A few months ago I came across a copy of Sins of New York on the outdoor bargain table of Argosy Books. Sins of New York is an amazing compilation of stories and illustrations from The National Police Gazette, a 19th-century tabloid which, according to wikipedia, "was well known for its engravings and photographs of scantily clad strippers, burlesque dancers, and prostitutes, often skirting on the edge of what was legally considered obscenity."

Edward Van Every compiled stories from the Police Gazette for Sins of New York in 1930, by which time its popularity had substantially waned, intending to select, according to his foreword, "the Gazette's worst features" and to "confin[e himself] to the sins that went on in New York." Van Every did follow up with a collection of non-New York Gazette stories called, appropriately, Sins of America, images from which have been dutifully scanned by The Nonist.

So, here are a few of the choice engraving reproductions from Sins of New York. Pretty hard to believe this passed for salacious in New York City not so long ago, eh?

How She Cured Him
A young wife astonishes her erratic husband by emulating his example, and causes him to promptly abandon the vagabond habits of his bachelor days.

Check out the expression on the husband's face! Also worth noting is that the wife is reading the Police Gazette!

The Female Rights' Musketeers
What may be expected if the schemes of certain strong-minded women in America are realized.

This dystopian image pretty much speaks for itself.

Beauty and the Beer
An incident of the beer-maker's strike in New York—How the dashing daughter of a brewer supplied the place of one of her father's striking employees—A pretty girl's practical protest against teetotalism.

I'm not sure this was so much a protest against teetotalism as a rich chick ensuring her wealthy family would have enough dough to keep up their lifestyle despite labor movements, but at any rate "Pretty Girl's Practical Protest" is definitely a phrase I'm going to be keeping on hand for later use.

Would-Be Voters
A bevy of strong-minded Amazons make a sensation at a New York uptown polling place.

Fantastic!

Cupid in Tompkins Square Park
A place which cupid has made his favorite stamping ground, and where the stern paterfamilias is wont to appear.

Gotta love the detail of the upper right corner:

Sign: "Keep Off the Grass" Editorial: But they don't!

She Grabbed the Reins
The sensation produced on a Broadway car by an impatient young lady passenger.

And who hasn't wanted to do that during their morning commute??

If you can't get enough, policegazette.us attempts to recreate the effect of the original Gazette with today's news—although, to tell you the truth, I think we all know Drudge comes a lot closer to the intended effect.

The Library of Congress has a flickr account! [via metafilter] With awesome photos from their archives! And no copyright restrictions!

I'm their new biggest fan.

From your favorite federal institution's flickr profile:

Yes. We really are THE Library of Congress.
We invite your tags and comments! Identifying information is also appreciated–many of our old photos came to us with very little description.

How sweet!

Some notable NYC photos:

The New York Public Library on opening day.

The original Penn Station.

And, unbelievably enough, a photo of orphans being driven to Coney Island. "In Autos," the photo caption notes. Autos!!!

Library of Congress, accept my love. You're my newest flickr contact.

Last week I received [via Sean] the joyous news that, thanks to embeddable Google Maps, no one ever need much around in javascript and the Maps API again to create their own personalized and awesome maps viewable in the comfort of their own website.

To celebrate this time-saving innovation, I immediate spent somewhere in the neighborhood of eight hours Google mapping Mary McCarthy's New York, as told in her Intellectual Memoirs: New York, 1936-1938.

Now, I'll admit I like Mary's fiction much better (especially The Company She Keeps, my collegiate introduction to Mary), but there's something irresistably fascinating about the lives of authors, particularly the life of someone so likable but incomprehensible as Mary—it's impossible to understand, even in her own telling of the story, why she left Philip Rahv for Edmund Wilson.

But I mapped Mary's memoirs primarily to highlight her hyper-awareness of the socio-economic geography of New York—on the snubs, imagined or real, she felt from the "real" Village radicals for living on the Upper East Side—and also becuase they describe a New York that doesn't really exist any more, now that the Village is more expensive than the UES, among other changes.

Anyway, though, here you have it, as long as you're not using Opera, in which case the markers won't show. Enjoy:

View Larger Map

Whee! I've been tagged in a tell-us-about-yourself meme by Anne Helmond. Not exactly an arduous task for a shameless egomaniac like myself.

Here are "the rules" of the meme:

• We have to post these rules before we give you the facts.
• Players start with eight random facts/habits about themselves.
• People who are tagged need to write their own blog about their eight things and post these rules. At the end of your blog post, you need to choose eight people to get tagged and list their names.
• Don’t forget to leave them a comment telling them they’re tagged, and to read your blog.

8 things about me:

1. According to this version of the Jungian personality test, I'm an INFP. The INFP personality generally fits me, but have some qualms about the "introvert" label. When I'm around other people (especially at work), I tend to play the part of an extrovert—and I usually enjoy it, but I get burnt out quickly and need time to myself to recover. And I definitely don't seek out social situations. I think I'm actually an antisocial extrovert.

Crif Dogs "eat me" sign, as photographed by flickr user urbanblitz

2. Although I grew up in Florida, I'm proud to report that my family has roots here in NYC. My paternal grandfather was born in Manhattan, not in a hospital, but in the back of a candy store that his parents ran at 115 St. Marks Place, now the site of a clothing boutique.

You might get a better idea of where it's located if I mention that it's right next door to Crif Dogs, of the famous "eat me" sign. When I took my dad here a few years back, he caught sight of the sign as we approached. "Of course," he shouted, assuming this must be the indicator of his father's birth site, "It says 'eat me'! That's perfect."

