From the Atlantic...

Last night I saw two adorable girls on the bus. They wore orange sandals, had orange flowers in their hair and drank some kind of orange drink. They held their plastic cups with both hands. I kept waiting for one of them to spill their drink. Sticky orange disaster on the BX7. Ah, summer.

At least there’s a breeze out in Cony Island. Swell day for ice cream, huh?

Picture by Bags.

Cheap Eats: the place to be.

[Photo Credit: Hilary Bergantine; Bags]

…with your .44.

[Photo Credit: Stanley Kubrick]

Sunset in Manhattan. I remember walking up Broadway during the summer as a teenager. As I crossed each block, I’d look down past West End Avenue and chart the sun lowering in the sky until it had disappeared beyond the Hudson River and the sky was pink and orange. It was like a walking flip book. Then the lights from the stores and traffic signs and cars popped on the city street. Magic hour, that surreal moment between night and day when everything seemed like it was out of a movie.

[Photo Credit: Atenacius via This Isn’t Happiness ]

The people ride in a hole in the ground… Oh, for the love of Julie Munshin.

Funcrusher plus. Aie, papi.

[Illustration by Namio Harukawa (warning, erotic content)]

From Charles Simic:

No city displays its mixture of beauty and ugliness as brazenly as New York does. It’s one thing to see a city with cathedrals and other church towers from an approaching train as one does in Europe and another to see Manhattan with buildings of every size thrown together more or less haphazardly and its streets packed with humanity all coming into view simultaneously. I still can’t believe my eyes every time I see it.

[Photo Credit: A crowd watching the news line on the Times building at Times Square, NYC, on D-day, June 6, 1944. Large-format nitrate negative by Howard Hollem or Edward Meyer, Office of War Information…via New York History]

In the summer, in the city, in the summer, in the city…

[Picture by Leonard Freed via Adam Marelli Photo]

Check out this site: Old New York Stories.

[Photo Credit: Mark Kalan]

Summer in New York is sweet because the town thins out some. People go on vacation, or at least they often vamoose for the weekend. The trains are less crowded cause kids are out of school.  The Farmer’s market has incredible fruit and veggies.

There’s plenty of flesh to enjoy.

So long as the power doesn’t go out–thank the heavens for ice cubes and air conditioning–life is good.

[Photo Via Bags and the most incredible, This Isn’t Happiness]

Spotted on on Ludlow Street between Canal & Hester earlier this spring by a pal.

Dodger graff on the L.E.S.? Well, go figure that. Never know what you’re going to find in this town.

I remember watching people talking on pay phones when I was a kid. I waited for them to hang up to see if they would stick their finger in the coin return, looking for a dime, or later, a quarter. It seemed like a reflex, as if they were scratching a morning lotto ticket.

Hey, you never know, right?

They were different from the schnorrer’s who walked up to a pay phone and stuck their finger in the slot looking for change without any intention of making a call.

[Photo Via Retro New York]

Art in Progress: seen on Broadway, Upper West Side.

[Featured Image (by Frank Horvat) and Video Via Retro New York]

Alex Maclean looks at New York’s hidden skyline spaces. Dig the “Up on the Roof” gallery over at Fast Company.

Ayo, what are you listening to?

[Photo Credit: Koarli]

Nothing says New York, or at least Manhattan, like a water tower. I remember looking out of the window at my grandparent’s apartment as a kid. They lived on 82nd street between Columbus and Central Park West. On the ninth floor. I’d look north at the cityscape and I knew why I liked Edward Hopper’s paintings. I’d see the brownstones and on the top of them the water towers. I never understood what they were for, how the water got in or out of them.

Today, I just know that I feel comforted when I see them.

[Photo Credit: The Great Retro New York]

This picture is neither I know, but which do you prefer: Italian or Puerto Rican Icey? I like the shaved ice better not only because there are more flavors to choose from but also because I like watching the ice being shaved. Not that I’d turn down an Italian ice on a hot day.

[Photo Credit: Rob Brulinski]

Drink up.