May 04, 2006
767 5th Avenue (Apple 5th Avenue #3)
A view of the enclosed cube from across 58th Street. It was much too busy (and dangerous!) for me to get any good shots. I'm going to try to photograph Apple
May 08, 2006
Apple Corps Smacked Down
Via The Times (via Reuters and like a billion other sources):
Apple Wins Trademark Case With BeatlesApple Computer won its courtroom battle against the Beatles on Monday when a judge ruled the company's iTunes Music Store did not infringe on the trademark of Apple Corps, which represents the band's interests.
In a trial which included the playing of disco hit "Le Freak" in London's High Court, Apple Corps argued the computer company had violated a 1991 trademark agreement by moving into the music business.
Apple Computer, which has sold millions of iPods and more than a billion song downloads, held that iTunes was primarily a data transmission service and permitted by the agreement.
The Beatles are high-profile holdouts from Internet music services like iTunes, but it emerged during the trial that Apple Corps is preparing the band's catalog to be sold online for the first time, according to a submission by Neil Aspinall, managing director of Apple Corps and a former Beatles road manager.
"We are glad to put this disagreement behind us," Apple Chief Executive Steve Jobs said. "We have always loved the Beatles, and hopefully we can now work together to get them on the iTunes Music Store."
Jobs can keep dreaming. Apple Corps already has announced an appeal and I'm quite sure that once they make their performance catalog (remember, Sony and Michael Jackson own the publishing rights to most of their work) available for download, the iTunes Music Store won't be privy to it. Unless they (Apple Corps) wisens up and wants to make milllions from day one with an exclusive deal.
Bonus: Think Secret's article includes a download link to the 34-page decision (as a PDF).
May 11, 2006
Grand Opening - Fifth Avenue
No other words needed really:
Grand OpeningCelebrate the grand opening of the new Apple Store, Fifth Avenue. Win great prizes. Get a commemorative t-shirt. Be one of the first to experience our amazing new store. We look forward to seeing you.
The Apple Store, Fifth Avenue is located at 767 Fifth Avenue at 59th Street.
Of course, I'll be there. Email me if you want to meet up before, during or after the opening.
May 12, 2006
Industrial Art
The NY Weblogger Meetup Group: Founded by Sr. Louis Pagan of Latino Pundit fame. Starting with the 2nd meetup (May 11, 2006), I brought along my Nikon Coolpix L3 and ColorSplash Cam to document the good fun at the Chipotle located at 150 East 44th Street.
Some of the pics (all of the better ones!!) were taken by Alexis Abreu.
May 18, 2006
Apple's Glass Cube Revealed
Via ifoAppleStore (via Mac Rumors):
Workers removed the black plastic material covering The Cube that is the entrance to the Fifth Avenue (NYC) store, and there was a surprise! Stormy Shippy was first in line at 12:15 a.m. Thursday — you may recall he was first in line for the Regent Street (London) store, too. Check my full report for photos and videos.
May 20, 2006
Yo Spike!
Director extraodinaire Sheldon Jackson "Spike" Lee. Don't know why he's been sporting all these "Brasil" shirts and caps and jackets lately.
Since I let Linda (a friend and colleague) cue in front of me on that long ass line, she got him to sign the Tee-shirt box and then gave it to me (but she ain't stupid y'all. She basically switched boxes. And she got two Tees, although one is going to her niece overseas.)
I'd say these two events were the highlight of my time at the Apple 5th Avenue opening.
May 21, 2006
Bumbling In Biloxi
Main Street runs through the center of East Biloxi. Tyrone's Barber and Beauty Shop stands about halfway down Main Street. Tyrone Burton has been cutting hair in Biloxi since 1962, and when I stopped in one morning, there were a half-dozen or so people waiting for a haircut or a style. They hadn't seen the rebuilding recommendations, and most of them hadn't even heard about them, so I went back to my car and fetched a copy and showed it around.
There were two women at Tyrone's, Renee Scott and Bernice Catchings. Before Katrina wrecked it, they had both worked at the Boomtown Casino, Scott as a wardrobe clerk and Catchings as a cook; each had been making $8.75 an hour and taking home about $6 after taxes — $12,000 a year for a full-time job and the jobs had disappeared six months previously. I flipped to the part of the plan that covered affordable housing, and they looked at it skeptically. "Affordable to who?" Scott said. "It won't be me, I can assure you of that."
"Affordable to who?" That's the first question, and the most difficult to answer. There used to be a lot of ways for people to get by in Biloxi: the communities were stable, houses were old and often passed down through generations and rental properties were plentiful and inexpensive. Now that much of it needs to be rebuilt, everything is going to cost a great deal more. I asked Andrés Duany what he meant by "affordable," and he said: "$140,000. We can make a really nice three-bedroom house for $140,000, working with mobile-home manufacturers." When I asked Bill Stallworth, a black councilman whose ward includes about half of East Biloxi, he was just as blunt. "That's not affordable for this area," he said. "Affordability is $65,000 to $95,000."
