Put on some comfortable boots, snuggle up with your companion, and hold your breath when the plant’s ruggedly handsome superintendent, Jimmy Pynn, explains how the city cleans 1.3 billion gallons of wastewater each day.

You’ll get to see every aspect of the plant’s waste treating process, and even take a trip through its suggestively shaped digester tanks, where plucky microorganisms break down what you and your date ate for lunch yesterday, producing methane and carbon dioxide gas.

And at the end of the tour, Pynn will give each attendee a Hershey’s Kiss — because there’s nothing sweeter than protecting the environment.

One thing’s for sure -it will be a Valentine’s Day neither of you will ever forget. Link -via Breakfast Links

(Image credit: New York City government)

Meet Agata Oleksiak (aka OLEK), a “New York-based Polish artist” who’s the world’s first crochet street artist. Her works have been seen all over New York and London, and she’s bringing a bit of crocheted color to the world with her psychedelic yarn works and twisted gimp-esque crocheted bodysuits.

Head to the link to see some of her awesome guerilla artworks, from a crocheted car to the Wall Street Bull and some seriously twisted yarn covered rooms in-between. Olek seems hell bent on making the world a warmer place, one bright pink skein at a time.

Link  –via DesignTAXI

(YouTube Link)

Hudson Urban Bicycles decided to try out something interesting in New York’s SoHo neighborhood-chain up a bike, take a picture of it every day and see how long it takes to disappear, piece by piece.

The findings were surprising at first (it took nearly six months for the first piece to be stolen), then slipped rapidly into familiar territory (only took another 30 days or so for the bike to disappear completely).

Hey, at least the thief (or thieves) waited almost six months before snatching the bike up piece by piece, that has to be a world record!

–via Geekosystem

(YouTube Link)

New York is the kind of place where anything can happen at any moment, and although that comes with plenty of bad, this video shows that there are also many instances of spontaneous goodness going down, even on public transit.

These strangers on a train, who both happen to have their instruments with them, break out in a soulful song,  much to the delight of their fellow riders.

Whether this chance meeting was truly by chance or not ceases to be an issue once you watch them play, and feel that energy that seems to be in the air that New Yorkers breathe.

–via AnimalNY

(YouTube Link)

(YouTube Link)

It’s almost Christmas, so the critters from the Queens Zoo and Prospect Park Zoo in New York have started celebrating! The dwarf mongooses were given brightly wrapped mealworm treats, and the Andean bears were given packages full of a nutty treat, and I think it’s safe to say they won’t be needing gift receipts!

–via Gothamist

Before Stanley Kubrick was able to make a living as a movie director, he worked as a photojournalist for Look magazine. He took nearly 10,000 photos and 25 of these have now been made available as limited-edition prints.

Link – Flavorwire via Kottke

This beautiful luxury home in New York’s Adirondack State Park has an awesome secret-it’s built on top of a former launch control center, and has an additional 2300 square feet of space which lies safely underground.

And now this cabin/bunker can be yours for a mere $1.75 million! Maybe Bruce Wayne is looking for a vacation home, complete with pre-constructed BatCave? You can see more pics of this survivalist dream house at the link below.

Link

A year ago, we told you about artist John Morse and his Roadside Haiku project in Atlanta. Now his talents have been commissioned for traffic signs in New York City! The New York City Department of Transportation has installed a collection of curbside signs written in haiku along with graphics designed by John Morse. The seventeen-syllable poetry warns drivers, pedestrians, and bikers to watch for safety hazards. Some also have QR codes. See more of them at core77. Link -via Metafilter

Even if you’ve never been to New York, you’ve certainly seen enough movies and tv shows filmed there to get an idea of what it looks like these days. If you want to see what it looked like around the early half of the last century though, you might want to head to The Jewish Museum New York’s website and enjoy some of their featured photos taken by The New York Photo League. Of course, if you’re in the city, you really should head to the museum itself to enjoy the full gallery in person.

Link Via BuzzFeed

Katie O'Beirne has an idea so simple it's downright brilliant. She leaves a disposable camera in the park, tied to a park bench with a twine, and then waits to see what develops.

She posts the wonderful photos taken by random strangers on her tumblr blog New York Shots - via Kickstarter blog (with video interview of Katie)

There was a huge turnout of cosplayers at new York’s Comic-Con, and photographer Michael Tapp was there to document them. See a gallery of 43 photographs of the best costumes to be seen at the convention at Geeks Are Sexy. Link

(watch on MyDamnChannel)

Comedian Mark Malkoff offered New Yorkers free cab rides for an entire day, accepting requests via Facebook and Twitter. Mark says, “I hired a cab driver and kept the meter running for fourteen hours straight! Along the way we did fun stuff that’s never been done in a cab before including filling the entire cab with popcorn and plastering Tony Danza’s face all over the cab. The grand total on my 14 hour cab ride turned out to be $486.10. Afterward I showered for a long, long time!” I’m willing to bet the shower was also 14 hours long.

Thanks Mark!

Starting next summer, a partnership between New York City and Atla Bike Share will set up ten thousand bicycles for public use. Membership cards for the year will be priced lower than a monthly MetroCard, and the first 30 minutes of bike use is free. The video features Atla’s successful bike program in Washington, D.C., the largest in the country.

Link -via Gizmodo | Video

This collage of 200 street portraits, taken by photographer Brandon Stanton, is combined with the song  “Empire State of Mind” to create a love note to the city.

The Humans of New York Project is an effort to create a photographic census of New York City. The project seeks to collect 10,000 street portraits, and plot them geographically on an interactive map.

Stanton has taken over 2,000 portraits so far. Find out more about the project, and read some of the stories of the people behind the portraits, at the Humans of New York website. Link -via Everlasting Blort

New York artist Jay Shells got tired of the rude manners of fellow New Yorkers and decided to take matters into his own hands. He created official-looking etiquette signs around Manhattan, under the guise of the "Metropolitan Etiquette Authority."

