<![CDATA[Five Alternate Histories of New York - io9 Comments]]> <![CDATA[Five Alternate Histories of New York - io9 Comments]]> <![CDATA[Five Alternate Histories of New York]]> Hmm interesting stuff. I live in NY and this was very insightful. But I only have 1 issue. Did Chabon re-invent the alternate history genre or made an impact on it with his addition?
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ceokhan

]]> <![CDATA[Five Alternate Histories of New York]]> I am confused here... is Michael Chabon the inventor, or just an addition to reinvented histories?
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KicksOnFire.com - News & Updates on Air Jordan & Jordans

ceokhan

]]> <![CDATA[Five Alternate Histories of New York]]> Why isn't Elvis Costello being credited with an alternate present vision in his song "New Amsterdam?"

wotthehell

]]> <![CDATA[Five Alternate Histories of New York]]> OK, I'm from the uK, and wikipedia can only tell me so much, what seems to be the problem with buffalo?

mr_bigglesworth

]]> <![CDATA[Five Alternate Histories of New York]]> The Blasting of Flood Rock actually provides an important piece information to the alternate history story that I am presently working on. Thanks!!

Nebris

]]> <![CDATA[Five Alternate Histories of New York]]> Actually L.A. is the good twin.

spudzill

]]> <![CDATA[Five Alternate Histories of New York]]> I'm proud of what New Amsterdam has brought us, even up to its current nick, New York. Everyone still goes Dutch here. Am I Dutch? Well, I'm living here. The street names have been of great interest to me since first landing here in the summer of '06. A confluence of energies transpire on the corners of the streets of Wall and Water, in Battery Park, up and down Broadway of course, on Canal Street, and Lexington, almost everywhere you look! Five points now pinpoints the great halls of Justice? Limited experience withstanding, I can't think of a better mosaic! Readers, what's the survey on alternate futures of New York? The deliberation is endless, and that note about going Dutch, well, that's one of the best virtues upon which such deliberations are founded. Up, up, and awayyyy!

EncephelanetRepairHelperGuy

]]> <![CDATA[Five Alternate Histories of New York]]> Robert Moses did some good stuff, but he's rotting in the nastier part of hell for what he did to Buffalo. He was a charter member of the Pave the Earth group.

daveNYC

]]> <![CDATA[Five Alternate Histories of New York]]> The Intuitionist by Colson Whitehead.

the memorexe

]]> <![CDATA[Five Alternate Histories of New York]]> @dOk: Well, L.A. is like an alternate NYC. It's like the evil mirror universe version of New York.

Charlie Jane Anders

]]> <![CDATA[Five Alternate Histories of New York]]> So...

If this post is about new york...
Why is the lead image Syd Mead's concept drawings for Bladerunner...

Which is of course Los Angeles.

dOk

]]> <![CDATA[Five Alternate Histories of New York]]> @Moff: excellent observation.

joshuajcohen

]]> <![CDATA[Five Alternate Histories of New York]]> @GraniteInMyVeins: I don't think so. All planners recognize the value of Jones Beach, the Triborough Bridge, the Merritt Parkway, and all the open space, pools and parks. It's just where he began tearing down neighborhoods to build freeways in dense areas that he ran into trouble when he got super power-hungry. Soho and the Major Deegan were just the two most aggressive and crossed a line.

No one - and I mean no one - hates every project he did.

zingbot

]]> <![CDATA[Five Alternate Histories of New York]]> @omg-ponies: Especially in the subway; that stink has lingered.

As for the Long Island megalopolis. Keep tithing to the Jehovah's Witnesses and pray for Citigroup to stay afloat and you just may get your wish some day.

92BuickLeSabre

]]> <![CDATA[Five Alternate Histories of New York]]> Hey there,

Thanks for picking up NEU-YORK! Ironic that you came across it via Claire Light. For the record, from the scores of blogs who've written about this project over the past several years, she remains singular, not only for her out-of-bounds and mean-spirited "review" -- nasty in an oddly personal, below-the-belt and unprofessional manner that I've never encountered anywhere, before or since -- but because the "points" made in her post, the accusations of the many things I've done "wrong," are completely and uniformly misguided.

