(images from the NYPL Digital Archive and Shorpy (click on the Shorpy images for more information/larger sizes)).
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THERE IS A NEW DRUNK HISTORY ABOUT TESLA VS. EDISON STARRING JOHN C. REILLY AND CRISPIN GLOVER.
It’s like someone read my mind, but they got the casting for Tesla and Edison mixed up (seriously, Reilly even looks like latter day Edison when you stick a moustache on him. Don’t even get me started on Glover being perfect to play Tesla).
Over at Shorpy’s are pages and pages of gorgous, high-resolution photos from the past. Normally I just admire them for their ridiculous amount of detail, but when I saw this one I realized I knew that place! I never know that place! Whenever they show a picture of Olde Tymie Newe Yorke the ‘before’ is always some guy with a donkey-drawn cart standing in a dirt rut surrounded by field, and the ‘after’ is the Disney store in Times Square. What?! But this time, not only did the building look the same, and the surrounding buildings, but it’s something I pass all the time in present day!
And that little building grew up to be…a Starbucks and an Urban Outfitters! The El line is long gone and the building the guy’s scrubbing is some weird pizza shop (sorry, blue and white is a color scheme for Greek food, not pizza), but otherwise it’s the same! Fun Fact: the subway there still has the old IRT signs going down the stairs.
I highly recommend clicking on the high-resolution image over at Shorpy’s; you can see two ladies staring out a window , a window-washer rigged with just a rope tied around his waist, a street urchin who looks like he snuck on the El, and a bowler-hatted fellow reading the paper nearby.
Tags: architecture, history, I know that place!
Despite living all of 4 blocks from it, never once did I visit the gigantic floating museum known as The Intrepid. This was likely due to my distaste for any NYC tourist spot, what with the crowds, the standing right in the middle of the damn walkway gawking up at stuff and pointing wearing three cameras, a fanny pack and an oversized sweater bearing the name of a favorite sports team lightly spotted with hot dog stains, and the potential shame of being mistaken for a tourist, plus a lack of interest in military history.
Visiting the Independence Seaport Museum in Philadelphia was a revelation that floating historical ships are really fun to run around in, especially combined with the freedom to be a gawky, photo-snapping tourist in a city not my own. So, I figured the Intrepid might be a lark.
Firstly, the Intrepid is huuuuuuge. Immense, gargantuan, a gigantic floating island holding numerous planes (big ones!) for you to wander around and surreptitiously touch when no one is looking despite 20 signs saying ‘do not touch planes’. To even board the ship, you need to climb 4 flights of tall concrete steps and cross over a large metal gangway to reach the upper deck. Once aboard you’re surrounded by all sorts of famous planes from around the world.
Tiger plane!
They did a good job sticking the decals on straight.
Families from all over posed and took photos, though I’m not sure what this mom was going for. Walking down to the main floor of the museum, you run right into this:
Boo! Kids really enjoyed ‘shooting’ everyone in their family as they came down the steps. Ah, childhood. The main museum has lots of flashy BS with long lines like flight simulators and a ’4-D’ movie from the point of view of a kamikaze, leaving the cases of genuine artifacts relatively unobstructed. These are badges of various departments on the ship:
They also had scrapbooks, souvenirs, notes, and memos:
From there you could walk into the officer’s sleeping quarters and beyond that, the chain room:
This was painted on one of the chain pulleys.
Down another deck was an Au Bon Pan. Yep, just like the sailors used to sit at! Down a hall littered with odd signery was the actual mess hall, complete with piped-in audio of sailors chowing down.
A sign informed us an enthusiastic sailor decorated the different parts of the mess area using the limited materials at hand. This was the ‘Western’ section, but there was also a ‘Cafe’ area and an ‘Al Fresco’ scene.
Back upstairs, an upper level led to the main control rooms.
Somehow they made an On/Off switch too complicated.
An old man sat in the main control area telling stories of yore and fielding a combination of silly/ignorant/random questions from the crowd gathered around. Despite repeatedly mentioning he’d started in the Navy on the Intrepid in 1953, he was congratulated several times for serving in WWII.
What’s a run around an educational historical thing for if not the gift shop? Though plenty of ship models and military hats were available, they also had several racks of street name stickers, with absolutely no military or nautical relation to anything:
Ugh. I do not want to live on that street.
Walking out I ran into several groups of Boy Scouts meeting up for an Intrepid sleep-over. Could anything be more American? Oh yeah, there was also a hot-dog vendor with an eagle flying over an American flag nearby. USA! USA! USA!
This was a sticker on one of the captains’ room doors, I wonder what they meant by OHMYGOD LOOK OUT!!!!
Tags: history, military stuff, ships, tourism