This one above is my favorite. Bravo! Link - via Laughing Squid

This image of Manhattan was taken by the Enhanced Thematic Mapper Plus (ETM+) aboard the Landsat 7 satellite, about 27 hours after the terrorist attack of September 11, 2001. It was uploaded to Flickr only a couple of hours ago. Link -via Gizmodo

(Image credit: Flickr user NASA Goddard Photo and Video)

To promote their Prohibition Era show Boardwalk Empire, HBO has brought some vintage trains back to select subway routes in NYC. If you’re in the Big Apple in the month of September and find yourself in need of a ride, try to check out the express 2/3 track in Manhattan from 12 to 6 p.m. on Saturdays and Sundays. Laughing Squid writer Scott Beale just happened across one on the inaugural weekend and took the above video. Vintage features include rattan seats, ceiling fans (!) and drop sash windows. Pretty sweet.

Link via Laughing Squid

I’d like to stay with people of different ages, races, religions, sexual orientations and economic situations. I’d like to hit the five boroughs (Staten Island eludes me but its on the calendar!). I’m trying to do 52 neighborhoods. I’m at around 40 right now depending on how you define them. Ultimately though, I’m looking for different perspectives and ideas. So far, I have stayed with some of my best friends, friends of friends, relatives of friends, former coworkers, complete strangers through some of the recent press I have received. It has been difficult, scary, interesting, and exciting. Most of all, it has been immensely rewarding, which is what I expected when this idea first popped into my head.

Casabian was granted a SoundCloud Community Fellowship to underwrite his adventures. Link -via Laughing Squid

by Daniel M. Berry
Cheriton School of Computer Science, University of Waterloo
Waterloo, Ontario, Canada

In software engineering, we are told that a software requirements specification should specify what the desired software should do, not how the software should do it. This is often summarized as “What, not how.” This paper explores the validity of the advice to specify “What, not how” for requirements, including quality requirements. In the domain of the New York bagel, it may be necessary to explain how in order to make the what precise enough.

In general, there are two ways to specify any system, software or otherwise:

1. a “what” specification describing what the system does, or

2. a “how” specification describing how the system does what it does.

A system may also be described by tests that are satisfied by the desired system.

A “what” specification and a test share the property that each leaves the question of how to implement the system up to the implementer. The freedom accorded to the implementer allows him or her to find the best technology to achieve the desired “what” or testing success.

Note that there can be no test specification for any but the most trivial systems, because no finite set of test cases can thoroughly test a non-trivial system for compliance to its requirements. Edsger Dijkstra once said, “Program testing can be used to show the presence of bugs, but never to show their absence!”1

While the “what, not how” mantra seems clear enough, in practice it may be very difficult to separate the hows from the whats. Indeed, for some requirements, it may be impossible to specify “what” without saying something about “how.” There are also requirements, usually called quality requirements, for which the “what” specification is simply not very useful, e.g., “The output shall look good,” “The user interface shall be easy to use,” or “The response time shall be fast.” In some of these cases, the only way to make the requirement precise enough to be tested is to say something about how it will be met.

A prime example of a product requiring a detailed “how” specification is none other than the New York bagel, examples of which are shown in figure 1.2

Figure 1 (Image credit: Flickr user Ezra Wolfe)

New York Bagels

How many readers have ever really had one? A New York bagel, such as what you get at Zabar’s, H&H, or Rise & Shine, is not just a baked good with a hole in it, despite the widespread proliferation of places that make a bread with a hole and call it a bagel in order to profit from the current bagelmania.3 A donut is another baked good with a hole in it, and we all know that a bagel and donut have little in common except the hole; indeed, a bagel and a donut have literally nothing in common.4

“What” Specification of a Bagel

A “what” specification of any object consists of a textual description of the object, often accompanied by diagrams. If, unlike software, the object has physical dimensions, the diagrams may include what are commonly called blueprints.

A bagel is a baked good in the approximate shape of a symmetric, regular torus. The torus has approximately a 4 inch (? 10 cm) outer diameter, a 1 inch (? 2.5 cm) inner diameter, and a 1.5 inch (? 3.8 cm) ring diameter. The interior of the bagel has air holes. Most of the outside surface of the bagel is a golden brown crust that is approximately .0625 inch (? 1.6 mm) thick. The part of the outside surface that comes in contact with the baking surface is dark brown and pockmarked.

Figure 2 shows a blueprint5 formed out of 5 photographs of various views of genuine New York bagels. Considering a bagel as it lies flat on a plate viewed from above the plate, the plan view is in the upper left-hand corner of the blueprint, and the elevation view is in the upper right-hand corner of the blueprint. The Line A-A in the plan view defines Section A-A shown in the lower left-hand corner of the blueprint, and the Line B-B in the elevation view defines Section B-B shown in the lower right-hand corner of the blueprint. The middle left-hand side of the blueprint shows Detail 1A-A, a blowup of the part of Section A-A that is delimited by a dashed-line rectangle in the section’s left-hand side.

A donut satisfies the physical dimensions given in the blueprint, but a donut is not a bagel. To distinguish a New York bagel from any other baked good with a hole, Detail 1A-A of the blueprint, shown in Figure 3, has specifications of the elasticity of the surface and the moisture content of the interior. The surface should withstand 45 pounds per square inch (?3.17 kg per square cm), and the interior should have 20 to 25 percent moisture content. The surface elasticity and inner moisture content specifications together specify the chewiness of a New York bagel. A donut does not satisfy this chewiness specification. A piece of ordinary bread shaped into a ring of the right size also does not satisfy this chewiness specification.

Is this chewiness an essential, functional requirement of a New York bagel? Some think so, because without the chewiness, the baked good with a hole in it is not a New York bagel. It is a bread with a hole, a donut, or perhaps another kind of bagel entirely, such as the Montréal bagel.

