io9: New York City

A 1969 plan to build a second, nuke-proof Manhattan below New York City

Cyriaque Lamar — Tue, 20 Dec 2011 12:25:00 PST

Every now and again we encounter a retrofuturistic urban planning proposal that is equal parts whimsical and hilarious, such as the proposed million-person city spanning from New York to San Francisco. Here's something that eclipses that design in terms of comic impracticality. Behold Oscar Newman's 1969 plan to hollow out an entire, nuclear-resistant city under Manhattan. How on Earth would all of this space be made? Why, by burying nuclear weapons deep underground and detonating them, of course. More »

Ninja attack engagement photos add much-needed katanas to marriage

Cyriaque Lamar — Sun, 18 Dec 2011 08:00:00 PST

We've seen zombie apocalypse family portraits and undead assault engagement photos. Now, a couple from Queens, New York have illustrated the Ashford-And-Simpson-like sturdiness of their pending nuptials with a photo series depicting a shinobi attack in Brooklyn's Prospect Park. More »

A giant Companion Cube from Portal appears in New York City

Cyriaque Lamar — Wed, 14 Dec 2011 08:50:45 PST

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Last night, pranksters from CalTech dolled up the famous Alamo sculpture in Manhattan's Astor Place with the exterior of an Aperture Science Companion Cube. Here's the note they left to boot. Prediction: cosplaying public art will be the next big trend come 2012.

New map imposes New York City grid system on the world

Sean Kane - Popular Science — Sat, 03 Dec 2011 09:15:00 PST

If the Manhattan grid system was extended beyond the island, the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom would live at the intersection of 63,709th Street and East 10,894th Avenue. A wild interactive map by Harold Cooper, called ExtendNY, imagines an entire globe laid out according to the New York City grid of the Commissioners' Plan of 1811. More »

Sleep No More = LARP + Shakespeare + Absinthe + Orgy Masks

Cyriaque Lamar — Sun, 13 Nov 2011 15:40:00 PST

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Since March, Punchdrunk theater company's immersive Shakespeare adaptation Sleep No More has converted an entire Manhattan loft building into a 100-room abandoned hotel from the 1940s. More »

Mortal Kombat flash rave harasses passers-by with deadly dancing

Cyriaque Lamar — Sat, 05 Nov 2011 09:55:00 PDT

This is so unapologetically stupid, but I can't help but applaud these guys for carrying a boombox around New York blasting the Immortals' always hilarious rave theme. (Random fact: The Mortal Kombat soundtrack has Orbital's "Halcyon" on it. Man, that song really got around.) Anyway, this video goes on for approximately eight minutes and has more critical merit than Mortal Kombat: Annihilation. More »

Old Marvel Comics NYC map teaches us that the Scarlet Witch lives in New Jersey

Cyriaque Lamar — Sat, 22 Oct 2011 15:50:00 PDT

Comic fans will remember that the Scarlet Witch went bonkers several years ago and rewrote most of reality on a whim a few times. More »

Come to the Doomsday Film Festival, a movie party devoted to the apocalypse!

Cyriaque Lamar — Wed, 19 Oct 2011 18:00:00 PDT

Hey you! Have a hankering for the end times? Will you be in New York City this weekend? Did you like Lifeforce? Want to watch me interview Larry Cohen, the director of cult classics like The Stuff and Q: The Winged Serpent? Fuck yeah, you do! More »

10 Ways 9/11 Changed the Way We Build

Robert T. Gonzalez — Mon, 12 Sep 2011 10:13:18 PDT

Ten years ago today, Chicago developer J. Paul Beitler — who once aspired to build the world's tallest building — told The Chicago Tribune that governments would cease to approve plans for skyscrapers, for fear that they would become "magnets for future terrorism." More »

