It's July in New York artist Olafur Eliasson's NYC Waterfalls are flowing in the East River through October. Circle Line Downtown is offering free waterfall cruises.
NewYorkology contributor Scott Ross keeps you abreast of upcoming Mets and Yankees home games in New York City. Ross toils in anonymity for a giant online news aggregator. Here’s your look at major league baseball in New York City for the next two weeks:
Not surprisingly, the Mets have continued to play .500 ball under new skipper Jerry Manuel. This is what average teams do.
Their saving grace at this juncture of the season is the apparent indifference to winning among the other teams in the NL East. The Metropolitans will play host to two of the four worst teams in all of baseball this week, the San Francisco Giants and Colorado Rockies, giving themselves a good chance to chip away at the Philles’ 4 1/2-game lead.
Easily the most enticing match-up of the week at Shea will be Wednesday’s game featuring Tim Lincecum against Johan Santana. The 24-year-old Lincecum reminds some folks of Sandy Koufax with his slight frame – 5’ 11”, 170 lb. – and long stride. Apparently Lincecum’s father modeled his son’s delivery on Koufax, though their wind-ups are very different.
Santana has pitched far better than his record would indicate – he’s 0-4 over his past five starts despite a 2.53 ERA in those games. These two promise as much excitement as one can hope for in Queens this summer.
While the Mets benefit from being in a woeful division, the Yankees suddenly find themselves also-rans in the game’s powerhouse division. The defending champion Red Sox are a known quantity, but the Tampa Bay Devil Rays have made the leap from “appealing band of scrapping young talents” to “force to be reckoned with.” They’ve put together the best record in baseball despite having played the toughest schedule of any team. Their offense leads the league in runs per game on the road thanks to a line-up that hits homers, steals bases and draws walks. Their pitching staff has the second-best ERA+ in the AL, thanks in large part to the most improved defense … maybe ever.
The Devil Rays are turning 72 percent of balls in play into outs, good for second in the league and up from last year’s atrocious 66.2 percent. And there’s reason to think they can’t be just as good if not better in the second half of the season. Nobody’s playing beyond expectations and a few guys have been below and will likely turn it around.
Go see this team play. They’re young, they’re tough, they play hard and they’re fun to watch – if you can get past the likelihood that they’re beating your team’s brains in. Scott Kazmir – the man the Mets let go in return for the wrong Zambrano – is already an ace at the age of 24 and will win a Cy Young or two before he’s 30. Someone should call Greenpeace before he’s allowed to face Sidney Ponson on Tuesday.
And lest we forget, the All-Star Game is coming to town, as the two leagues square-off to see who gets to be the home team come the World Series. The last time the NL won this game, the Dow had yet to break 8,000, Princess Diana and Mother Theresa were still alive – though not for long – and none of us had heard of Moninca Lewinsky. There’s no reason to think this year should be any different as the AL players have outpaced the NL in interleague play 149-102.
The Magna Carta - the medieval document that set the global standard for religious freedom, trial by jury and other liberties - will headline a display of historic documents in lower Manhattan next year, the Daily News has learned.
Before the text was ratified, Congress made a number of changes, many of which upset Jefferson, particularly the deletion of his lengthy condemnation of slavery, an editing decision made to appease the delegates from Georgia and South Carolina.
But don’t plan on reaching the top any time soon - officials don’t expect answers until early next year, and there is no guarantee the crown will ever reopen.
New York City Transit officials say the NYPD issued 85,000 summonses for fare-beating last year, from which the agency collected over $7 million in fines.
Reigning champion Joey Chestnut defended his title against six-time champion Takeru Kobayashi. Chestnut and Kobayashi had consumed 59 hot dogs and buns each after the end of the ten-minute race, forcing the first-ever overtime in the contest’s history. The winner would be the first to consume five more hot dogs and buns, and Chestnut finished seven seconds before Kobayashi. The coveted Mustard Yellow Belt stays in American hands.
The Port Authority has spent $150 million on plans for the new World Trade Center transit hub - and last week’s decision to scrap the retractable roof could add another $30 million to the price tag, The Post has learned.
If you’re inclined to start your Fourth of July in its first wee hours, hit up the 2 a.m. Candlelight Walking Tour of Revolutionary War New York form the Fraunces Tavern Museum, which the Wall Street Journal gamely previewed. Later on the 4th, Sonic Youth and The Feelies play a free concert at the Battery.
On Saturday, head to Governors Island for more fireworks and a free NY Philharmonic concert on Governors Island, which will have its regular free ferry service supplemented by Statue Cruises, which will also offer packages with blankets and picnic dinners.
For ongoing events and shows, click to NewYorkology’s Now in NYC list. For events on tap after this weekend, see NewYorkology’s calendar. And see Eater for some weekend rooftop bars suggestions.