Figure 3. Detail 1A-A from blueprint in Figure 2.

“How” Specification of a Bagel

A “how” specification of a bagel is a recipe for making bagels:

1. Use high-gluten flour dough that has risen.

2. Make a ring with outer diameter 4 inches (? 10 cm) and inner diameter 1 inch (? 2.5 cm) and with a cross section of 1.5 inches (? 3.8 cm) in diameter.

3. Put the ring into boiling water for 30 seconds.6

4. Bake the ring on a corn-meal covered surface in a 400°F (? 200°C) oven until golden brown, usually for about 10 minutes.

The step that is left out or changed by the making of most poor imitations of New York bagels and of other kinds of bagels is Step 3.

This “how” specification, a recipe, is clearly an algorithm.7

Testing Properties of a Bagel

A test gives one way to determine whether a candidate system has the tested property. A standard test for New York bagelhood is that a proper genuine New York bagel can be used by a baby for teething for at least 10 minutes without disintegrating into a ball of mush.8 A donut clearly fails this test. In fact, all baked goods with holes that fail to meet the surface yield and interior moisture content specification fail this test. All the so-called bagels, including the steamed ones, described below, made without boiling fail this test.

Another test is that chewing a genuine New York bagel burns almost as many calories as are ingested by eating the bagel, particularly if the bagel is taken from someone else’s plate.9

Figure 4: The Bagel Biter

Still another test is that only a genuine New York bagel stands up to and does not get squished by the Bagel Biter™ bagel cutting guillotine depicted in Figure 4. A steamed bagel gets crushed into a wad before the blade begins to cut.

Still another test is that if you bite down on a sandwich made with a genuine New York bagel, the filling squishes out. With a steamed bagel, the sandwich filling does not squish out; thus, a steamed bagel makes a great bun.

As mentioned, a test is similar to a “what” specification in the sense that it allows any implementation that achieves the test. Therefore, from here on, this paper compares only “what” and “how” specifications.

What, Not How

As mentioned above, a “what” specification is normally preferred to a “how” specification because the “what” specification says only what is desired and allows the implementer the freedom to achieve the requirements in any way he or she can. It spurs competition to find more efficient ways to achieve what is specified than originally conceived.

Some of the companies that fail to make genuine New York bagels do so because they have decided to make different kind of bagels. These companies include the makers of Montréal bagels, a different kind of bagel with its own fans.

Montréal Bagel (Image credit: Flickr user Sifu Renka)

Others that fail to make genuine New York bagels do so because they have decided that the high-gluten flour and the boiling are unnecessary. These bakers do not get the proper surface yield or interior moisture content. They make bread with a hole. Many supermarket-made bagels are in this category.

Some who do use high-gluten flour, e.g. McDonald’s, have tried steaming in place of boiling. It almost works, but the surface yield is not high enough and the interior moisture content is too high. These steamed so-called bagels are clearly examples of trying to find a cheaper way to achieve the “what” specification than can be done by following the standard “how” method, or recipe. However, to date no recipe other than the standard recipe has succeeded in achieving the desired “what” specification. Saekel et al. 199510 quote Gary Goldstein, co-owner of the Bay Area’s Holey Bagel, as insisting, “Steaming is for dry cleaning, not bagels.” Even on the other side of the globe, the slogan of the Bagel House in Sydney, NSW, Australia, says it all: “If it’s not boiled, it’s not a bagel.”

Others who boil their bagels before baking still fail to achieve the required chewiness because their flour does not have enough gluten. While the resulting bagels have the required surface strength, the interior is noticeably less moist. Thus, the chewiness is limited to the initial, surface-piercing bite, and does not extend to the interior. This author believes that most of the bagel houses in Israel make this kind of low-gluten bagels. Note that gluten cannot be eliminated entirely, because without some gluten, a ring of dough would simply disintegrate during its boiling.11

Finally, there are at least two companies whose bagels taste to this author like they have been steamed, namely Tim Hortons’s and Noah’s Bagels. A search for reviews confirms that others have come to the same conclusion regarding Noah’s Bagels’s bagels.12,13,14 Nevertheless, e-mail from an official of each company says that the company’s bagels are boiled.11,15 Further investigation shows that Tim Hortons practices par-baking. At a central factory, high-gluten flour rings are boiled, baked to 85–90% of completion, and then frozen for delivery to individual stores. Each store then finishes off the baking locally. These bagels do have a freshly baked aroma, flavor, and feel, but they taste to this author like steamed bagels, with too soft a surface and too moist an interior. Perhaps the time lag between the two baking steps, during which the bagels are sent frozen from the central factory to the stores, accounts for the surface tension decrease and the interior moisture increase from those characteristic of boiled bagels to those characteristic of steamed bagels.

Thus, a bagel is an example of a project for which a “how” specification may be better than a “what” specification. A “how” specification is certainly simpler in the sense that it is easier to tell what needs to be done. In opting for this “how” specification, one is discouraging innovation. However, in the case of the New York bagel, perhaps innovation should be discouraged.

Boiling Bagels (Image credit: Flickr user Elizabeth Beers)

Could an expert baker deduce from the blueprint or an actual bagel that using high-gluten flour and boiling before baking is necessary? That is, can a domain expert deduce what is not explicit in a “what” specification so that it is not necessary to give “how” information? The answer to this question is probably “yes.” This author is a sufficiently expert eater that he can tell from feeling or biting on a candidate bagel whether it has been boiled, and can tell by chewing it whether it has enough gluten. Moreover, he can tell when another kind of bread, e.g., the German Laugenbrot or Pletzl, has a lot of gluten and has been boiled before baking. Additionally, it is hard to imagine a baking expert who has not learned about the use of gluten and boiling before baking as a technique for achieving certain effects, namely those exhibited by New York bagels. More generally, the recipient of a specification must be considered when deciding what to leave implicit.

