.

But I didn’t ask to ride on it.  My Dad took me to all sorts of places in NYC that were fun for a kid, but the sight of that hanging tram car made me pretty apprehensive.  Hell, I’m not sure I’d want to ride it as an adult.  (There was a malfunction in 2006 that left 80 people trapped up there for around 90 minutes.)

I didn’t know it at the time, but the tram would have actually been relatively new at the time that I saw it (and at about the same time Cortell filmed his videos).  It opened in July of 1976.

Postscript — there is actually a shot of the tram in that old “Million Dollar Movie” intro that everyone loves.  It’s right at the start, five seconds in.

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Photo credit: Kris Arnold from New York, USA, CC BY-SA 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0&gt;, via Wikimedia Commons

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Eric Robert Nolan listed with the Poets & Writers Directory

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I received a really nice honor yesterday, friends  — I am now listed in the Poets & Writers Directory.  This is a registry of over 10,000 published authors, maintained by Poets & Writers — America’s largest nonprofit organization serving creative writers.  You can find it right here.

Poets & Writers was founded in 1970.  Its mission is “to foster the professional development of poets and writers, to promote communication throughout the literary community, and to help create an environment in which literature can be appreciated by the widest possible public.”

I am quite grateful to Assistant Web Editor Francisco Marquez and his colleagues in New York City for assisting me during the application process.

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Throwback Thursday: “Charley Chimp!”

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This is takin’ it waaaay back — people were joking about creepy vintage mechanical toys on Twitter, and it totally reminded me of the mechanical monkey I had when I was not much older than a baby.  It was originally manufactured and marketed as “Musical Jolly Chimp” between the 1950’s and the 1970’s by Japanese company Daishin C.K., according to Wikipedia.  But it was resold under various names on the street in New York City.

My guess is that my father picked it up for me after work in the 1970’s.  (He was a municipal bus driver in Manhattan.)

It was loud.  It did scare me — but I also remember loving it too, and it remained in my toybox for years.  (Maybe I had a split personality as a little kid or something.) 

Anyway, you can see the thing in action over at Youtube, courtesy of echelon16.

 

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Photo credit: YuMaNuMa, CC BY 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0&gt;, via Wikimedia Commons

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Men of a certain age …

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W. H. Auden called the mid-twentieth century The Age of Anxiety. It was the title of a book-length epic poem that won him a 1948 Pulitzer Prize, and it depicted his perception of the loneliness and isolation of the mid-twentieth century.  (I have not read it.)

Auden set it in a bar in New York City.  (He actually immigrated there in 1939; many casual poetry readers are unaware that he had dual citizenship with Britain and America.)

I wonder what Auden would think of the early 21st Century, here at his adopted home. I t started with the September 11 terror attacks and has arrived at a pandemic that has killed 443,000 Americans (along with nearly 94,000 back in his native Britain).  Evictions and unemployment have predictably risen right along with the deaths.

And America seems the closest now to civil war since … the actual Civil War began in 1861.  (We did, after all, see one side storm the Capitol to attack its democratically elected government.)

I’ll bet our anxiety could give Auden’s a run for its money.

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Check out “August Morning, Upper Broadway,” by Alicia Ostriker

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Well, summer is officially winding down.  (I have friends whose religious devotion to the beach has them counting down the days in August.)  There is one last summer poem I’d accordingly like to pass along.  It was included on a list of 19 summer poems published by BookRiot a couple of weeks ago.

Its title is “August Morning, Upper Broadway,” and it was written by Alicia Ostriker.  It’s a beautiful piece that reminds me of New York City, among other things.  It’s Number 6 on the list above.

 

 

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Guerrilla poetry at Farragut Square, Washington, D.C.

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June 2018.  This is the only part of Washington, D.C. that can truly remind me of New York City.  (The diverse array of “food trucks” help quite a bit.)  The people there, however, seem far more likely to make eye contact and begin a conversation.  (I briefly chatted with a nice photographer who took a couple of poetry mini-books home with her.)

I’m proud of that last shot you see of pigeons alighting the park’s namesake — even if it is a little fuzzy and even if I only snapped it by chance.  David G. Farragut was a Southerner who nevertheless served heroically as an admiral in the Union navy during the Civil War.  He coined the famous phrase, “Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!”  Maybe I’m only demonstrating my ignorance here, but I didn’t even realize that torpedoes were really a thing during the Civil War, even after seeing the C.S.S. Hunley at Charleston, South Carolina as a kid.

 

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Amazing street-level footage of New York City in 1911

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This is easily one of the coolest things I’ve found on the Internet in a long time — street-level footage of New York City in 1911.  (I’m linking here the guy jones Youtube channel.  There’s a truly impressive collection of antique films there.)

This video surprised me in two ways.  First, I had no idea that the film quality for something this old could be so good.  Second, the added sound effects actually worked.  (I figured something like that would be awkward and distracting.)

You’ll enjoy this more if you maximize the window on your computer and lay it in a dark room.

 

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Amateur footage of New York City, 1976

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I’m linking here to the stuart bailey media Youtube channel — this is footage of Manhattan over 40 years ago, shot by some unknown tourist with a Super 8 camera.  Most of the buildings look the same.  The clothes, haircuts and cars look very, very different.

Check out the frame you can see below.  That is indeed the original “Rocky” playing at a Loews Theater — alongside the year’s truly awful “King Kong” remake that I’ve mentioned previously here at the blog.