Tomorrow in NYC: Japanese animation fundraiser

Cyriaque Lamar — Sat, 10 Sep 2011 16:20:20 PDT

Tomorrow at New York City's Japan Society is Films For Hope, an international showcase of movies and short features inspired by Japanese animation. The event's date is no coincidence, as it falls a decade after 9/11 and six months after the Tōhoku earthquake. Notes io9 friend Marcelo Gallegos of this event over at Cinespect: More »

What to do if you encounter a real Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle

Cyriaque Lamar — Sat, 27 Aug 2011 11:45:00 PDT

Should Hurricane Irene's impending deluge flood New York City subways, we may see a swarm of rats take to the streets in numbers not seen since the heyday of Hamelin. More »

Become NYC's resident Jules Verne creepster in this $1.7 million steampunk pad

Meredith Woerner — Tue, 23 Aug 2011 13:05:00 PDT

For a cool $1,750,000, you could own your very own Chelsea steampunk apartment! Receive guest through your submarine door, toast them under the giant pink zeppelin, and twirl your vast collection of clockwork thingamajigs. All this and more can be yours...if you can pay for the apartment (and all its many burnished furnishings). More »

Take a stroll down Staten Island's freeway to nowhere

Cyriaque Lamar — Sun, 14 Aug 2011 12:00:00 PDT

In 1966, community activists successfully stopped the construction of the Richmond Parkway Interchange, a stretch of highway that urban planning titan Robert Moses wanted to run through the forested Staten Island Greenbelt. After construction ceased, this highway became cracked and crumbled by time. More »

This is the music you can create with a subway system

Cyriaque Lamar — Tue, 01 Feb 2011 08:00:00 PST

In the euphonious data visualization "Conductor," Alexander Chen transforms the New York City subway system into a massive stringed instrument. More »

This six-story highway through Manhattan is a great lunatic moment in urban planning

Cyriaque Lamar — Sat, 22 Jan 2011 10:05:00 PST

As controversial as Robert Moses' automobile-heavy redesign of New York City was, none of his projects matched the sheer insanity of this skyscraper-sized highway proposed by one-time NYC health commissioner Dr. John A. Harriss in 1930. More »

An abandoned quarantine island, in plain sight of New York City

Cyriaque Lamar — Wed, 19 Jan 2011 11:22:37 PST

A stone's throw away from Manhattan, Bronx, and LaGuardia Airport sits North Brother Island, an one-time quarantine facility that housed infectious individuals like "Typhoid" Mary Mallon. The island has since been exiled from the surrounding metropolis and left to nature. More »

In an alternate universe, there's a 600-mph underground missile train between NYC and Philly

Cyriaque Lamar — Wed, 12 Jan 2011 07:00:00 PST

In John B. Prather's 1945 paper New York-Philadelphia Vacuum Tunnel, Preliminary Design Features and Economic Analysis, the author proposes building a screaming vacuum train that will blast between Philadelphia and NYC in 20 minutes. Up yours, New Jersey Turnpike! More »

An entire New York theme park crammed into a single skyscraper

Cyriaque Lamar — Wed, 05 Jan 2011 11:35:11 PST

To reduce the sprawl and auto emissions created by conventional amusement parks, New York architect Ju-Hyun Kim's envisioned a playland condensed inside one skyscraper. A roller coaster's way more thrilling when you're almost plummeting into the office building next door. More »

Short film shows off what's left of New York City's Mole People

Meredith Woerner — Sun, 02 Jan 2011 19:07:49 PST

Urban explorers from Undercity took their cameras down below and into NYC's century old sewer systems, abandoned subway stations, and inside the Lincoln Tunnel to see the remnants of the society of tunnel folk. Watch what they uncovered. More »

1916 plan for NYC proposed fusing Brooklyn and Manhattan, building new islands

Cyriaque Lamar — Tue, 26 Oct 2010 11:27:25 PDT

In the early 1900s, Dr. T. Kenard Thomson proposed increasing NYC's property value by creating a land bridge between Manhattan and Brooklyn, building an island off the Jersey shore, and constructing a "New Manhattan" directly below the old one. More »