An algorithmic description is the clearest, simplest specification for a New York bagel. While it does prescribe how to make it, in principle anything that tastes and feels the same will be accepted as a bagel. Unfortunately for those who wish to optimize on the time to produce a bagel and to eliminate the need for high-gluten flour, for a boiling vat, or both, all other ways tried so far have yet to produce exactly the desired taste and feel.

Conclusion

This paper has considered one situation in which design and implementation details are necessary to resolve issues that should be resolved during specification. Space does not permit the exploration of other examples such as text formatters; robust, safe, secure, and survivable systems; and varying telephonic systems. The conclusion after consideration of these examples is that sometimes, a “how” specification is significantly more clear or brief than a “what” specification, and that sometimes, a “how” specification is needed for information that is not available in a “what” specification. Also, sometimes, a “how” specification is needed to make a quality requirement precise enough to be tested. Therefore, when it is appropriate to use a “how” specification, do so without guilt and in good health.

(Image credit: Flickr user Matthew Mendoza)

Acknowledgments

I thank Martin Feather for pointing out that the Bruegger’s Bagel Bakery blueprint on my T-shirt, on which the blueprint of Figure 2 is based, constituted a “what” specification of bagels and that sometimes a “how” specification is better. I thank Michael Jackson for an interesting e-mail discussion on “what” vs. “how.” I thank Brian Burechails and Reneé deHerrera-Brooks for teaching me some things about bagel making. I thank Vic DiCiccio for the mouth-watering photograph of the bagels. Finally, I thank Jo Atlee, Gunnar Begersen, Brian Berenbach, Nancy Day, Merlin Dorfman, Martin Feather, Mike Godfrey, and Leah Goldin for valuable comments on earlier drafts of this paper or during lecture presentations of the material in this paper.

References and notes

1 “Notes on Structured Programming,” E.W. Dijkstra, in Structured Programming, O.-J. Dahl, E. W. Dijkstra, and C. A. R. Hoare, eds., Academic Press, London, 1972, ISBN 0122005503.

2 The subject bagels of the photograph of Figure 1 were so mouth-watering that the author and the photographer ended up eating the subjects immediately after the photograph was taken.

3 Bagelmania: The Hole Story, C. Berman and S. Munshower, HP Books, Tucson, 1987, ISBN 0895866242.

4 When the Israeli branches of Dunkin Donuts began to sell bagels as well as their traditional donuts, the author remarked that Dunkin Donuts was diversifying into other holey products in the Holy Land, even though its business was not wholly holey products.

5 This blueprint is modeled after a document entitled “Building a Better Bagel,” produced by Bruegger’s Bagel Bakery and, until a few years ago, used in their promotional activities. Breugger’s Enterprises, Inc. declined a request for permission to publish a copy of that blueprint in this scholarly article.

6 The duration may have to be altered if atmospheric pressure differs substantially from that at sea level. In Denver, Colorado, USA, which is a mile (? 1.6 km) high, the ring must be boiled for 90 seconds.

7 There are a (w)hole host of details ignored in one or both of these specifications:
a) boiling time as a function of the altitude of the place of baking,
b) possible toppings, e.g., garlic, onion, poppy seed, salt, and sesame seed, and when and how to apply them, and
c) emotional issues9; after all, this paper does get a bit emotional about how a bagel is made.

8 Not really!

9 “Is Emotion Relevant to Requirements Engineering?” I. Ramos and D. M. Berry, Requirements Engineering Journal, vol. 10, no. 3, 2005, pp. 238–242.

10 “What’s New,” K. Saekel, M. Cianci, and M. A. Mariner, San Francisco Chronicle, April 19, 1995.

11 R. deHerrera-Brooks, Einstein Noah Restaurant Group, Inc., private communication by e-mail, August 2008.

12 “Noah’s Bagels — Redwood City, CA,” Yelp.com.

13 “Restaurant Review: Bagels: blurring the line between tradition and innovation,” M. C. Peterson, Palo Alto Online, May 23, 1997.

14 “Noah’s Bagels”, Davis Wiki.

15 A. Ziemski, Tim Hortons (TDL Group Corp.), private communication by e-mail, August 2008.

(Title image credit: Flickr user Thomas Hawk)

_____________________

This article is republished with permission from the January-February 2009 issue of the Annals of Improbable Research. You can download or purchase back issues of the magazine, or subscribe to receive future issues. Or get a subscription for someone as a gift!

Visit their website for more research that makes people LAUGH and then THINK.

“Kids might be afraid or ashamed because they are delinquent with the library,” said NYPL official Jack Martin. “The idea of this program is to bring them back in.

Personally, I could have worked off over $100 worth of fines over one summer when I was a kiddo, but I know most youngsters aren’t as eager as I was.

Link Via Consumerist Image Via Wonderfully Complex [Flickr]

The place that gave Mr. and Mrs. Joe Schmoe the crazy idea that happiness was just a few subway stops away.

Between about 1880 and World War II, Coney Island was the largest amusement park in the United States. But back in 1609, when Dutch explorer Henry Hudson became the first European to arrive on the premises, he found nothing more than barren sand dunes and very unfriendly Native Americans. After his petty officer was killed in a skirmish, Hudson moved on to a much calmer and peaceful island later known as Manhattan.

At some point the island (which is five miles long and up to a mile wide) was named Konijn Eiland, which is Dutch for “Rabbit Island.” Konijn became “Coney,” possibly during the days of Lady Deborah Moody, a London widow in her mid-50s, who brought a group of religious dissenters to the island during a lull in the Indian Wars. It was rough going -the local Native Americans still weren’t all that friendly- but the plucky group stayed on.

EASY ACCESS

Coney Island remained an island until 1829, when it was connected to mainland Long Island by Shell Road, a road made of -you guessed it- shells. It’s been a peninsula ever since. But linguistically, it’s still an island: one is said to be “on” Coney Island, not “in” it.

