Janos.nyc reader Jon Reznick has joked that this site is a daily history of riots in New York City, and it’s true that Gotham’s manic energy has lent itself to nearly every type of riot imaginable. So why not a folk singer riot? In 1961, beatniks were ascendant. Ginsberg and Kerouac were mainstream hits, and…
We all know how frustrating it is when your morning train has issues. (I’m looking at you, L line!) Now imagine eleven days without subways or buses. By 1980, the city had started to recover from the mid-70s fiscal crisis, but dealing with union contracts, many of which had been frozen or taken a hit…
If you’ve ever seen Koch, the movie, you’ll recall the scenes were Ed Koch delightfully waves at drivers crossing “my new bridge!” The scene was filmed shortly after the 59th Street/Queensboro Bridge was renamed the Edward I. Koch Bridge on March 23, 2011. Mayor Bloomberg had announced the idea at Ed Koch’s 86th birthday party,…
New York City politics might seem convoluted now, but for nearly a century the city was governed by the Board of Estimate, an eight-member body as opaque and sinister as it sounds. On March 22, 1989, the U.S. Supreme Court declared the Board of Estimate unconstitutional. The subsequent revision to the City Charter created the political…
Few conversations about New York City spark more heated debate than the redevelopment of Times Square. For some, it symbolized the death of New York City’s soul, the beginning of a corporate, stale, Disneyfied city. For others, it was a rebirth, a defiant reversal of the downward spiral that had unleashed crime and middle-class flight through Gotham. This…
Just When I Thought I Was Out, They Pull Me Back In: The Richard Ravitch Story… Richard Ravitch is one of those legendary public intellectuals from a bygone era who leaves you at the end of a television interview muttering to yourself about the shallowness of other news coverage. His most famous accomplishment, for which all New…
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