‘New York, New York, New York, New York’

My dear friend Hiro Ito has a brilliant photo slideshow on the New York Times’ Lens blog today, called “New York, New York, New York, New York.”

It’s a series of 17 grids, drawn from the gigantic archive of black-and-white street photography — like tens of thousands of images — that Hiro has built up over the years. (He takes other kinds of pictures, too, including arts performances for the Times.)

Here’s one image that is part of slide #10 (I am flattered to report that yours truly makes a cameo in that slide as well):

You can see another Times slideshow of Hiro’s work here, and read an interview with him here.

Dirty Jersey

(Via, via.)

Disco Soccer 3

Disco Soccer 2

Disco Soccer 1

The sad origins of ‘alternative rock’

Note the first cited example by the Oxford English Dictionary. Paging Jesse Sheidlower: somebody’s gotta right this wrong, because we built this city on far, far better things.

alternative rock n. orig. U.S. rock music characterized by an unorthodox or uncommercialized style or approach, esp. as distributed by an independent record label.

[1981 Washington Post C11/3 Jefferson Starship is an alternative rock group. That is, they give an audience a taster's choice of stancesthe psychedelic origins, the sci-fi middle ground and the metallic dead end.] 1986 Los Angeles Times 19 Jan. (Calendar) 74 Listeners..loyally supported the Long Beach-based station's eclectic, *alternative-rock play list. 2000 C. H. HANSEN & R. D. HANSEN in D. Zillmann et al. Media Entertainm. x. 181 They grouped the videos into eight types of music (rap, soul, country, heavy metal, pop, classic rock, alternative rock, and other).

VHS youth: ‘Screwballs’ (1983)