New York City | Microkhan by Brendan I. Koerner

Entries Tagged as 'New York City'

The New York Hog Drive of 1849

November 8th, 2022 · Comments Off on The New York Hog Drive of 1849

One of the animating principles of Microkhan is the steadfast belief that the recent past was more chaotic—and thus immeasurably more interesting—than most of us realize. Take, for example, the prevalence of hogs on the streets of New York City in the mid-19th century, the subject of this paper by a pair of Spanish professors. […]

Beneath the Elevated

June 15th, 2011 · 1 Comment

Little time for Microkhan-ing between now and the weekend, as the Golden Horde is in the midst of packing up its yurts for points not-too-far-afield. After seven years in the blessed Paradise known as Atlah, we’re moving across the East River to a land with a slightly Brave New World-ish name. Always bittersweet to move, […]

Requiem for the Slug Kings

April 28th, 2011 · 1 Comment

A surprising number of tears were shed when the world’s last manual-typewriter factory announced its shuttering a few days back. Once again, generations of technological know-how are set to evaporate as a once state-of-the-art invention tumbles into museum mode. The manual typewriter industry’s long-anticipated demise got me thinking about engineering wizards whose skills have been […]

What’s in Wyoming?

April 26th, 2011 · Comments Off on What’s in Wyoming?

Limited time to work today as Microkhan Jr. still has one day left of spring break, which he has apparently decided to spend attempting to coax me into serial games of hide-and-seek. Trying to grab a few hours here and there to focus on what pays the bills ’round this humble yurt, and that means […]

Theater of the Absurd

December 21st, 2010 · 3 Comments

The hooded lady above was not a bandit, but rather a New York City detective who worked the 21 Jump Street beat in the early 1970s. Kathleen Conlon earned her gold shield after surviving a scary incident in the Bronx: While working on an undercover narcotics unit, she was dragged into an alley, assaulted, and […]

The Kevin Durant of Bus Driving

October 18th, 2010 · Comments Off on The Kevin Durant of Bus Driving

Thanks for Microkhan Jr.’s increasing obsession with all things mechanical, I recently found myself trolling through the hundreds of transit-related videos on this YouTube channel. It is quite an amazing collection, the handiwork of a New York City metrophile who apparently spends the bulk of his leisure time filming buses and subways. And among his […]

Live Spot in Brooklyn

September 6th, 2010 · 2 Comments

Though I find myself laboring on Labor Day, I sincerely hope that you have avoided a similarly wretched fate. And if you live in New York City, I hope you’ll carve out some time tomorrow evening to swing by Brooklyn’s Union Hall to check out a rare live appearance by your humble narrator. I’ll be […]

Ice Van Wyck

July 9th, 2010 · 7 Comments

At the end of Wednesday’s post about one of the least heralded pioneers of refrigeration, we noted that the “ice lobby” had been instrumental in frustrating John Gorrie’s dreams of freezing water via mechanical means. This notion struck us as rather humorous since we can scarcely think of a less valuable commodity these days than […]

From the Mouths of Giants

May 3rd, 2010 · Comments Off on From the Mouths of Giants

Crazy morning ’round here, as we once again find ourselves butting up against a brutal WIRED deadline. But seeing as how this is an especially dreary Monday, at least here in this rainy metropolis where incompetent bombers run amok, we couldn’t just start your week with pure laziness. So let us spend a few moments […]

Bye-Bye to the Battery

April 16th, 2010 · 7 Comments

Rising sea levels recently submerged tiny New Moore Island in the Bay Bengal, thereby settling a longstanding territorial dispute between India and Bangladesh. (Curiously, the nations seem totally disinterested in claiming a piece of land that’s underwater.) While we certainly appreciate Mother Nature’s unique approach to conflict resolution, New Moore’s watery demise renewed one of […]

Dyed by Their Own Hands

March 11th, 2010 · 11 Comments

For the umpteenth year in a row, we failed to take advantage of our Atlah locale and check out the annual Phagwah parade in Richmond Hill, Queens. But we got our Guyanese festival kick by checking out these shots, which amply demonstrate the splattery fun that was had by all. More great photos of Phagwah […]

The Murder Project: “Doing the Big Job”

July 30th, 2009 · 1 Comment

Part of our goal with The Murder Project series is to assess how hitman prices have changed over time. Our assumption going in is that these prices shift according to the certainty (or lack thereof) of capture, and so more lawless epochs will be marked by lower murder-for-hire fees. A logical guess, perhaps, but does […]

The Eyes of Ms. T.J. Eckleburg Diaz

July 15th, 2009 · Comments Off on The Eyes of Ms. T.J. Eckleburg Diaz

We recently stumbled across the photo above while sifting through the National Archives “Picturing the Century” website, in search of images of child coal miners. Something about the two girls’ sharply differing expressions stuck with us—the one on the left strikes us as the contemplative member of the duo, the one on the right the […]

Explaining the Fujian Conundrum

July 6th, 2009 · 6 Comments

Over the holiday weekend, in addition to bidding farewell to our dead-tree labor o’ love, we found a few spare moments to start reading The Snakehead, the new book from Chatter author Patrick Radden Keefe. We’re only 50 pages in, but so far this tome gets Microkhan’s equivalent of an Ebert-ian “thumbs way up” rave. […]

Last Call in Red Hook

July 2nd, 2009 · 2 Comments

To borrow a sentiment from Mötley Crüe, it’s time to turn the page on Now the Hell Will Start, our dead-tree labor o’ love. This Sunday, July 5th, we’ll be reading from the book for the very last time, amid the cozy waterfront confines of Sunny’s Bar in beautiful Red Hook. If you’re in New […]

Microkhan World New York Tour

June 8th, 2009 · 2 Comments

To celebrate the paperback release of Now the Hell Will Start, we’re gonna be hitting the subway system over the coming weeks, doing a trio of readings in our adopted hometown. If any of y’all are in the environs of Gotham, we’d be honored if you’d turn out to support The Cause. Come up and […]

The Utter Failure of High Concept

May 29th, 2009 · 2 Comments

For today’s installment of Bad Movie Friday, we’d like to shred a flick that must’ve seemed so great when William Friedkin pitched it: Cruising, a murder mystery that’s several degrees clumsier than the worst Encyclyopedia Brown shortie. Now we can see why this got made. The milieu (the gay leather-bar scene) was ultra-edgy at the […]

Skulls and Nomads

May 27th, 2009 · Comments Off on Skulls and Nomads

We’re in bunker mode on the screenplay for the day’s remainder, so no semi-deep thoughts this p.m. We’ll just leave you with the above snippet of the classic documentary 80 Blocks from Tiffany’s, an account of gang life in the Carter-era South Bronx. The social background is ceaselessly tragic, the clothing style mind-blowingly great. And […]

Subways and the Smart Grid

March 26th, 2009 · Comments Off on Subways and the Smart Grid

As promised yesterday, Microkhan’s gonna continue with its week-long series of “extras” taken from the cutting-room floor of my Wired smart-grid essay. Today’s treat? How subways can become part of distributed-generation networks, along with rooftop solar panels and backyard wind turbines. Beginning in the early 1970s, the Metropolitan Transit Authority began experimenting with flywheels that […]

“Sleek Greyhound of the Seas”

March 24th, 2009 · 2 Comments

Over the weekend, the fam and I paid a visit to the Museum of the City of New York, primarily to check out the exhibit on our fair city’s stab at going green. But the exhibit that really drew me in was “Trade”, an overview of New York’s heyday as a bustling port. As noted […]