Hotel Brighton

HOLIDAY INN

Five years after Shell Road was built, a large hotel, Coney Island House, opened for business in hopes of drawing a summer crowd to the seaside. The hotel’s success encouraged builders of even more elegant hotels. What started as a genteel resort recommended by doctors (sea bathing was considered to be healthy and invigorating), quickly became a hot spot with the upper classes. Before long, hotels along the seashores welcomed such distinguished guests as P.T. Barnum, Daniel Webster, and Washington Irving. Visitors lingered on the the hotels’ long porches, ate their meals in posh dining rooms, and took dips in the Atlantic.

BATHING SUITS AND OTHER PURSUITS

The completion of Plank Road (made of planks, we assume) in 1850 made access easier and encouraged entrepreneurs like Peter Tilyou to set up shop: Tilyou not only sold beer for a nickel, but he also built bathhouses, so that visitors could change into their swimsuits right there on the beach -or, in those days of casual hygiene, rent them for the day.

Women’s bathing costumes of the day were about the size of a modern-day conservative dress and, stockings included, weighed 15 pounds when wet. (A dress code was strictly enforced for 100 years. For instance, in 1918 a hundred women were arrested for not wearing stockings on the beach. And in the early 1930s, men who exposed their chests on the beach could get a $50 fine and spend 10 days in jail.)

CONEY’S GREATEST GIFT TO HUMANITY

Frankfurters came to the United States via German immigrants. But they didn’t really become popular until the 1880s, when Charles Feltman, a German banker, settled in Coney Island and decided to sell boiled frankfurters on heated buns from a cart. Each frankfurter sandwich was sold for a dime and was loaded with traditional German toppings -mustard and sauerkraut.

Feltman was so successful that after a few years he opened his own restaurant, Feltman’s German Beer Garden. In 1913, he hired Nathan Handwerker as a part-time delivery boy. But for $11 a week, Nathan wasn’t too happy with his earnings. He began to plan for his own concession stand. In 1916, when he had saved $300, he made his dream a reality.

Nathan’s stand offered a unique spiced meat frankfurter made from a recipe his wife, Ida, created. As a way to market his product, he promised free franks to the local doctors. His only condition was that they had to eat them in front of his stand wearing their white lab coats and stethoscopes. So when people saw the esteemed doctors eating Nathan’s frankfurters, they automatically assumed his franks must be of much better quality than his competitors. And they were cheaper than Feltman’s, since Nathan only charged a nickel apiece.

By the time Nathan opened his concession stand, frankfurters were commonly known as hot dogs -all because of an American cartoonist who couldn’t spell. The story goes that one night in 1906, with a deadline looming, Tad Dorgan sketched a drawing of a dachshund smeared with mustard and squished in a bun. When it was time to caption the picture, poor Tad didn’t know how to spell “dachshund,” so he wrote, “Get your hot dogs!” instead.

LADIES AND GENTS OF LEISURE

But it was back in the late 1870s that island business really started booming: Five railroad lines ran to and from the island by then, bringing 50,000 to 60,000 visitors in 1878. For the first time in industrialized America, people were taking advantage of leisure time. Wearing their comparatively skimpy bathing suits and splashing in the surf was somehow liberating. Reporters of the day mention (and an early Edison Company film shows) the “jubilation” on the faces of Coney Islanders. The poor, working-class slob was learning how to have fun!

THERE GOES THE NEiGHBORHOOD

Gamblers, hookers, and card sharks were soon giving Coney Island a dubious reputation. Local residents were outraged. In hopes of cleaning up the place, they elected John Y. McKane as their police chief in 1868. But McKane ignored the misconduct (for a fee) and ended up behind bars himself when he was convicted of fixing elections.

TAKE THIS JOB AND SHOVE IT

In 1884, MaMarcus Adna Thompson opened the world’s first roller coaster, the Switchback Railroad. It had 600 feet of wooden tracks, but unlike roller coasters of today, workers had to push it up to its highest point to get it going. Passengers paid a dime for a ride.

VIVA LUNA PARK!

Captain Paul Boyton had an even better idea. In 1895, he opened Sea Lion Park, the world’s first enclosed amusement park. It featured a colony of sea lions and the ever-popular Shoot-the-Chutes, a waterslide that landed its riders in a man-made lagoon.

Sea Lion Park was redesigned in 1903 and transformed into Luna Park, the Las Vegas of its time. Besides the elephant rides, camel rides, and a circus, the park featured the Dragon’s Gorge, a tunnel ride that included a waterfall and scenes from the North Pole, Africa, the Grand Canyon, and the River Styx.

There was a simulated trip to the Moon. A live-action show, Fire and Flames, had the New York City fire department rescuing trapped residents of burning tenements, some of whom had to jump into nets to escape. This was an attraction that New Yorkers could identify with since a lot of them lived in real tenements. A real fire claimed Luna Park during the 1940s, and the site was eventually turned into a parking lot.

MEET ME TONIGHT IN DREAMLAND

Coney Island’s most famous park, the completely white Dreamland, opened in 1904, and it duplicated a lot of Luna Park’s ideas. Fighting the Flames was copied directly from Fire and Flames. There was a ride called Maxim’s Flying Machine, a miniature railroad, a ballroom, and a Japanese teahouse. All watched over by the Dreamland Tower which stood 375 feet high and was covered with 100,000 lights.

Dreamland’s most unusual attraction was the fully functional Incubator Hospital, which displayed actual premature babies in their incubators. This sounds a little less freaky when it’s revealed that real doctors and nurses provided round-the-clock care for the little newborns. That’s a relief, huh?

In 1911, a fire leveled Dreamland and all its spectacles in a matter of hours. The babies in the hospital were saved.

DAY-TRIPPING

By 1910 or so, the big hotels were closing, and the guests who used to come for weeks and months now only visited on weekends. And then they did not come at all. The island now belonged to the masses. The subway station built in 1918 cemented it. By the 1920s, one million people crowded the island on a single sunny day and walked the two-mile boardwalk, which had been completed in 1923.

