A while ago, I was walking down East 7th Street in the East Village when I suddenly got the feeling I was being watched. I glanced over… …and realized it was Predator. Now, running into Predator on a New York City street isn’t that strange in and of itself. But this Predator is special for…
Note: It’s gone. You know 35 Cooper Square, right? Sure you do. It’s that cute little building hidden in the shadow of the modern Cooper Square Hotel, a building best described architecturally as having been inspired by Optimus Prime’s phallus. If you had passed it today at around 4:30pm, you’d have seen a group of…
On Saturday night, I was walking through Astor Place past the iconic “Alamo” sculpture (aka The Big Black Cube That Has Never Actually Been Called The Alamo By Anyone Ever Other Than The Artist’s Wife Who Named It) when I noticed it looking distinctly Christmas Tree-ish: I crossed to the island, where something neat was…
I love stumbling on New York’s ghost signs – essentially, signs or advertisements for businesses long since deceased. I wrote about the great stationery store sign hanging on Broadway just north of Canal Street a year ago (I promise, that arrow doesn’t lead to greeting cards anymore): Anyway, I was driving by the intersection yesterday,…
Walking west on 12th Street from 3rd Ave, you probably wouldn’t give it a second glance: a stone church located midway down the block. Coming from the opposite direction, however, you might notice something decidedly wrong with it. In short, the church has no…church. While this isn’t a secret to most New Yorkers, the remnants…
If you live in New York, you’ve probably passed by these two beautiful buildings on 2nd Ave at 9th Street in the East Village a zillion times. On the left is a branch of the New York Public Library; on the right is a former medical clinic. What comes as complete surprise to me is…
After posting about the Beach House on an East Village apartment roof, one of our readers, Karen, commented that it reminded her of the rooftop house on 13th and 3rd, above the Kiehl’s store. Today was the first time I had a chance to check it out, and sure enough, there’s a clapboard house –…
For the first year or two after I moved to New York, I became one of those people who smugly criticized tourists for “looking up.” “Looking up” to ogle buildings as you walked down the street (causing you to inevitably bump into real New Yorkers like me with places to go) was about the greatest…