Archives › underground systems
We’ve learned of Site NY, a prop-and-set design house located, of course, in our home borough/county, Brooklyn/Kings. They make cool stuff for movies and tv and probably geeky people like us – but with more money. And there’s more – here are mysterious white cubes either taking hallucinogens – or giving birth, I’m not sure [...]
Jen Chung at Gothamist and Al Baker of the Times have good coverage of the new, much-increased Department of Homeland Security grant to provide security for New York City subways, including the 16 underwater tunnels that link the boroughs to each other, and to the mainland (the Bronx, of course, is actually on the mainland). [...]
The Postal Service first used pneumatic tubes between New York and Brooklyn in 1897; the system expanded to connect individual post offices in Manhattan, Brooklyn and Queens. Similar systems were used in Boston, Philadelphia and Chicago in the United States, and in Europe, Prague, London, Paris, and Russia. [photopress:Pneumatic_Tube_Canister___National_Postal_Museum_.jpg,thumb,alignright] At its peak, New York’s pneumatic [...]
[Originally posted at Popular Logistics] Anyone interested in the issues discussed at is likely to find Cryptome.org an – and its affiliated sites – invaluable resources. One of – The Eyeball Series – treats “Eyeball” as a verb rather than as a noun – and provides visual information – some declassified, some acquired as open-sour [...]
This was on the City Skip Blog: City Skip is the name of a blog – and while it seems to be the nom de plume of one person, it’s also the name of a group of some sort. The sort of conspiracy in which people get to attached to old things just because they’re [...]
Thomas J. Lueck (copy) and Tyler Hicks (images) of my hometown paper have reported that in the most prominent, and well-kept, public park in New York City, rats play as though they were squirrels. Notwithstanding municipal efforts to persuade them to relocate. From November 10, 2007, “Where the Rats Come Out to Play”: The rat [...]
We have first-hand sightings of DEP personnel making repairs to storm drains on Caton (at, we think, Marlborough, and East 10th) on at least three occasions. [singlepic=6,320,240,,right] This may be a good thing. But not, we think, a reason to cease concern about flood risk. And – the next time you hear a government official [...]
John Strausbaugh (Wikipedia entry here) has a great article, “(Weekend Explorer) On the Trail of Brooklyn’s Underground Railroad,” … [L]ong before Brooklyn was veined with subway lines, it was a hub of the Underground Railroad: the network of sympathizers and safe houses throughout the North that helped as many as 100,000 slaves flee the South [...]
Last Sunday’s Times, Metro section, Sunday September 16, 2007, page 21, column 1, headlined: “Pipeline Accident Kills Worker.” No dateline, no byline. Not showing up in the Times’ archive search on its website. From that piece, which reports that Mr. McCaffrey was killed on Saturday: The worker, identified as Pat McCaffrey, 67, of Lebanon, N.J. [...]
Kris Alexander at Danger Room has a short report and incisive analysis of these attacks, which PEMEX (Mexico’s oil exporting entity) claims will require hundreds of millions of dollars in repairs. PEMEX also claims – in my view, not plausibly – that it won’t cause disruptions in exports (and to United States imports). Photo by [...]