For example, she claims that naming streets after trees is an American convention, something that the Nazis did not do. While this aspect of street-naming may indeed have been realized similarly in the United States, it certainly happened in Germany, as evidenced from the 1939 map of Berlin -- printed under Nazi rule -- that was the source of my project. Anyway, I can only laugh; she devoted a good deal of pixels to a project that got her "panties in a bunch" (her words); her post reads as a sadly competitive directive -- how she would have done the piece, had it, in fact, been hers to do.

Not a soapbox moment here -- just a heads-up and caveat to any in your readership who may peruse that original post. Thank you most kindly for the mention and keep up the good work!

MeGo

MeGo

]]> <![CDATA[Five Alternate Histories of New York]]> Personally, I'd love to see what would have happened if Brooklyn - not Manhattan - had seen the great skyscraper boom of the late 19th century. What if all of Long Island, from the East River to the Sound, became a giant skyscraper-populated megalopolis?

OMG! Ponies!

]]> <![CDATA[Five Alternate Histories of New York]]> This is a great post! Thanks Charlie!

During the 1600s the Dutch were in the middle of their Golden Age and had a lot of trouble attracting settlers to New Amsterdam. Hence, you had the English (like John Bowne whose home still stands in Flushing) coming down from New England, Jews from Europe and other non Dutch folks settling here.

Even if the Dutch were able to hold onto the area I'm not sure they would have been able to populate it in the manner that the English were able to but it still would most likely have been a melting pot much like we see today.

frankadelic

]]> <![CDATA[Five Alternate Histories of New York]]> @92BuickLeSabre: And Canal Street was named for the open-sewer that was jokingly called the Canal. The smell has not improved.

OMG! Ponies!

]]> <![CDATA[Five Alternate Histories of New York]]> Nieuwe Oranje Nieuwe Oranje, grote stad van dromen
En alles in New Orange is niet altijd wat het schijnt
U zou kunnen krijgen fooled als u uit uit stad komt
Maar ik ben neer door wet en ik ken rond mijn manier

Teveel, teveel mensen, teveel (aha-Ha)
Teveel, teveel mensen, teveel, Raaah!

Whyaduck

]]> <![CDATA[Five Alternate Histories of New York]]> @wishnevsky: I almost included the riots, but couldn't imagine how they'd have turned out differently.

Charlie Jane Anders

]]> <![CDATA[Five Alternate Histories of New York]]> @wishnevsky: That makes me think of walking through the "Five Points" area in Manhattan.

It's now a playground in Chinatown surrounded by state and Federal court houses, and you really can't help but think: "Really, this was arguably the most violent spot in the country for fifty years?"

92BuickLeSabre

]]> <![CDATA[Five Alternate Histories of New York]]> There is an Elizabeth Bear book, "New Amsterdam," Alt/hist with zeppelins, vampires and forensic sorcerers.

wishnevsky

]]> <![CDATA[Five Alternate Histories of New York]]> Don't forget the Irish doing their best to burn down New York in the Civil War Draft Riots. Cannon on the corner of Bleeker and MacDougal.. Blood running in the gutters..

wishnevsky

]]> <![CDATA[Five Alternate Histories of New York]]> That would be really interesting if the Dutch still owned it, Manhattan would be independent of the US, like Bermuda off the coast of Virginia. And Hell Gate would still be there and it could never have expanded. Very interesting.

aspiringexpatriate

]]> <![CDATA[Five Alternate Histories of New York]]> @TimGunn: As I currently live in the West Village, you can rest assured the gay population is doing quite nicely (just take a walk on Christopher Street some time). The zoning restrictions in my area of New York are a godsend, as I work for a large corporate law firm, and getting out of our massive skyscraper at night, and arriving down to the quiet of the village is much needed. I'm not gay, but everyone in the neighborhood is really friendly. I can't imagine a massive highway rolling through the area - that would really kill the spirit (ugh).

PVIII

]]> <![CDATA[Five Alternate Histories of New York]]> What about Fernando Wood's "Tri-Insula" secession idea?