A very interesting and insightful piece from the New York Times magazine about the rebuilding efforts along the Mississippi coastline after Katrina. I've been interested in the New Urbanism movement after first hearing about it and its advocates when I worked at the Guggenheim years ago. Unfortunately, the plans for Biloxi, Mississippi simply ignore the very citizens that should be the focus of any revitilization:
The New Urbanists like to point to their inclusiveness and respect for regional traditions. Liz Moule told me several times that they had gone out of their way to bring local people into the forum. But judging from the list of invitees, that meant "local designers." Movement throughout Biloxi was significantly limited that week, with National Guardsmen stationed along the highway leading up to the Isle of Capri. Any unaffiliated citizen who wanted to stop by would have been turned away, and in any case, a lot of the evacuees hadn't come back to town yet. In the weeks that followed, there were public meetings to discuss the rebuilding, but many people didn't hear about them or were too busy picking through the debris that had once been their homes. Stallworth, the councilman, described a process that was already well under way before any of the residents were asked how they wanted to rebuild: "It took into account a lot of great planners and their ideas, but not very much from the people. At the town meetings, they pulled out all these plans and said, 'Isn't that nice' and 'What do you think about that?' But the time to ask these questions is on the front end, before you draw up all these plans." The working people of Biloxi — the shrimp fishermen, the bus drivers, the men and women who clean the casinos — weren't consulted, and there was no way to know what the plan might have looked like if they had been.
New Urbanism is like Whole Foods: it's meant to be good for you, but it's expensive, at least on the front end, and it comes with a set of cultural connotations that generally play best among the prosperous and the self-consciously progressive. At Tyrone's Barber and Beauty Shop, Bernice Catchings had flipped through the plan, with its spiffy little houses and tasteful storefronts, and said: "A poor lady like me, what the hell am I going to do with that? Walk by it and admire it? We can't buy it. The white man will always have us pushed to where we have to just . . . go by and admire it and then go home somewhere and eat them old beans and bread and be thankful."
A number of people involved in the Mississippi Renewal Forum referred to the Gulf Coast as a blank slate, but of course it wasn't, exactly. There were lives and mores at work there, which persisted even when most of the buildings were leveled. There are, for example, several thousand Vietnamese in Biloxi: they came to work on the shrimp boats and stayed to build houses and raise families. According to Uyen Le, who works for a Vietnamese community organization, many of them left behind a world where only poor people walk everywhere and a car is a sign of success. "That's the American dream: you get your own lot, and you get your own little house, and you get your own car," she explained. "And now you're talking about these walkable neighborhoods, and some people will say, 'I came to America so I could drive.' Some of these New Urbanist ideas don't really match up for this area." In the 65-page, 28,000-word "Reconstruction Plan for Biloxi," the word "Vietnamese" appears just once.
It appears that "New Urbanism" generates as much debate about it's benefits as does "gentrification." There will be factions that embrace and demean the movements without any room for compromise.
May 22, 2006
Katherine Dunham Dead At 96
I'm pretty shocked by this piss-poor obituary of Dunham in the Times. I'd expect at least three times as much space for such a pioneer:The NY Times has a much longer obit available. I guess they put the below online until writers polished off the longer version.
Katherine Dunham, a pioneering dancer and choreographer, author and civil rights activist who left Broadway to teach culture in one of America's poorest cities, has died. She was 96.
Dunham died Sunday at the Manhattan assisted living facility where she lived, said Charlotte Ottley, executive liaison for the organization that preserves her artistic estate. The cause of death was not immediately known.
Dunham was perhaps best known for bringing African and Caribbean influences to the European-dominated dance world. In the late 1930s, she established the nation's first self-supporting all-black modern dance group.
She choreographed ''Aida'' for the Metropolitan Opera and musicals such as ''Cabin in the Sky'' for Broadway. She also appeared in several films, including ''Stormy Weather'' and ''Carnival of Rhythm.''
Her dance company toured internationally from the 1940s to the '60s, visiting 57 nations on six continents. Her success was won in the face of widespread discrimination, a struggle Dunham championed by refusing to perform at segregated theaters.
After 1967, Dunham lived most of each year in East St. Louis, Ill., where she struggled to bring the arts to a Mississippi River city of burned-out buildings and high crime.
I first heard of Dunham because of one fact: I adored Eartha Kitt, a former dancer for Dunham's dance company.
May 24, 2006
Chicken & Mashed Potatoes at Le Gamin
Celebratory Dinner: The hubby just passed his 2nd Exam (with distinction, I may add!!). Original plans called for burgers and fun at the Chelsea Grill, but it was closed due to a private affair; so this tiny little French joint hit the spot!
I had the Chicken with potatoes and mixed vegetables. All around good with extra fresh, perfectly cooked vegetables. I especially loved the squash and peppers because I rarely eat them (and when they're done right...)