A day in the life of the Ghostbusters firehouse

Cyriaque Lamar — Sun, 10 Oct 2010 07:00:00 PDT

What's it like to a be a firefighter at the FDNY Hook & Ladder No. 8 Firehouse in Manhattan? 50% of your day is dedicated to extinguishing fires; the other 50% is spent dealing with Ghostbusters fans. More »

The South Edgemere Wasteland of New York City

Cyriaque Lamar — Sat, 02 Oct 2010 07:15:57 PDT

In the 1920s, South Edgemere in Queens was a thriving summertime destination replete with bungalows and a boardwalk. Nowadays, these 20 or so unused blocks have been abandoned to seaside squatters and gangs of wild dogs. More »

100 years ago, the New York Times predicted cars would be abolished today

Annalee Newitz — Thu, 09 Sep 2010 16:00:00 PDT

Back in 1909, a fanciful New York Times journalist decided to spice things up by pretending to describe a futuristic 2009 "centennial celebration." His portrait of future NYC is surprisingly eco-conscious and pedestrian-friendly. More »

The whimsical inner city airports that never came to pass

Cyriaque Lamar — Mon, 02 Aug 2010 13:41:16 PDT

Your average metropolitan airport is on a desolate tract of land far from the city's center. But that doesn't mean past urban designers didn't try to incorporate airfields into cities' layouts. Here are some fanciful urban aerodromes of yore. More »

Darth Vader and the Stormtroopers invade the New York subway

Cyriaque Lamar — Wed, 14 Jul 2010 16:13:03 PDT

It's a typical day in New York. Leia Organa's doing some light reading on the subway, when suddenly a cadre of Imperial trooper enters. One stop later, a Sith Lord is using public transportation. Yes, Improv Everywhere has struck again. More »

Future New York, The City of Skyscrapers (1925)

Matt Novak - Paleo-Future Blog — Sat, 10 Jul 2010 15:00:00 PDT

This postcard from 1925 imagines future New York City, "The City of Skyscrapers." Utopian New York of the 1920s had a lot of levels, with a system of elevated trains, beautiful flying contraptions, and towering skyscrapers reaching toward the heavens. More »

The streets of New York City are a hidden symphony of lights

Cyriaque Lamar — Tue, 08 Jun 2010 16:00:00 PDT

Eric Archer drove from New Jersey to Brooklyn and scored the trip using a photodiode-to-audio circuit. Using this technology, the headlights of cars become blaring horns and a flashing truck pounds out a Kraftwerkian beat. [MAKE] More »

Watch The First 10 Minutes Of Ugly Americans

Cyriaque Lamar — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 06:30:00 PDT

Ugly Americans debuts tomorrow, but Comedy Central has cued us in to this 10 minute preview. Meet social worker Mark Lilly, his zombie roomie Randall, Mark's demonic boss Callie, the obnoxious Great Brain, and those damn land whales. More »

Architects Propose Expanding New York Into The Water To Go Green

Megan Carpentier — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 15:00:00 PDT

While many visions of a future New York showcase its lauded ability to grow upwards, architects Richard Garber and Brian Novello have suggested it grow outwards — into the water — to increase public space and harness hydropower. More »

Trains Erupt with Flowers: Past and Future New York City

Annalee Newitz — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 10:38:24 PST

A marvel of industrial efficiency when it was built in the 1930s, New York City's High Line was an elevated train line that chugged up through the lower west side of Manhattan and along the Hudson River. But in the 1980s, the trains stopped running and the tracks returned to nature, sprouting unexpectedly lush gardens of local flora. Now a years-long project to convert a stretch of the tracks into a park is nearing its end, and we've got a timeline of the train's strange life in images, below. More »

Our Homes Have Turned into Server Farms

Annalee Newitz — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 07:00:00 PDT

