New York City Transit Museum

I always try to find time to visit the NY City Transit museum when I visit New York. One of the things I love are the historic advertisements that are in the old subway cars parked in the museum. This is a particularly fun one I think. The accompanying text says "Bet you do better in a hat!" and states that "84 out of 100 women prefer men who wear hats."

While at the museum I bought the book Helvetica and the New York Subway System: The True (Maybe) Story by Paul Shaw. I finished reading it before Christmas and it's really interesting - you'll never look at a NYC Subway sign the same way again! (Here's a link to a similar article he wrote on the internet - Paul Shaw, The (Mostly) True Story of Helvetica and the NY City Subway).



And, one final photo of a mosaic from the Cortlandt Street IRT Subway Station (also in the Transit Museum collection). All my photos of the NYC Transit Museum on Flickr.

New York High Line

I visited New York in September for a series of meetings with OpenPlans about organizing a Transportation Camp in Washington DC during the Transportation Research Board Annual Meeting in January 2012. While there I was able to visit the High Line, an old aerial railway line that ran along the west side of Manhattan. The rail line has been converted to a walkway and is probably one of the most successful urban design projects from the last decade.



New York Magazine asked to use one of my photos in an article they were doing about tourist photos of New York, but unfortunately, I could not name all the people in the photo (there were about a hundred) so they didn't use it.

If you go to New York be sure to take a walk on the High Line. All my NY High Line photos on Flickr.

No Pants Subway Ride 2010

Improv Everywhere's film of their 2010 No Pants Subway Ride ... great fun.

Happy Birthday IRT Subway

Steam tram in Bern (Switzerland) from my flickr photos (the subway replaced elevated steam trains in NY ... sorry I could not find my photos from the fantastic NY Transit Museum).

The IRT subway in New York began service on October 27, 1904! Here's a link to the NY Times article Our Subway Open, 150,000 Try It.

Grocery Store Musical

Just returned from Zurich and found this in my mailbox ... as I have written before, ImprovEverywhere makes me want to move to New York!

I Love New York - Improv Everywhere

I just read about the group Improv Everywhere in David Pogue's NY Times blog. According to Improv Everywhere's website,

Improv Everywhere causes scenes of chaos and joy in public places. Created in August of 2001 by Charlie Todd, Improv Everywhere has executed over 80 missions involving thousands of undercover agents. The group is based in New York City.

They have a whole series of videos of their "missions" on the website, one of my favorites is High Five Escalator which is embedded above. It's so wonderful to see the diversity of New York riding up the escalator together, and, yes, high fiving Rob.

We'll try to participate in No Pants Subway Ride in Vienna next year. Contact me if you're interested.