HISTORY

I have always enjoyed history, and recently discovered a couple new blogs that deal with New York City history.  The first and best is The Bowery Boys, whose podcasts and blog really make the history of places we walk every day as New Yorkers come alive with context and humor. The second is Ephemeral New York, which has little tidbits about forgotten areas of the NY and is a great resource for vintage imagery of the city (see above). Another, which I have known about for a while and is the most obsessive and cantankerous of the bunch, is Forgotten New York. There is an entire section on this blog about lampposts! Amazing!

Another great source of historical amusement is the now out of print book New York Then and Now. You can view it online on Google Books. It's great because the "new" comparison shots are from the 70's and look even less familiar than some of the older 19th century ones.

image via Ephemeral New York

FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS

In honor of wild Friday nights... on a more typical not-so-wild Friday night, I am celebrating with a classic 70's and 80's musical genius, Giorgio Moroder.  Giorgio produced some of the biggest hits of the day, including I Feel Love by Donna Summer and the theme song, Chase, from Midnight Express.  He also created the score to Top Gun.  Who can forget Berlin's Take My Breath Away?  In many ways he pioneered electronic music, and I love seeing and hearing his synthesized sound feel so fresh.

The video for 1977's From Here to Eternity in amazing in itself.  I know it is a bit repetitive, but how can you not love a video with a twirling disco maven who dances under her own tossed glitter?  Party time!

If you commit you'll also get to enjoy snippets of Moroder making his own slow strobe affect, a young Willi Ninja (I think) and a crazy half nude Amazon woman twisting around into a zoom effect.  To have lived in 1977...

A WORD ABOUT CAMERAS

One of the first gifts my man ever gave me was a little Chinese-designed plastic camera called a Holga. The Holga was first made as an inexpensive point and shoot that allowed the growing middle class in China to snap family portraits and the like. Soon, however, the flaws of the cheaply made Holga, such as light leaks and double exposure, were yielding some interesting, surreal results, and the camera became widely used in the west.

I used the camera on one trip, and the pictures were really cool. Stupidly, I put the camera up on the shelf and forgot about it. What a mistake.

Luckily my friend Jesse Yarbrough has still been using his Holga all this time, and the results are supreme. He has inspired me to dig the Holga out again and put it to good use. Here are some of his incredible shots:

Thanks Jesse!

In other camera news, look for much better images here on HFH, as I have just upgraded to the highly recommended Canon G10. I can't wait to sit down with it for a day and master it's power!

Holga image from The Powder Room

MAD

This weekend is supposed to be really nice here in the northeast (finally, summer!) and I am lucky enough to be able to get out of the city and up to Maine again. DO NOT WORRY, though. I have programed by TiVo to record the premere of Mad Men season 3, Sunday night.

Mad Men is, hands down, the finest show ever produced on television. Character development, plot depth, writting, set design, costumes... nothing can come close. Every time I see an episode, as soon as it is over, I want another. I watched all of season 2 in a weekend. I am not sure how I will make it through waiting a week between episodes.

In celebration of the return, here are some shots of vintage New York. Bask in the glorious dysfunction, fantastic style, hopeless repression and pervasive cigarette smoke of these times. Enjoy the weekend!

Here is where I will leaving town from soon... Eero Saarinen's former TWA (now JetBlue) terminal at JFK-- a relic of the golden age of air travel.

Images via AMC.com, straatis on Flicker, CUNY, NY Dialogue, Ezra Stoller