Thursday Yankees vs. Boston at Yankee Stadium at 7:05 p.m.
2 a.m. to 6 a.m. Candlelight Walking Tour of Revolutionary War New York sponsored by the Fraunces Tavern Museum, which is also hosting its Independence Day Open House at more decent hours: noon to 5 p.m.
NYC & Co. has revived the third-night free hotel deal for the summer, offering just what the name implies at The New York Palace Hotel, Hotel Plaza Athénée New York; Jumeirah Essex House; Loews Regency Hotel; The London NYC; The Plaza; The Sherry-Netherland Hotel; The St. Regis Hotel, New York; Trump International Hotel & Tower; and the Waldorf Towers.
The Premier Hotel, (formerly The Premier at Millennium Broadway,) said it has re-launched and now has a Women Travelers Floor.
East Coast military airspace goes public for July 4th
Commercial airlines will once again get permission to use U.S. military airspace along the East Coast during the 4th of July weekend in hopes of reducing delays, U.S. Transportation Secretary Mary E. Peters announced today.
The details:
The Department of Defense (DOD) is releasing airspace off the eastern seaboard from 6:00 p.m. EDT on Thursday, July 3, to 6:00 a.m. on Monday, July 7, the Secretary said. This is similar to what was done over Memorial Day, Christmas and Thanksgiving. The military continually works with the Federal Aviation Administration to release the airspace anytime it is not being used for military missions, the Secretary noted.
The schedule posted on the NY Water Taxi website lists two morning departures from Pier 11 at Wall Street and two return trips from Rockaway.
The morning boats will leave Manhattan at 9:15 and 11:45 a.m. while the afternoon boats leave the beach at 2:30 and 5 p.m. There’s one stop in both directions at the Brooklyn Army Terminal.
The service is scheduled to start July 4 and will run through September 1, according to the website for the National Park Service, which operates the beach and surrounding Jamaica Bay wildlife area.
OpenSkies to buy L’Avion, will fly Orly to JFK, Newark
British Airways today agreed to buy L’Avion, the low-fare business-class airline that flies between New York and Paris, in order to combine the French airline with BA’s two-week-old premium-class spinoff, OpenSkies.
BA values the acquisition at Euro 68 million, including cash of Euro 33 million.
OpenSkies currently has only one plane, and flies seven days a week between JFK and Orly. L’Avion has two planes, travelling five days a week between Orly and Newark. Those routes would be maintained “as is” after the companies merge, though in theory at least one of the planes could peel off for use to another city as OpenSkies gets permission for new routes out of New York.
An OpenSkies spokesman today told NewYorkology he couldn’t comment on new routes, but
in June the company said Amsterdam, Brussels, Frankfurt and Milan are popssible next destinations.
L’Avion, the last survivor of the recent all-business class airline trend, has been flying since January 2007. SilverJet folded in May, Eos went bust in April and MaxJet pulled the plug on Christmas Eve.
15th Century sculpture falls from Met Museum doorway
At the Metropolitan Museum of Art last night or early this morning, a late-15th Century glazed terra cotta relief sculpture of Saint Michael the Archangel by Andrea della Robbia “came loose from metal mounts that have long held the framed lunette securely to the wall above a doorway in its European Paintings and Decorative Arts Galleries,” according to a statement issued by the Met.
More details from the museum’s statement:
The 62-x-32-inch relief, which has been on view in its current location since 1996, fell to a stone floor and suffered some damage. Preliminary inspection indicates that the relief has not been irrevocably harmed and that it can be repaired and again presented to the public.
Museum curators and conservators are at work this morning fully assessing the situation, trying to determine the cause of this accident, and considering next steps. The sculpture is expected to be transferred soon to a conservation area within the building for a full assessment, at which time the gallery will be reopened to the public. While the Metropolitan routinely and thoroughly inspects its pedestals and wall mounts to re-confirm their structural integrity, it will initiate a reinvigorated museum-wide examination as expeditiously as possible in the days that follow this unfortunate accident.
The blue-and-white della Robia lunette of Saint Michael, dressed in armor and holding a sword and the scales of justice, was commissioned ca. 1475 for the church of San MicheleArcangelo in Faenza, a small town between Bologna and Ravenna. The church was dismantled around 1798. Later owned by private collectors, the Saint Michael was acquired by the Metropolitan Museum in 1960 at the auction sale of the Myron C. Taylor Collection.
Update: The New York Times has more information, including the detail that the “sculpture and frame rested atop the doorway on a steel shelf, with additional steel bolts to secure the top, and there were no apparent signs of rust or water damage behind the piece.”
