esquared

Route 66, Depeche Mode

(i'll be more like somewhere in Route 87N by the time this posts)

"I woke up as the sun was reddening; and that was the one distinct time in my life, the strangest moment of all, when I didn't know who I was — I was far away from home, haunted and tired with travel, in a cheap hotel room I'd never seen, hearing the hiss of steam outside, and the creak of the old wood of the hotel, and footsteps upstairs, and all the sad sounds, and I looked at the cracked high ceiling and really didn't know who I was for about fifteen strange seconds."

- Jack Kerouac, On the Road, Part 1, Ch. 3

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Other big-name retailers moving into the trendy neighborhood include Nordstrom Rack and Best Buy. [Crain's]

Well, once they've moved in, neighborhood won't be trendy anymore. Yup, welcome to NYC the suburbs.

[not via queque -- blogging from the boondocks. it's boring up here. i've told myself not to bring my laptop, to enjoy nature, but i guess i'm just hooked on tumblr. will be hiking in a few. enjoy.]

Mad Men promo in Times Square

[queue]

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"I think I meant it more as an indictment of American life in the 1950s. Because during the Fifties there was a general lust for conformity all over this country, by no means only in the suburbs — a kind of blind, desperate clinging to safety and security at any price, as exemplified politically in the Eisenhower administration and the Joe McCarthy witchhunts. Anyway, a great many Americans were deeply disturbed by all that — felt it to be an outright betrayal of our best and bravest revolutionary spirit — and that was the spirit I tried to embody in the character of April Wheeler. I meant the title to suggest that the revolutionary road of 1776 had come to something very much like a dead end in the Fifties."

~ Richad Yates from Henry, DeWitt and Clark, Geoffrey. "An Interview with Richard Yates," Ploughshares, Winter, 1972.

(Replace Eisenhower with Bloomberg and this is pretty much what his administration has done to NYC-- suburbinization and the lust for conformity)

[via queue]

Which Mad Man are you?

[tumbling via queue]

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Mad Men's first episode is to be simulcast in Times Square after a costume party where fans can parade their retro wardrobes. This promotional event is Woodstock, corporate style, with martinis instead of marijuana, Sinatra instead of Shankar and narrow ties supplanting the tie-dyed. [NYT]

"Hell its already a mad house in Times Square right now with the Broadway only allowing pedestrian traffic lower than 47th so with the fans of the shows, the camera's and tourists mixing it oughta be a hell of an event to witness.

(Tumbling from the neck of the woods up here by yours truly)

Don't You Forget About Me, Simple Minds

Off to the Adirondacks and Montreal (and maybe Vermont). See ya when I see ya. Have a good one.

just a reminder, this sunday

Steven Spielberg's 1975 thriller "Jaws" surfaces tonight and tomorrow at midnight

@Landmark's Sunshine Cinema 143 East Houston Street on the Lower East Side

[at Eldridge St. bet. Broome and Delancey Sts.]

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"Gawker Artists presents MOM & POPism, an exhibition curated by Billi Kid reinterpreting James and Karla Murray's latest book, Store Front: The Disappearing Face of New York, in unique collaboration with many of today's hottest graffiti and street artists."

Public Viewing Hours Saturday August 15, Noon-4PM 210 Elizabeth Street, 4th Fl. FREE

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"Cocktails have been a vital element of the show right from the opening scene, which showed Don Draper sitting in a bar. Before the audience learns his name or his profession, he expresses his drink preference: “Do this again — old-fashioned, please.”

...drink historians and barmen of a certain age say that “Mad Men” mostly gets its bibulous world right. Dale DeGroff benefits from a twin perspective. A former bartender at the Rainbow Room, he is often credited with rekindling interest in classic cocktails. But in the early 1970s, he worked at the influential advertising firm Lois Holland Callaway. One of the agency’s clients was Restaurant Associates, which ran such sensations as the Four Seasons and Forum of the Twelve Caesars.

These ad guys made themselves experts on all the details that needed attention, including everything at the cocktail bars and even the wine lists,

"The big Scotches were Bell’s, Black & White, Teacher’s, White Horse, When you’re drinking Canadian Club, you’re showing people you drink a better brand" of whiskey. Betty Draper’s taste for Tom Collinses and vodka gimlets was spot on.

This season, Sterling gets his hands on some prized contraband: Soviet-made Stolichnaya (then not available in the United States). His priorities remain solidly in place. “Help yourself,” he tells a colleague. “Not the Stoli.” "

When Cocktails Were Office Supplies [NYT]

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Media Circus, tonight, 7:30 pm (doors open at 7:00 pm), at the JLA Studios art gallery on 63 Pearl St. Brooklyn, with a night examining cable news and its corporate influences. Speaking will be Brian Stelter, the former editor of TVNewser and current New York Times media reporter, and Steve Rendall, senior analyst for the media watchdog organization FAIR.

Admission is FREE. Drinks will be available

[via ASSME]

and Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter has been spotted in the cafeteria, "eyeing reasonably priced stir fry." Oh, yes, it's that bad at Condé Nast

[NYO via Cityfile]