Company Town
October 1st, 2008“[New York] is the company town for money” – Richard Lefrak
October 2, 2008
⇒ “A box of books labeled “Free Books” is deposited at various 14th Street locations. A seeming act of generosity, the artist has removed the last few pages from each book…”.It’s the LARP version of “if on a winter’s night a traveller”
“[New York] is the company town for money” – Richard Lefrak
September 15, 2008
⇒ Speaking at Web 2.0 Expo this Thursday, 4:10pm.August 8, 2008
⇒ Crowd sourcing a history of Silicon Alley.Wondering if I should add my early ’99 recollections of Alley parties, getting backed into a corner by painfully geeky HotJobs nerds (HotJobs used to have real live nerds working for them!) who wanted to convince me that BSD was the one true TCP/IP stack, and escaping to the roof only to find Spring Streeters doing lines of coke over Bryant Park. Something tells me that isn’t what Fred is looking for.
June 4, 2008
⇒ John Waters: “Moving [to New York] proves that you believe in irony”.On New York’s facsimile driven aesthetics. via Buzz
Some of you have heard, some of you haven’t, but Jasmine and I are getting up next week (June 12th) and moving to New York.
The plan is to go on working for Flickr, and fly back to SF once a month or so. So if you could plan your camps/parties/meetups/conferences accordingly that would be swell.
Looking forward to seeing you all on the East Coast. (And while we haven’t really gotten a feel for the new apartment [in Williamsburg], its looking like we might even have something resembling a guest room.)
We’ll be driving back via the not most direct route (which will surprise no one who knows us) that takes us past the Grand Canyon, Austin, and New Orleans. (thats as far as the map I’m looking at goes) So any suggestions for anything from sights, to food, to places to stay, to good people along those stretches, to great audiobooks to fill up empty bits in the road are all appreciated.
May 24, 2008
⇒ E.B. White: “There are roughly three New Yorks.”.“There is, first, the New York of the man or woman who was born here, who takes the city for granted and accepts its size and its turbulence as natural and inevitable. Second, there is the New York of the commuter — the city that is devoured by locusts each day and spat out each night. Third, there is the New York of the person who was born somewhere else and came to New York in quest of something. […] Commuters give the city its tidal restlessness; natives give it solidity and continuity; but the settlers give it passion.”
The writing was on the wall.
Jack Dorsey: Taking the subway to Union Sq. The NYC one. (July 23rd)
(actually I missed that one, but Twitters from Jack regarding the White Stripes were a dead give away!)
Bit late, but congrats to both Twitter and WeSabe on closing funding with Union Sq. Ventures.
Like Tony said, “All my friends go with Union Sq.”. I’ve been fan (a fan of a VC!?!?) since shortly before their del.icio.us investment, and they continue to fund my favorite start ups.
We walked by their office today, but too busy to stop in and say, “Hi”.
May 8, 2007
⇒ NYU ITP Spring Show 2007.If I was in New York this week, I’d be going to this. Today and tomorrow.
February 14, 2007
⇒ Apparently “Unknown Precipitation” is falling from the sky in NYC.“Liquid is clear and flavorless, which rules out whiskey, transmission fluid, honey, and pig’s blood. It’s too soon to tell for sure, but I’m guessing the precipitation is some form of water.” I’ll be there later this week to continue research.
January 24, 2007
⇒ Social Design Notes: Negative Campaigning.Billboard liberation campaign in NYC using placards taped over video billboards with the typography as negative space.
September 28, 2006
⇒ Gothamist: Map of the Day: Getting to Work (and more!).How people get to work in NYC. Red is cars, blue is public transit, green is walking
January 23, 2006
⇒ Prada is burning.literally
January 17, 2006
⇒ Blue Spoon Coffee Company.Very nice new (3mos) coffee shop on Chambers at Broadway. Excellent macchiato (layered). Friendly, excited owner. No relation to Blue Bottle.
Tony has a bit from this morning’s Brazilian auction
When the digital smoke cleared, the last bidder standing was the coalition of Australia’s Instaurator and Vince Piccolo of Vancouver’s Caffe Artigiano paying a record-demolishing $49.75 a pound (about $79,000 for the 12 bags).
A bold move that will have some scratching their heads, but Vince and his crew plan on selling the coffee exclusively via their recently obtained Clover at $5 a cup.
I’ve been pondering that a kiosk specializing in exactly this kind of thing, would probably be smash hit in Manhattan.
Specialized, small space requirements, appeal to the city’s snobbery. Hook it up to a decent online engagement strategy, communicating and blogging around daily specials, cuppings, and general coffee education. I think it would be a hit. And avoid most of the pitfalls associated with starting a coffee shop (especially in a high rent city) In fact, I even fantasized about starting it, until I thought hard about the initial outlay. And it dovetails nicely with my not so secret desire to see the quality of NYC coffee rise if I’m going to be living there.
“It might seem crazy that we were prepared to pay that price,” said Mr. Piccolo, a 40-year-old former fine-dining restaurant owner. “But when you break it down by the cup, it is about the same price that people would pay for a mediocre glass of wine.”
Actually it’s still considerably less then you’ll pay most places in New York for a mediocre glass.
In the wake of the A16 convergence (April 2000, World Bank/IMF), Jay Sand wrote an excellent document describing in detail the process of setting up and running the events IMC space. This document functioned for years as the blueprint for new IMCs and captured a huge amount of knowledge.
I was reminded of it while reading over Amit’s BarCamp NYC — the Nuts and Bolts, which, while shorter, is also excellent, detailed, and insightful. If you’ve been wanting to start your own un-conference (and who doesn’t!), this is your howto.
BarCamp NYC is next weekend, and with it the East Coast gets its inaugral un-conference. (FooCamp, BarCamp, and MindCamp all being West Coast affairs, and Amsterdam being spiritually closer to the West Coast then anywhere on the Atlantic Seaboard I’m thinking)
Registration is open, attendance is free, accomodation is urban camping.
Also if anyone has a suggestion for a talk for me to give, I’m coming up blank, I’ve handed out a number of excellent (IMHO) suggestions to others, but not feeling the inspiration personally.