Nestled among the towers of midtown Manhattan is a new housing development made entirely of prefab houses (top) that look like rack-mounted computer servers (bottom). In fact, these houses are intended to be mounted and stacked in giant racks that can be built in days. Soon, all of New York City may look like a giant Google server farm. Check out the rack server house being built below. More »

Hollywood Imagines 1980s New York—in 1930

Lynn Peril — Thu, 29 May 2008 13:20:00 PDT

It took a crew of 200 technicians to build a miniature model of a futuristic New York City for "Just Imagine, a motion picture fantasy" released in November, 1930. According to Modern Mechanix, the city of the future was built in an old blimp hangar, and the model covered a ground area of 75x225. Its tallest tower soared 40 feet high. In all, the not-so-tiny model city required more than five tons of plaster to construct. And there's more. More »

In 1870, New Yorkers Whooshed Under the City Via Pneumatic Tube

Lynn Peril — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 12:20:28 PST

It sounds like something out of Jules Verne or The Jetsons, but in 1870 a "pneumatic subway" ran under Broadway in Manhattan. Built in secret so as to not to arouse the ire of Tammany Hall, only a block-long segment between Warren and Murray Streets was completed before an enterprising reporter for the New York Tribune exposed its existence. More »

Cloverfield Graphic Novel + Last Shot Of Movie = Wink, Wink

Kevin Kelly — Mon, 21 Jan 2008 10:00:16 PST

So Cloverfield came and shed the "is it just internet buzz?" curse of Snakes on a Plane this weekend by chewing up over $41 million bucks at the box office, and that's not including the bonus holiday Monday take. Although the film has been out only three days, there's already more monster-sized rumormongering going on. Consider this your spoiler warning, dorkaholics! More »

Stay After The Credits For More J.J. Abrams Mysterification

Kevin Kelly — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 10:40:23 PST

Cloverfield opens this Friday, and if you're planning on seeing it in the theaters, make sure you stay planted after the credits roll. If you do, you'll be rewarded with a "Wink, wink. We'll be back!" moment. Basically the screen goes black and a walkie-talkie crackles to life and a voice says... something. None of us could figure out what they said, leading to speculation about a sequel, what the numbers actually mean on Lost, or maybe just a radio commercial for Slusho. If you see it this weekend, let us know what you think it was. More »

io9 Talks To Cloverfield Director Matt Reeves

Kevin Kelly — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 09:50:07 PST

Cloverfield opens today, ending months of internet speculation and Slusho tie-in controversies. We spoke to the man behind the movie, Matt Reeves. He took time out of his busy day, where he's poised to count bags of incoming cash and laugh maniacally, to talk to us about Gojira, David Schwimmer, and the big secret at the end of the movie. Check out the interview inside, and steel yourself for one of the nicest guys we've ever met in Hollywood. More »

Movies That Smash the Statue of Liberty

Kevin Kelly — Tue, 11 Dec 2007 12:00:58 PST

A trailer for the upcoming movie I Am Legend shows Will Smith and his canine buddy wandering an entirely empty New York City. But that's nothing new. Hollywood has always loved to show one of the most bustling cities on the planet smashed to hell and emptied of human life. More »

Sea Creatures Float in New Smartglass Aquatic Carousel

LISA KATAYAMA — Tue, 04 Dec 2007 14:00:40 PST

Nobody wants to ride merry-go-rounds anymore because horse-drawn carriages are so last century. That's why Manhattan's Battery Park is setting up the first aquatic carousel this summer. Instead of mounting a horsey inside a tacky gold-plated circus tent, visitors get to coast through a nautilus-shaped carousel on the back of a dolphin or a manatee while enjoying 360-degree projections of sea creatures floating around them on windows made of SmartGlass. More »

Cloverfield Monster Is Free Willy With Pubic Lice

Kevin Kelly — Fri, 30 Nov 2007 09:30:59 PST

The monster in the J.J. Abrams-produced Cloverfield movie has had everyone speculating about what it could be. For months people have been wondering if this was a new Godzilla movie, a return of the Loch Ness monster, or something more sinister. More »