Image source: Metropolitan Museum of Art
Andrea della Robbia, 1435–1525
Saint Michael the Archangel
Italian (Florence) 15th century (ca. 1475)
1470 – 1480,
Glazed terracotta
Frame, wood
31-1/8 × 61-7/8 in. (79.1 × 157.2 cm)
Harris Brisbane Dick Fund, 1960
60.127.2
Central Park summer lineup - now with free Bon Jovi
Central Park is getting crowded this summer, with the usual Summerstage sharing the spotlight with Bon Jovi free ticketed concert on Central Park’s Great Lawn on July 12 at 8 p.m., Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced today.
Tickets will be handed out starting this Wednesday “at baseball parks and events throughout New York City. The bulk of tickets distributed at the ballparks will be found at Yankee Stadium in the Bronx, with others made available in Queens at Shea Stadium, in Brooklyn at the home of the Cyclones and in Staten Island at the home of the Staten Island Yankees. Tickets will also be available at MLB.com.”
The free Bon Jovi concert is tied to the Major League Baseball 2008 All-Star Game, which will be played at Yankee Stadium on July 15 but celebrated throughout the city from July 11 -15.
Here’s the remaining schedule for the mostly free 2008 Summerstage shows:
July 9 - Music & Film: Screenings of “Machito: A Latin Jazz Legacy” and “Bragging Rights: Stickball Stories” with music from Cuban vocalist Cucu Diamantes at 7 p.m.
July 10 - Music & Film: “The Harder They Come,” with I-Wayne, hosted by Dahved Levy at 7 p.m.
Home games: Rangers, Red Sox to test Yankees' Joba
NewYorkology contributor Scott Ross keeps you abreast of upcoming Mets and Yankees home games in New York City. Ross toils in anonymity for a giant online news aggregator. Here’s your look at major league baseball in New York City this week:
Since finding themselves at a season-worst five games under .500 on May 18, the Yankees have gone on a tear, winning 23 of 36. Unfortunately for the Bombers, so did the Boston Red Sox and Tampa Bay Devil* Rays.
If the Yankees manage to fight their way into the playoffs, it will be thanks to the development of Joba Chamberlain, who has been progressively more dominant with each start. Since his first start against Toronto, New York’s team ERA has fallen 15 points, as they have compiled a 3.86 ERA over the past 23 games. And in his past two starts, Chamberlain has given notice that he is in the hunt for the AL Rookie of the Year Award, striking out 16 in 12 1/3 innings while allowing only one run.
That said, most of Chamberlain’s success as a starter has come against teams from the woefully inferior National League (the AL is 141-96 in inter-league play thus far.) This week, however, he will take the hill against the two most potent offenses in the AL, the Texas Rangers and the defending world champion Boston Red Sox. But let’s be honest, only one of these series matters.
With the season half-over, the Yankees are in third place, 5 1/2 games back from Boston. Now is New York’s chance to start taking a bite out of that lead and with Yankee-killer David Ortiz still nursing a nasty wrist injury, they won’t get a much better opportunity.
With Daisuke Matsuzaka missing a handful of starts and Josh Beckett’s maddening inconsistency, the Sox have been kept afloat largely thanks to the work of Jon “Cancer Boy” Lester and Justin Masterson. Between them they’ve started 24 games — of which Boston has won 18 — with a 3.23 ERA.
Game of the week: Every game is huge when it’s Sox vs. Yankees, but Saturday features a match-up of Chamberlain and Masterson, one that has a chance to be revisited for years to come as part of baseball’s best rivalry.
*Yes, I know, they changed their name, they’re idiots.
Eliasson's NYC Waterfalls officially on through Oct. 13
For 110 days, artist Olafur Eliasson’s New York City Waterfalls will pump 35,000 gallons of water per minute up and over four man-made towers – including one taller than the Statue of Liberty – inviting the public to the waterfront to not only explore the installation, but to have a good think.
“I don’t want the quantifiable elements of this project to be out in front of the unquantifiable,” Eliasson said Thursday during the Circle Line Downtown’s inaugural waterfalls cruise. While water can evoke dreams, it also has a very tangible side: “You get wet if you get into it,” he said.
And while you can’t swim under Eliasson’s waterfalls, you can approach them by boat, bike, on foot, or ponder them from the bridges or new bars and cafes set up just for the waterfalls. Two-years in the making, the Public Art Fund raised $13.5 million from private donors plus $2 million from the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, acquired more than 20 permits and arranged for 270 tons of scaffolding (which was erected by the same guys who normally erect scaffolding around new York City buildings.) Mayor Michael Bloomberg said the city’s Economic Development Corp. estimates the tourism boost will contribute $55 million to the city’s economy. (And yes, the international media were going bonkers at Thursday’s launch events.)
The exhibition consists of four waterfalls:
Under the Brooklyn Bridge at the Brooklyn-side anchorage (80 feet wide, 90 feet high)
Piers 4 and 5 in below the Brooklyn Heights Promenade (30 feet wide, 120 feet high)
(For reference, if they were buildings, they’d be nine to 12 stories each. The Statue of Liberty is 111 feet tall from her heel to her top.)