During the Great depression, Coney was the perfect escape; crowds averaging 35 million came each summer, but now the beaches were the primary draw because the masses couldn’t afford the fifty cents it took to by a ride. Eventually the prices dropped to a nickel -for a hot dog, a ride, and the subway. But without an infusion of cash, the island started to decay.

THINGS ARE LOOKING UP -AND DOWN

On July 3, 1947, 1,300,000 people -one fifth of the population of New York City- spent the day enjoying not just the beach and the rides, but also a fireworks show and an air show put on by the New York Daily Mirror and the U.S. Air Force. It’s estimated that one in one hundred Americans visited Coney Island that weekend.

But that couldn’t keep the decay away. By the 1950s, it looked like the island was doomed. Even while modern-day entrepreneurs were trying their hand at revitalizing the amusement parks at Coney, the island continued to decline. New amusement parks were going up around New York and the rest of the country, including Coney’s biggest competitor: Disneyland in faraway California.

Image from the 1979 film The Warriors.

Some historians describe Coney as a ghost town in the 1970s. All of New York seemed a dangerous place then. On Coney Island, the bathhouses closed, and the big hotels were torn down.

CONEY, REBORN

But you can’t keep a good Coney Island down. In 1980, the New York Parks Department reported that concession revenues at the beach had been steadily rising for several seasons in a row.

(Image credit: Flickr user André)

Today, the rides and amusements are run by Astroland Amusement Park. The attractions include the Cyclone roller coaster, Go-Karts, the Tilt-a-Whirl, the Water Flume (a waterslide), and Dante’s Inferno (with Spook-A-Rama, one of the park’s two “dark” rides).

And let’s not forget Astroland’s Sideshows by the Seashore, featuring Insectavora, Serpentina, Bambi the Mermaid, Eak (the Illustrated Man), Scott Baker (the Twisted Shockmeister), Ravi (the Scorpion Mystic), Ula (the Rainproof Rubber Girl), and Todd Robbins (Amazement Is His Business).

______________________________

The article above is reprinted with permission from Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader Plunges Into History Again.

The book is a compendium of entertaining information chock-full of facts on a plethora of history topics. Uncle John’s first plunge into history was a smash hit – over half a million copies sold! And this sequel gives you more colorful characters, cultural milestones, historical hindsight, groundbreaking events, and scintillating sagas.

Since 1988, the Bathroom Reader Institute had published a series of popular books containing irresistible bits of trivia and obscure yet fascinating facts. Check out their website here: Bathroom Reader Institute

Dan Abramson drew a map of the United States of America as seen by New Yorker over at Funny or Die. As far as I can tell based on my interactions with New Yorkers, it’s entirely accurate.

I love New York and New Yorkers. I found them to be amongst the nicest and most helpful people in the country. Their reputation of being rude and brusque is wholly undeserved (they are, however, direct).

But there’s one thing that I find very funny about New Yorkers (or those that blog anyhow): they think that everyone they like must live in New York because it’s inconceivable to live anywhere else.

Less than an hour after the New York legislature passed a marriage equality bill 33 to 29 during a late session on Friday, Twitter started filling up with messages about how the Empire State Building had “gone rainbow.” “OK, pictures of rainbow Empire State Building are getting me misty,” screenwriter Diablo Cody wrote. “A rainbow shines on the Empire State and the Empire State building tonight!,” another tweet read. And another: “Empire state building goes rainbow. Go us!”

Less than an hour? The Atlantic explains how the display was executed so fast. Link -via @Bad Astronomer

The 2,448-mile trip took six days and included a stop in Las Vegas where the friends won $2,000. [...]

On 22 April, after their winning streak in Las Vegas, he tweeted: "Woke up Alam to a shower of $100 bills at sunrise."

Link | John’s documenting the trip on his Twitter page

This odd but appealing animated documentary was produced by Diego Maccione and Adam Gill for Al Jazeera. A rat narrates the history of New York hot dogs. Link -via Buzzfeed

“All the Buildings in New York” is the name of a blog where James Gulliver Hancock, an illustrator originally from Australia and currently based in Brooklyn, New York, will post creations from his ongoing project to draw all the buildings in his hometown.

Link – via kottke.org

Now I am not going to tell you about all the great things that will be coming to the NeatoShop this year. I wouldn’t want to spoil the surprises that we have in store for you.  Instead I will share a few pics that I snapped with my phone and camera.

The first thing I did when I got to the hotel was take this picture. This is the drawing my daughter drew for me before I left. It’s a picture of my family.  It includes my husband and 3 kids. My daughter drew this so I wouldn’t forget them while I was gone. I carried the photo around with me in my pocket.

Are you getting a clear picture of how much Mommy guilt I endured this trip?  Apparently, however, it was needless guilt since my more than capable husband took the 3 monkeys to an amusement park while I was gone. The kids had a blast and didn’t even really miss me.

This is a picture I took when I got to the Toy Fair. If you look closely you can see that one of the Ugly guys is holding the picture of my family.  This was no easy task since he could barely bend his arm.  Thanks Ugly guys you are awesome!

These are pictures of a really awesome toy that it coming to the NeatoShop this Spring.

That’s all your getting out of me. Frankly, I think I have told you too much. If you really want to know what amazing things I found on this trip you are going to have to check in on the NeatoShop.  We suggest you visit us often and frequently.

It’s a river of people! Over 40,000 runners participated in the New York City Marathon last weekend. Thanks to time-lapse videography, you can watch most of them get started. -via Buzzfeed

That is what led Amber Lambke and Allan Grinshtein to start a group called the New York Nightowls, a sort of study hall for entrepreneurs, freelancers and software developers who gather at 10 every Tuesday night and stay as late as 4 a.m.

“The goal is to come, get inspired, meet new people and get work done,” said Ms. Lambke, a creative consultant. “It’s six hours of uninterrupted, productive time where you’re surrounded by other creative people doing awesome things.”

