Impossibly Hip meets the Biological Clock:

Babies have long been a fixture in the area’s Latino, Polish and Hasidic communities. But the pioneering artists and those who followed them to Williamsburg in the last 20 years seemed to float above such corporeal concerns as pregnancy and child-rearing. They were known for pierced navels and creative facial hair, for cigarette-filled afternoons and all-night roof parties.

You see, the first baby store has opened in Williamsburg. Those without kids are horrified. Those with are grateful. Those of us who have kids and roll our eyes at such ghettos of hipness are amused.

 

Unlike most cities, the subway — not the roads — is New York City’s circulatory system. Several subway lines were disrupted when the World Trade Center was destroyed, and their restoration was an early sign that things were getting back to normal. In an astonishingly short time, transit officials opened train lines that ran next to, but not quite under, the towers. In one case, a station is being bypassed, but even there ongoing repairs are evident.

The train line that runs down the West Side of Manhattan to the ferry terminal was directly under the towers. It’s been out of commission since September 11, but even that line will be back sooner than most people had imagined. From the NY Times:

A Subway Interrupted Awaits Its Imminent Resurgence. As the debate continues over what to build above ground at ground zero, a few hundred men are already rebuilding what was once below the ground.

From the NY Times (I’ve got to get more news sources….):

Bell Labs Forms Panel to Study Claims of Research Misconduct. Lucent Technologies’ Bell Laboratories has formed a panel to examine the validity of some recent impressive experiments.

No one’s accusing anyone of anything. Not really, not yet. But good for the Labs for taking allegations seriously and looking into them sooner rather than later.

Leo J. Burke. “People who say they sleep like a baby usually don’t have one.”

Similar: “I sleep like a baby; I wake up every two hours, screaming.”

 

Via 24-hour Drive-Thru:

SOME EVIDENCE FOR OPTIMISM.. U.S.S. Clueless. Steven Den Beste writes about how he accidently left his HP Jornada handheld computer at the mall. “I felt a bit sick. Of course, there was no chance I was going to get it back. A thousand bucks down the tube… ” But he got it back after all – likely what happened is some honest person found it, and turned it on to a mall restaurant, where likely another honest person tucked it away in a bin somewhere, where it was likely passed by several OTHER honest people who didn’t steal it, and finally brought out to Steven’s waiting hands by yet another honest person. He writes, “It’s easy to get cynical about people, to assume that down deep inside everyone is evil. It isn’t true.”

I have a similar story. I once lost a cell phone in a Las Vegas taxicab. During Comdex, where about a quarter-million people flood the city. I mean, this phone was gone. But the next passenger in the cab found the phone, and worked though the address book and found the entry Home. He pressed Send. My wife answered. She paged me. I returned the page, and she said, “You dropped your phone. Call Bell Taxi and ask for cab number” something-or-other; “the driver has it.” Twenty minutes later, I had my phone back. The cabbie got a large tip, but I have no idea who the samaritan was.


[24-hour drive-thru]

Maybe it is, if it’s too subtle. And if you’re in Texas. The NY Times reports on a lawsuit against a Dallas alternative weekly.

I’ve written lots of this kind of stuff, going back all the way to high school. I’ve been called on the carpet a bunch, but I’ve never been sued. A carpet burn every few years I can stand but I have no particular appetite for court, so this kind of thing can be a bit <ahem> chilling.

Brits complain that Yanks have no sense of irony. They may be right. Big flashing HTML or XML <humor> </humor> tags would be a shame.

From Kottke.org:

This is what Milton Glaser has learned (full PDF transcript): “Less is not necessarily more. Being a child of modernism I have heard this mantra all my life. Less is more. One morning upon awakening I realised that it was total nonsense, it is an absurd proposition and also fairly meaningless. But it sounds great because it contains within it a paradox that is resistant to understanding. But it simply does not obtain when you think about the visual of the history of the world. If you look at a Persian rug, you cannot say that less is more because you realise that every part of that rug, every change of colour, every shift in form is absolutely essential for its aesthetic success. You cannot prove to me that a solid blue rug is in any way superior. That also goes for the work of Gaudi, Persian miniatures, art nouveau and everything else. However, I have an alternative to the proposition that I believe is more appropriate. ‘Just enough is more.‘” (boldface mine, via bbj)

I *love* that. Just enough is more.

Glaser, if you don’t know, is one of the most influential publication designers of the latter half of the 20th Century.

The August issue of British Journal of Plastic Surgeons will apparently carry a story about “a hapless Romeo [who] suffered major ligament damage and a fracture to one of his fingers while tackling his lady’s brassiere,” according to The New York Post.

For one thing, it says surveys show that 40 percent of men in their 30s and 40s have difficulty removing bras.

And it cites a recent test that found men spend an average of 27 seconds taking bras off, when using both hands.

When right-handed men used their left hand, it took an average of 58 seconds.

From the Times:

Operator of the Money-Losing Tram to Roosevelt Island Wants to Sell Ads. It’s a New York vista: the red Roosevelt Island aerial tramway soars across the East River above the New York skyline, above the boats on the water and the graceful split-level Queensboro Bridge.

For those of you not from around here, Roosevelt Island lies in the East River, just across from the Upper East Side. It’s a planned community, mostly co-operative, with no cars allowed. When it was first built, access was via a bus from Queens or the tramway — which was intended as a temporary solution.

Cars still aren’t allowed on the island’s streets, but the subway now runs to Roosevelt Island. Every time someone suggests shutting down the tram, which loses money, great squawking occurs. Usually people on the mainland — the “mainland” being Manhattan Island — talk about closing the tram when it goes out of service for weeks at a time, requiring expensive repairs to keep what was a temporary solution running safely. The thing is as much a theme park ride as it is effective mass transit.

My favorite graf:

“In `Spider-Man,’ the climactic scene takes place on the tram,” he said. “They would have been the natural customer to wrap it.”

I haven’t seen “Spider-Man” yet, but I bet that climactic scene wasn’t one that would want to make people ride the tram, any more than the scene in “Nighthawks” did.

Personally I’m always ready to learn, although I do not always like being taught.

Sir Winston Churchill (1874 – 1965)