3. Googling "lauren sperber" turns up people who are not me. I actually have the gall to find this somewhat inappropriate.

4. My favorite poem is "Poems of Our Climate" by Wallace Stevens. It goes like this:

I.
Clear water in a brilliant bowl,
Pink and white carnations. The light
In the room more like a snowy air,
Reflecting snow. A newly-fallen snow
At the end of winter when afternoons return.
Pink and white carnations—one desires
So much more than that. The day itself
Is simplified: a bowl of white,
Cold, a cold porcelain, low and round,
With nothing more than the carnations there.

II.
Say even that this complete simplicity
Stripped one of all one's torments, concealed
The evilly compounded, vital I
And made it fresh in a world of white,
A world of clear water, brilliant-edged
Still one would want more, one would need more
More than a world of white and snowy scents.

III.
There would still remain the never-resting mind,
So that one would want to escape, come back
To what had been so long composed.
The imperfect is our paradise.
Note that, in this bitterness, delight,
Since the imperfect is so hot in us,
Lies in flawed words and stubborn sounds.

5. The fact that my flickr badge, badger badge, and embedded video code keep my xhtml from validating makes me feel sad inside.

6. I used to dye my hair incessantly. First it was My So-Called Life purplish-red, then auburn, then strawberry blonde, then strawberry blonde with highlights, then blonde, then blonder, then make-your-mother-cry magenta (which obliged me to straighten my very curly hair daily), then bleach blonde, then strawberry blonde, then auburn for quite awhile.

I finally dyed it a few shades too dark of a brown about a year and a half ago and haven't touched it since. It's mellowed to a medium brownish that I like to fancy has some reddish highlights. This is probably not the case.

7. Re Anne's #7: I have been struggling to remember the last time I went more than 24 hours—or even a full 24 hours!—without the internet, and, although it terrifies me to type this, I literally can't remember when that was. I think I need a vacation.

8. I have a million witty t-shirt ideas, but no clue what to do with them. CaféPress and Spreadshirt have crazy markups cost more than I, personally, would like to pay for a t-shirt (thanks, Jana!), but I don't exactly have time to make them myself. Solutions, anyone?

tagged: Sean, wordart, Lorna, Britta, that nondescript cat, Patrick, kbam, Grey

On Madison Avenue, no less. Further research has revealed this unexpected edifice to be the façade of an old armory built in 1894, so it never saw any actual battles, but nonetheless you can imagine my surprise when I came across it during my futile Friday afternoon quest to locate a coffee shop that was not a Starbucks but that nonetheless encouraged use of their electrical outlets. [As a side note, those wishing to hop into the coffee shop game might want to consider this as a selling point, since I ended up overpaying for coffee that I knew I would not enjoy just to get some laptop juice out of the deal.]

According to The City Review, the Squadron A Armory, which is between 94th and 95th Streets, was built to resemble "a fourteenth-century French fortress, complete with square towers, round turrets and a crenellated parapet," but it never really served a…fortifying…purpose. The New York Times explains that Squadron A (a division of the National Guard) only ever fought "in Puerto Rico, in France and along the Mexican border."

The actual armory building mostly served (per NYT) as an "immense riding ring with elaborate social quarters, which it used for polo, dances, badminton and horse shows." In 1969, most of the armory was torn down to build the Hunter College Elementary and High School, but the Madison Avenue façade was declared a historical landmark right before it was destroyed, and now protects the playground behind it (The City Review has an interesting shot of the playground, towards the middle of their article on the armory).

photo of meze from IstanbulGuide.net

I'm a certified grazer—I like to try a little bit of everything (well, everything vegetarian) and a lot of desert, but I'm usually hard-pressed to choke down an entire entrée. Until this weekend I thought that my only options for satisfying my preferred mode of eating were tapas, dim sum, Ethiopian food, or pissing off wait staff by refusing to order a main course at other types of restaurants.

But I've got a new addition to my mental list of snacker-friendly cuisine: meze!

According to wikipedia, small dishes called meze are common in a variety of Mediterranean countries, including Bulgaria, Turkey, Greece, and Serbia, but I found out about it during my pre-dining research on a Turkish spot on the UES called Beyoglu. According to its 2002 NYT review, Beyoglu's original owner insisted that it was a meyhane rather than a "Turkish restaurant." Apparently in Turkey meyhane are bars that serve meze dishes along with alcohol. Beyoglu is now under different ownership according to a more recent New York mag review, but its menu is still (delightfully!) appetizer-heavy.

photo of raki from wikipedia

Meyhane traditionally served wine, according to wikipedia, but now more commonly feature raki, the Turkish "national drink," which I got to try for the first time at Beyoglu. Raki is an anise-flavored liquor (you recognize anise, which tastes like really strong licorice, from your Oscar Wilde-inspired research on absinthe) that arrives as a clear liquid with a dish full of ice on the side. When you drop in the ice cubes (which seems to be the right thing to do under the circumstances), they melt almost immediately and your raki turns milky white.

Raki has an extremely strong flavor, but it was perfect for sipping with meze. Although Beyoglu got panned a bit by NYC nosh (and I agree that the octopus was chewy), the hummus and puffy bread were amazingly good and any place that encourages ordering multiple appetizers and no main courses gets an almost immediate gold star (and a spot in the sidebar) in my book.

I can't believe that none of the architects surveyed for Gridskipper's list of the ugliest buildings in New York [via kottke] included this hideous pair from W 42nd Street.

I mean, really, these are the ugliest buildings ever. And I know I'm probably almost alone here, but I sorta like the Hearst Building. Once the base gets its NYC grime back it'll look totally legit.