Although the New York group has been meeting only since April, the concept is catching on. Others have organized similar weekly gatherings in nearly a dozen cities, including San Francisco, Boston, Stockholm and Melbourne, Australia.

Link | The New York Nightowls website

Police in Queens, New York is looking for a robber with the purr-fect disguise:

According to the source, the lithe 5-foot-6, 115 pound thief, described in a wanted poster as possibly Middle Eastern, strode into the store at around 1:30 p.m. She prowled for about 45 minutes before donning her disguise and pouncing on a sales clerk.

"Give me the money. I have a gun," read a note Cat Woman passed to the worker, according to the source.

John Doyle and Lachlan Cartwright of the NY Post investigate: Link

On December 16, 1960, two commercial airliners collided in mid-air over Staten Island. One plane crashed into Staten Island; the other, in Park Slope, Brooklyn, with much of the wreckage landing at the intersection of Sterling Place and Seventh Avenue. Ten brownstones, a church, a funeral home, a deli, and a Chinese laundry all caught fire or were destroyed.?

10 year old  Stephen Baltz, was rescued by bystanders and rushed to the New York Methodist Hospital. Scouting New York recounts the story of the crash and shows the plaque in the hospital chapel  honoring the 135 victims. Stephen was carrying 65 cents in his pocket when the plane hit the ground. This pocket change is embedded in the plaque, a sad reminder of the little boy who dropped from the sky that day.

Link – Via Metafilter

Bonhams auction house in New York is held a unique auction on Thursday. On the block? Authentic dinosaur fossils and other artifacts from the ice age.

Among the things sold were skeletons, teeth, skulls, plants, and petrified trees. Most of the items were expected to go to museums, but private collectors also attended the auction.

Up for grabs are a Woolly Rhinoceros skeleton, a Tyrannosaurus Rex tooth — and a stegodon skull. But don’t be tempted to go for the impulse buy — these items don’t come cheap, with experts warning a buyer could expect to pay anything up to and even over $200,000.

Link – via foxnews

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by nmiller.

The Flatiron building was one of the first skyscrapers in New York, and its iconic shape, an extremely narrow triangle, is recognized throughout the world as a unique and interesting building.

The New York Times has an indepth profile of the building this week, and points out that though the exterior is awesome, the interior can be quirky, as much space is taken up by the elevators, furniture is hard to fit, and one floor is accessible only via another floor!

Nonetheless, the Flatiron building is an important part of New York and provides tourists with great pictures, locals with a reference point, and occupants with a special form of comfort.

Because of its footprint and location, the Flatiron has problems and perks that other buildings do not. The swirling winds generated by its shape are said to have inspired the phrase “23 skidoo” — what police officers would say as they dispersed the men who gathered outside to linger and watch for women’s skirts to blow up as they passed.

Link – via gothamist

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by nmiller.

Artist Erik Guzman has just installed a very cool art concept in New York City’s World Financial Plaza. The installation is a concoction of “moving gears and flashing lights” that is constantly changing based on weather data. As the weather changes, the art responds, changing in its own interpretive way, creating neat designs and patterns.

But how? This weather data is received via radio waves, which then get turned into visual representations of spring breezes, winter winds, and we’re guessing that lovely NYC summer humidity (warm garbage smell not included).

Link

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by nmiller.

So when a recalcitrant zipper threatened to be, or not to be, Queen Gertrude’s undoing in a Metropolitan Opera production of “Hamlet” last month, the Met dispatched a costumer, Michael Zacker, to Mr. Feibusch for a new zipper for Jennifer Larmore’s gown. “He really has great products,” Mr. Zacker said.

Retail, they go from 50 cents for a nylon dress zipper to $100 for a No. 10 brass zipper, 350 inches long, to wrap your hot-air balloon.

How great are zippers? Don’t even get Mr. Feibusch started. They are watertight for deep-sea divers, airtight for NASA. “Nothing replaces a zipper,” he said. Buttons? He made a face. “A button is unpleasant,” he said.

Link -via Jason Kottke

(image credit: Nicole Bengiveno/The New York Times)

A new movie opening up this week, Kick Ass, tells the story of average citizens becoming superheroes. The New York Post has a story on New York citizens who have been real life super heroes for many years!

“We are just people who really care and try to go out and make a difference,” says Chris Pollak, 25, whose alter ego, “Dark Guardian,” strikes fear in the hearts of drug peddlers in Washington Square Park. “The idea is to be this drastic example of making change in your community.”

The Staten Islander has been patrolling city streets for the last seven years, frequently putting himself in harm’s way. A drug dealer flashed a gun at Pollak once, and he has almost come to blows with thugs.

“My fiancée is very supportive, but she gets worried if I’m doing anything that involves danger,” Dark Guardian said. “When I met my fiancée, I told her I liked to do this thing where I go out and help the homeless and patrol the streets. I didn’t get into the whole costume thing — I waited until a little bit into the relationship.”

Link

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by Geekazoid.

Christoph Niemann of Abstract City Blog was inspired to create a series of miniature New York vignettes when playing with his son’s LEGO toys during the cold and dark winter days in Berlin. He posted his creations, and they were so popular that he got a book deal out of it!

Take a look at a few of Christoph’s clever and minimalistic creations over at our wide-format blog, Neatorama Spotlight, and win yourself a copy of the book: Link

Luna Park at Coney Island will open on Memorial Day weekend with 19 rides. Among them will be the Air Race, which sends riders swinging and soaring around a control tower. It will be the ride’s global debut.

Also promised are games, live entertainment, and concessions including Nathan’s Famous hot dog stand, which opened in 1916, pioneering America’s concept of fast food.

By the summer of 2011, Scream Zone at Coney Island will offer two roller coasters, go-carts and a human slingshot launching people more than 200 feet into the air.

