American Madness

At least that is what H.G. Wells thought, too bad he was a little off.

With a nice long warm weekend coming up, what better to do then break out your bike and go for a ride.

Not sure where to go, well then you should visit RideTheCity. RideTheCity is a website similar to MapQuest or HopStop, enter your location and your destination and it will draw up a route for you, you can even pick if you’d rather take the ‘Safest Route,’ the ‘Safe Route’ or the “Most Direct Route.” There are two main reason syou are going to want to use RideTheCity instead of, say, Google Maps “First, RTC excludes roads that aren’t meant for biking, like the BQE and the Queens Midtown tunnel. Second, RTC tries to locate routes that maximize the use of bike lanes and greenways.”

Pretty nifty, especially if you have ever ridden your bike in traffic.

Right now it is only for New York City, plus you need to cut them some slack because they are still in their Beta Release, so go, check it out, show them some love and enjoy your nice long weekend.

Well, I guess it is technically for Thursday.

Starting tomorrow and running through October 13th, the city is getting 4 waterfalls. Olafur Eliasson’s “The New York City Waterfalls” has been installed around the city. Although organized by the City and the Public Art Fund, the project is totally funded from private supporters, corporations and other foundations, with no city funds being put towards it. Now on to the project itself

“The New York City Waterfalls” are 4 waterfalls that have been installed in various locations along the river. You’ll find them at at the foot of the Brooklyn Bridge (in Brooklyn), Pier 35 (by the Manhattan Bridge), near the Brooklyn Heights Promenade (between Piers 4 & 5) and by Governors Island.

The waterfalls will be active between 7am and 10pm so if you travel along the bridges you may get a chance to see them during your daily commute. Otherwise you can venture out to see them in your free time.

the pictures from the ‘pre-dawn’ test look pretty stunning and it looks like this could be something incredible to check-out around the city this summer right around sunset.

The project is similar to one that Eliasson did in Austria in 2000 and Madrid in 2003, but on a much grander scale. You can learn more about him and his work here.

First a welcome back to me, I am once again trying to get back to writing on a regular basis, I am going to try and start off slowly and build to my previous posting levels, so without further ado:

Here at AmericanMadness we have not been huge fans of the law that requires chain restaurants to post calorie counts. Essentially we feel that the information provided can be misleading since it goes by the assumption that th only concern with food should be the amount of calories you are taking in.

Now we have another problem with it: Over at CellarDoor they have a post with pictures from 2 Dunkin’ Donuts, both located in Penn Station. 1 of them listing the calorie count on a Chocolate Glazed donut at 80 calories and the other listing it at 340 calories. Both are printed up in the official D & D way so which is to be believed? Or maybe they are both right, maybe each Dunkin’ Donuts in the city is using different recipes and cooking methods and that is why they get different calorie counts. Or the donuts on the left could be almost 1/4 the size of the ones on the right, there are so many possibilities that I decided to ask Dunkin’ Donuts to explain it. I am still waiting for a response.

Also in the realm of calorie counting: (more…)

Apparently there is one day out of every year when the New York City Grid aligns perfectly with the setting sun. You can look crosstown and watch as the sun sets down, no buildings or high-rises obscuring your view, just a beautiful sunset between rows of building. Of course to really catch a great glimpse of this you probably want to be on one of the major cross town street that runs from river to river- 14th, 23rd, 34th, 42nd, 52nd… One of those (Houston splits apart right after 6th Avenue, obscuring the view behind some buildings). This is a phenomena referred to as Manhattanhenge(Link 1, link 2).

Oh, and it just so happens that one day is today.

The sun is scheduled to set tonight at 8:16 this evening, so start hunting for those bars and restaurants with out door seating or just head to 1st avenue and 34th and marvel as you watch the sunset all the way across the island.

Some of you may be asking who is Harold Hunter, others may already know. In 1995 Harold Hunter became one of the faces representing youth in New York City in the movie Kids, a few years later he ended up in the Joan Osborne video “One of Us.”

Harold was a member of the early 90’s NYC skateboarding scene and part of the Zoo York team. Harold was last scene on TLC’s Miami Ink getting a tattooed tribute to WTC with the words NYC, Sk8 or Die. By the time this episode aired in April of ‘06, Harold had been dead for almost 2 months. On Feb. 17th of 2006 Harold overdosed.

This year Zoo York is one of the sponsors of the 2nd Annual Harold Hunter Day, a day in which Harold is remembered for his amazing skateboarding skills and his general good natured presence.