N__B

]]> <![CDATA[Five Alternate Histories of New York]]> what if the AIDS hadn't decimated the gay population?

TimGunn

]]> <![CDATA[Five Alternate Histories of New York]]> i'm pretty sure the "hell gate" etymology here is off- I think it's originally from the Dutch for "bright gate". yours fits too though!

theghastlyfop

]]> <![CDATA[Five Alternate Histories of New York]]> is this a new site?

Amiash

]]> <![CDATA[Five Alternate Histories of New York]]> No "Fifth Element" New York?

I only mention it because the take out looked so convenient.

-well, you know...up until the mail came and the phone rang.

strider_mt2k

]]> <![CDATA[Five Alternate Histories of New York]]> @DocGratis: But it sounds more like something you'd sing on Consumerist.

@risingstar: No kidding. There should be a sixth timeline point for everything being planned right now, including: the new battery park, the new southstreet seaport, the westside rail yards, Ratner's development, development around the highline, 2nd Ave subway, and on and on. There are a ton of massive re-imaginings going on in NYC right now, all of them arguably at least as impactful as LOMEX.

I just wish they would build the underground commercial trucking tunnels that were thrown around in idea form for decades.

@GraniteInMyVeins: Robert Moses was one of my least favorite NY figures....until work started requiring me to get from uptown to downtown quickly and often.

92BuickLeSabre

]]> <![CDATA[Five Alternate Histories of New York]]> Blue door hinge?

Ed Grabianowski

]]> <![CDATA[Five Alternate Histories of New York]]> @moff: New Orange New Orange..
You just rhyme it with itself...

DocGratis

]]> <![CDATA[Five Alternate Histories of New York]]> There were also those crazy plans by Columbia University to take over upper Manhattan and transform it into a series of glass boxes surrounded by housing projects. Thank God that didn't happen! . . . Wait . . .[neighbors.columbia.edu]

risingstar

]]> <![CDATA[Five Alternate Histories of New York]]> @92BuickLeSabre: Exactly. While it is easy to vilify Moses, this City wouldn't be operational today without him. Urban planners of the tree-hugger variety are too quick to point out his demolotion of neighborhoods (they have a point with the Major Deegan) while not acknowledging a single accomplishment.

GraniteInMyVeins

]]> <![CDATA[Five Alternate Histories of New York]]> @zeppelined: Ha ha... and ouch...

Hey I liked the 33.. it made getting into the medical district easy...

But yes that city has a bunch of weird highways...

DocGratis

]]> <![CDATA[Five Alternate Histories of New York]]> @moff: Yes, where would the world be without the genius of Madonna?

"I don't like cities but I like New York.
Other places make me feel like a dork."

Ed Grabianowski

]]> <![CDATA[Five Alternate Histories of New York]]> An awful lot of famous songs would not have rhymed at all if we lived in New Orange.

Moff

]]> <![CDATA[Five Alternate Histories of New York]]> My understanding is that Hell Gate is primarily the strip of water that connects the East River to The Long Island Sound, running between Randall's Island and Astoria and under the Triborough and Amtrak bridges.

It's still called that by the way. Even though the major obstacles are long gone, the waters flow into it from both the East River and the sound, creating a dangerous body of water for smaller boats. Plenty of speedboats head out that way to catch air off of the resulting waves.

That LOMEX image is really interesting in that it looks a lot like the Brooklyn-side of the Brooklyn Bridge, where the Brooklyn court complex and downtown Brooklyn is bisected by the need for easy access to the bridge.

Thank God for Robert Moses (FDR, Triborough), but Thank God he was stopped as well (Bronx, Bay Ridge).

92BuickLeSabre

]]> <![CDATA[Five Alternate Histories of New York]]> Did Chabon reinvent alternate history, or just contribute to it?

braak

]]> <![CDATA[Five Alternate Histories of New York]]> You can easily visit the alternate reality where Robert Moses had his way with a city, built highways willy nilly and turned the whole place to crap. And you don't need a wormhole to get there, just take I-90 west to Buffalo and Niagara Falls.

Ed Grabianowski

]]>