Other plans include shopping centers, restaurants, movie theaters, hotels, and 5,000 new housing units for the area. Link -via Fark

(image credit: AP/NYC Economic Development Corp.)

Jeff Kisseloff interviewed grocer Harry Dubin about an article written about him in 1947, but then found something much more interesting about Dubin.

I picked up the album and opened it, and my eyes nearly jumped out of my head. Inside were some 30 color photographs taken in and around the city in the 1940s. I had never seen such vibrant photos of the city in those years. In fact, I had never seen any color photos of the city in those years, yet here they were. It was such an interesting collection. Each of the pictures depicted a man in uniform intently doing his job, whether it was a street sweeper, gas station attendant or hansom cab driver. When I looked at them twice, I realized something, all of them were Harry!

Needless to say, while our subsequent interview was wonderful, the album left me speechless in delight. These were the most evocative photographs of old New York I had ever seen. Harry explained that all of them were taken by his son Ronald, who was then a teenager, after Harry managed to convince each worker to change clothes with him in an alley and let Harry do his job for a few minutes so the picture could be taken.

You might want to check back with The Kisseloff Collection as more pictures are added. Link -via Metafilter

Attention: Nerds, Knowledge Junkies, and most importantly, people who like to leave their house to drink and win stuff! The mental_floss Trivia Show is coming to a bar near you (if you live near Brooklyn), and you’re pretty much guaranteed to win something. In fact, our tagline is “[Almost] No one leaves empty-handed!” and we promise to [almost] live up to that.

But what exactly is The mental_floss Trivia Show? Well, it’s part bar quiz, part game show, and part lots of really bad jokes! We promise it’ll be a blast. So, go ahead and mark your calendar. We can’t wait to see you there.

Date: Sunday December 6, 2009.

Doors open at 7 p.m.

Location: Galapagos Art Space

16 Main Street, Brooklyn, NY

PS: There’s alcohol at the bar, so the event is 21 and up. (Better you find out here than at the door!).

Mangesh of mental_floss assures me that "there’s going to be lots of free trivia, and lots of free prizes." With a tagline of "(Almost) No one leaves empty-handed," I’m sure he’s right! Link – Thanks Mangesh!

Neatorama designer Chris "Snake" Murphy came up with this excellent design "ESC from New York." Ah, this certainly brings back memories. From the Neatorama Shop: Link

Meb Keflezighi won the New York City Marathon on Sunday. He is the first American to win the title since 1982! But around 42,000 runners took part in the marathon, some wearing elaborate costumes. Buzzfeed collected photographs of the most outrageous marathon costumes for your viewing pleasure. Link

(image credit: Flickr user monicamüller)

He said that the turtles were perhaps attracted to the sand along one side of the runway, which juts into the water. “They tend to look for sand while they are mating,” he said. “Presumably, all these turtles were feeling amorous.” It is unclear whether the turtles pair off, or if the numbers indicated it was a group activity, he said.

Some of the delays lasted up to an hour and a half -but hey, at least the turtles got their sexy on, which is a much better excuse for a delayed flight than most of the ones we hear.

Link Via Consumerist

Inspired by a similar idea in Atlanta early last year, a writer left two disposable cameras on park benches in Brooklyn and Manhattan. With just a note telling people to take any photo they like and her hope that someone wouldn’t run away with the cameras she left them for the day.

On returning she found the cameras exactly as she’s left them, with no exposures left. The developed photographs are an interesting slice of city life across one day.

Link

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by Jake.

“Designed for the Hudson Yard area of Manhattan, Eric Vergne’s Dystopian Farm aims to provide New York with a sustainable food source while creating a dynamic social space that integrates producers with consumers. Based upon the ‘material logic of plant mechanics’, the biomorphic skyscraper is modeled after the plant cells of ferns and provides space for farms, residential areas, and markets. These organic structures will harness systems such as airoponic watering, nutrient technology and controlled lighting and CO2 levels to meet the food demands of future populations.”

Link

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by whitespace.

The latest from improv everywhere. Agent Lathan spent all morning during the rush standing next to a subway escalator giving out high fives, more than 2000 in total

Link

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by Jake.

Christoph Niemann shows us how you only need a few LEGO pieces to make a whimsical yet brilliant homage to New York City:

During the cold and dark Berlin winter days, Christoph Niemann spends a lot of time with his boys in their room. And as he looks at the toys scattered on the floor, his mind inevitably wanders back to New York. I LEGO N.Y.

Link – via swissmiss

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by JKirchartz.

You can check out previous years’ pantless rides and other great pranks on ImprovEverywhere’s YouTube channel.

[YouTube]

‘I can’t watch," said Andrew Clarke, shutting his eyes.

"You shouldn’t," the doctor said calmly.

The doctor’s assistant pulled out an electric saw. He started slicing. The ground was already strewn with staples that had been yanked out. After one, two, three . . . seven incisions, Clarke’s $4,000, perfectly worn-in, brown leather couch lay in pieces with the 88-inch-long back surgically separated from the arms and bottom. Clarke’s cherished couch looked like a dissected moose.

"Gosh," he mumbled, his eyes wide, "whatever it takes."

Sal Giangrande calls himself the New York Couch Doctor, but in fact he’s New York’s Doctor Whatever It Takes for desperate people like Clarke, who couldn’t shimmy his old couch into his new apartment and wasn’t willing to give up either one.

The young real estate executive was moving from one apartment to another in the same brick building in the heart of west Greenwich Village. The new place was bigger and had a spectacular view of the Hudson River but was situated in the middle of a narrow hallway.

"The movers tried several times, several angles, but they couldn’t get the couch around the turn from the hallway into the new place," Clarke said. He was ready to dump it when his doorman told him about the Couch Doctor — aka Sal Giangrande.

Geraldine Baum of the Los Angeles Times has more on this fascinating story about New Yorkers and their sofabsessions: Link

(Photo: Carolyn Cole/LA Times)