This year Harold Hunter Day will be this Saturday, May 17th. Zoo York is sponsoring The Harold Hunter Skate Jam forom 12-6pm at the Manhattan Bridge Skatepark and the Harold Hunter Party at KCDC in Brooklyn from 8pm to midnight. For more information you can check out the website.

There has been growing concern about bottled water recently. A little while ago there were reports that the plastic that bottled water was packaged in was leaching into the water itself which isn’t great. Next there is the environmental impact the disposed of bottles have.

Well, the NY Post is reporting that some New York restaurants are addressing this issue and ‘banning’ bottled water at their locations. so far 12 are on board with the ban (including the Waverly Inn, Del Posto, Gemma, Bobo, Gusto Organics and Broadway East). Apparently the issue has become big enough that even the Park Slope Food Co-op will be voting later this month on whether they will continue to sell bottled waters.

According to the NY Post article, it takes 41 million barrels of oil a year to produce, transport and store bottled water. In place of bottles like Pellegrino you will have the option of free tap water (as you always did) or specially filtered tap water that will run you about $5 a glass. Of course at places like Per Se all non-alcoholic drinks are free of charge (they offer both bottled water and filtered water).

Earlier in the week there were a few news stories around that caught my eye, but I was hesitant to post them. ‘Why?’ you ask, well it was April 1st and I tend to take any news that comes out on April 1st with a grain of salt. Since there hasn’t been any retraction of these stories they get the full posting treatment.

The Recording Industry Association of America just received some bad news. A New York Federal Judge has made a ruling that is going to greatly effect most of their lawsuits against file sharers. According to Judge Kenneth Karas making a copyrighted file available for download does not necessarily violate the law. Instead it now needs to be proven that the file was actually downloaded or intended to be downloaded.

This is kind off a complex issue and this ruling will actually influence a lot of future download cases (NY courts are apparently known for how well they handle copyright issues). Essentially what this case ruling means (or can mean) is that the RIAA needs to show that some one had the intention of sharing copyrighted materials just having copyrighted materials available for download is not illegal. It is a complicated issue, I am sure complicated more with P2P file sharing programs. CNET has some decent coverage on the issue with explanations better then I can provide here.

This doesn’t really mean that anyone is going to get off scott-free in any of the pending lawsuits, but it does mean the RIAA is going to have to do a bit more legwork to prove that individuals were working to intentionally share copyrighted files.

Apparently, even though New York is the Big Apple, that isn’t an official nickname of the city. In fact, New York City doesn’t have any official nicknames.

While this may seem rather shocking that no nickname was ever attached to the city, Queens City Councilman Hiram Monserrate is looking to fix this by officially linking up New York as Gotham City. Monserrate feels that with this summer’s release of Batman : The Dark Knight, the city would be able to launch into an all-out campaign with “Come visit the real Gotham City.”

Of course the Gotham City depicted in Batman’s world is dark, gritty and filled with crime and supervillians, which, to some extent is actually kind of fitting for New York (sans the Supervillians). Not exactly the right message to be sending about New York, is it? Especially when you ate trying to lure in tourists. (more…)

So, it is obvious we are fans of New York Magazine. We’ve used their content (usually crediting them). They’ve used our content (sometimes crediting us).

Any-hoo, it just came across my inbox that they are doing a website re-design which will probably launch next Friday. If you’d like to see a little preview of what the new New York Magazine homepage will look like, check it out here.

According to their announcement: “the new homepage has a more consistent organization—now you’ll always know where to find whichever type of news you’re looking for, and you’ll be able to search our restaurant listings, runway galleries, and product guides more easily.”

Although we have previously mentioned that the sandwich shop formerly known as Zozo’s was going to be replaced with a noodle shop on the corner of Orchard and Stanton, there is now a banner up so we know that it will be called “Noodle Bar - Lower East Side.”

If you thought this might not be the ideal location for a new noodle shop with Open Sesame up the block on Orchard, Kampuchea just two blocks away on Allen and Rivington and a plethora of other spots on 1st avenue (including Momofuku), well apparently you’d be wrong.

Not only did Noodle Bar - Lower East Side think this would be a good location, but not even half a block away on Stanton (next to Epstein’s bar) another new noodle shop will be opening. Slurp has all of its signage up and for a while even had its tables set and looked like it was ready to open…before they had to go back in and do some more work (new work permit signs went up on the door just last week).

It looks like this is going to be the Spring of Noodle Soups for the Lower East Side. If either one of them ever opens maybe we will even go and write a review.