The waterfalls, here through October 13, will be turned on daily at 7 a.m. (but not until 9 a.m. on Tuesdays and Thursdays) and remain on until 10 p.m. nightly. They’ll be lit up after sunset. However, they may have to be turned off during extreme winds, storms or a heat wave.
Eliasson, a Danish-Icelandic artist, has been coming to New York since the 1980s. He’s well known for his large scale, often environmental works. He’s written an artist statement for NYC Waterfalls; two excerpts:
“When water flows down the East River, we tend to see it as a simple surface, framed by a neutral urban waterfront. By elevating it into waterfalls, I wish to amplify its physical and tangible presence while exposing the dynamics of natural forces such as gravity, wind, and daylight. My idea is to encourage people to identify more with the waterfront of New York City; this is a call for the revitalization of areas that until recently have been under-utilized as creative and recreational spaces because people have focused primarily on the interior grid of the City. There is a huge unrealized potential waiting to be explored and this is located right at our feet.”
“The Waterfalls appear in the midst of the dense social, environmental, and political tissue that makes up the heart of the City. They will give people the opportunity to reconsider their relationships to the spectacular surroundings. I hope to evoke experiences that are both individual and enhance a sense of collectivity: the Waterfalls will invite people to explore them on their own, but due to their size and locations, they will also generate expectations, opinions, and actions that can be shared. This relationship between individual experiences and the social contest is crucial for me. I believe that by seeing a work of art – a waterfall for instance – we become co-producers of the work and its social context. Taking part in this type of collaboration requires that we take responsibility within the city that we live.”
Eliasson’s waterfalls philosophy echoes some things he said in April at the Museum of Modern Art at the opening of his “Take Your Time” exhibition (which closes June 30.) His press conference there was held in a room dominated by an electrical fan on a rope arcing erratically around the room. He wondered aloud what affected the direction of the fan’s swings – does the temperature, the number of people in the room and their body heat, possibly change the artwork? “Maybe that turbulence constitutes the space,” he said. “It’s a dialogue between you and the space.”
At MoMA, the title of the exhibition itself asks the viewers to slow down, take your time, and think about your surroundings. “If you step out of commoditized time, you step into yourself.”
Likewise at the waterfalls on Thursday, Eliasson said “this is not about consuming a space. It’s about using a space. To evaluate your relationship to it.”
And like the swinging fan, the waterfalls change – with the wind, the tide, the clouds, the sun and moon, the temperature and even the passing boats. “This is something you want to see several times,” Mayor Michael Bloomberg said Thursday. “It’s going to expand minds and give us a lot to think about.”
In this video clip, Eliasson explains how the waterfalls work and riffs on their sustainable aspects:
Yes, everyone's drowning in NYC Waterfalls coverage today, so here are some quick bits you may not already know. ...
The waterside decks of the South Street Seaport afford views of all four waterfalls.
But if you want to eat and drink while contemplating their meaning, head to the Seaport's new outdoor Waterfall Cafe that boasts views of all four falls. An offshoot of nearby Sequoia, they open at noon daily, seven days a week. Closing time depends on the weather and business -- sometimes 10:30 p.m., or earlier. Burgers, ($10,) salads, ($7 to $18,) mussels, ($9,) desserts ($6.50,) beer ($6 or $7,) wine ($8 by the glass/$26 by the bottle,) and margaritas ($9) are all on offer.
Directly across the East River, the Brooklyn Bridge Park Conservancy today opened Pier 1 as a park that will be open daily 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. through Labor Day. The pop-up park juts 315 feet into the river just south of the Brooklyn Bridge. It's home to a café operated by Rice, (which told NewYorkology they have a beer and wine permit for the site,) and is outfitted with picnic tables, benches, bike racks, trees, grass and a sandy area. Pier 1 park will get its own free shuttle bus from June 27 through Labor Day, with stops at Borough Hall and High Street at Cadman Plaza West. Shuttle hours: Fridays 5 p.m. to 10:30 p.m.; and Saturdays and Sundays noon to 10:30 p.m.
Bike and Roll will be offering a twice-daily bicycle tour of the waterfalls. They depart from the South Street Seaport at 3 p.m. and 6:30 p.m. for a two and a half hour ride that goes over the Brooklyn and Manhattan bridges, making eight to 10 stops. Normally $40, those tours are free this Friday, Saturday and Sunday. Call (212) 260-0400 to reserve a spot.
Starting Friday, you can call the city's 311 information line and listen to artist Olafur Eliasson talk about his waterfalls, Mayor Michael Bloomberg said during this morning's news conference.
The waterfalls will be turned on daily from 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. except Tuesdays and Thursdays when they will run from 9 a.m. to 10 p.m.
