I was staggering around the Briarwood-Jamaica border a few weeks ago (in July 2008) ignoring the drizzle and humidity and getting images for a possible Briarwood page and picking up possible…

Unlike apparently everyone else in the NYC blogosphere I haven’t paid a lot of attention to Williamsburg the past couple of years — until a couple of weekends ago (writing this August 11,…

I was surprised, and disappointed, to see one of NYC’s iconic painted walldog ads is gone, as the giant Wellner Motors ad on Greenwich Avenue facing 8th opposite Jackson Square has…

According to the Bible of Brooklyn street names, Brooklyn By Name by Leonard Benardo and Jennifer Weiss, Williamsburg’s Dunham Place was named for David Dunham (1790-1823), a New York merchant who helped initiate an…

I did a story on FNY the other day about the changes befalling Manhattan’s largest Belgian-blocked surface, the huge plaza where Greenwich, Gansevoort, Little West 12th Streets and 9th Avenue all…

Two separate Manhattan street grid systems come together at a 4-street intersection in the West Village, where Greenwich Street, Gansevoort Street, Little West 12th Street and 9th Avenue all meet.…

I think it was 1992 when I first spotted Renwick Street. In the summer of that year I was freelancing at a type shop named ModKomp, entered from a loading dock…

In September 2007 FNY, on the Lullaby of Broadway Slice, chronicled the impending demolition and restoration of the Broadway (Flushing) Long Island Rail Road station. Between 1993 (preceding that actually) and 2007, the…

I’m a subway fan. Not during those times when I’m in NYC during summer rush hours, when it’s 100 degrees down there and have to wait till several trains pass until…

I conceived of Forgotten NY in 1998 out of the floating images of rusted lampposts, hidden alleys, bricked streets, ancient business signs, NYC neighborhoods that the guidebooks don’t acknowledge such as…

On a May visit to Bay Ridge (to the dentist no less) I walked Fifth Avenue for the first time in a while, and spotted quite a number of store signs…

St. George, Staten Island is an oasis of urbanity in a borough that, until about 25 years ago, was largely rural and has today transformed into teh worst aspects of suburb-anity,…