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Introducing Throwback Thursday, Bloomingdale Edition

1/29/2015

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1910: Riverside Drive at West 96th Street

If you have even had a brush with social media these days, you have either delved deep into your trove of photo negatives or you've been treated to friends' blasts from the past.  I have seen all sorts of photos resurface that ought perhaps to remain buried in their non-digital past.  But thanks to the relentless burgeoning of Facebook & Company and with a nod to the rapacious hunger we all seem to have for our younger selves, old photos are flying high these days.

That got me to thinking about crowd sourcing from neighbors pictures our area from the past.  We need not go all the way back to renderings of Lenape in Manahatta (but it would be nice if we could find some!).  Throwbacks should be any "period" pictures we can find. For starters, I'd love to have some Broadway storefronts from the 1970s, for example...or just a shot of those old gas guzzlers tooting down West End.

So, each Thursday that I have something new, I will post a Throwback Bloomingdale image.  For the full series, click here.

Today's image goes back a century.  It is thanks to Camille Colon. And I thought it was a perfect launch image since it shows our neighborhood from its southern edge. For the purposes of these posts, Bloomingdale will be loosely defined as "I'll know it when I see it" but will generally stretch from about 96th to 110th on the West Side. Exceptions made for excellent images.

So, were you here in the 1950s?  1960s?  Earlier?  Do you have great pictures of your street hailing from a bygone decade.  Shots of the park, Broadway storefronts, neighbors in bell bottoms?  Let's get them up and online for everyone to enjoy.

Nostalgia is in.  Long live nostalgia.


By Caitlin Hawke

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Photo courtesy of Camille Colon
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CityRacks, Get Your CityRacks Here...

1/16/2015

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PictureNeighbors John and Carol and our very own CityRack
A couple of friends from Germany arrived at a dinner in our neighborhood helmets in hand having left their bikes on the street. Horrifed, I queried: where?!  Then they described that piece of "city furniture" we all walk by and pay no mind.  It's a CityRack, and it is an ideal spot to leave your velocipede if you just can't bring it with you.

What do our local restauranteur, Henry Rinehart, and cycling advocate Peter Frishauf know how to do better than most? How to move bureaucracies. I do believe that they are at the root of the installation of those utilitarian but sleekly designed bike racks that are popping up in our neck of the woods.

Henry's Restaurant was the first place I noticed these a couple of summers back.  And now that I mention it, you, too, will see that the brunch crowd at Broadway and West 105th Street are enthusiastic adopters. There are cycles aplenty lashed to that cold steel.

Peter is a more recent victor alongside his neighbors KC Rice and Asya and Ted Berger. First they let their fingers do the walking, I am guessing from Peter's Twitter feed. They simply made an official location suggestion. Lo and behold -- as Bob Dylan and the Band sing over and over in the new, fabulous release of the Basement Tapes -- we now have a two-bike rack right on this block of West 103rd Street between Broadway and West End Avenue.

Peter reports that to get a CityRack, DOT often checks to make sure the building wants one.  A co-op board or other owners and neighbors can make the request for rack placement.

And the best part?  No alternate side of the street rigamarole!  Plus you can dress it up for Halloween.

To request one on the street where you live, either enter your suggested location at the city's website or download a request form here.

As the fabulous and much missed Freddy Mercury sang:

Bicycle, bicycle, BICYCLE!
I want to ride my bicycle.
I want to ride my bike.
I want to ride [and park] it where I like!



By Caitlin Hawke

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An Idea Whose Time Has Come: Hyper Local Networking

1/1/2015

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Running a Business from Home? Why Not Do Some Networking in the Neighborhood.

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There's a lot going on in our neighborhood these days in terms of knitting together this community. A fan of this block association as well as our neighboring block association to the north, I am keenly aware of my wish to remain in the city but also to live slightly less anonymously, to know more neighbors and to enjoy a small-town feeling from time to time.

The wild success of Bloomingdale Aging in Place is probably due to its great "bones."  It took root quickly in this fertile ground because the block associations have made it their business to connect neighbors over the years.  So the new tri-organizational initiative, TriBloomingdale, is an informal attempt to bring members of these three community organizations together in mutually beneficial ways -- something, by the way, that's been going on for some time already. But now it has a couple of concrete offerings, such as the Sunday morning TriBloomingdale Brisk Walking Group, led by Teresa Elwert. The second is a new networking group for neighbors who work from home: Bloomingdale Networking in the Neighborhood (NITN).

Our neighborhood is remarkably vibrant by day owing to the large number of folks who work from home or who have flexible schedules.  Entrepreneurs, sole proprietors, artists, consultants, you name it.  And it seems that somehow connecting this corps of neighbors to share resources and best practices is a brilliant idea: why go to the trouble of schlepping to midtown to network and glean tips when you can do it one or two blocks from home?  The potential for such a group is tremendous.

So we're launching NITN to see where this idea might lead. Neighbor Harriet Hoffman, an entrepreneur with two businesses that she runs from home, and a skilled, experienced networker, will facilitate the first event. She will schedule the first networking event in the second half of January.  If you would like to receive details about that event, please email: BloomingdaleNITN@gmail.com. Make sure to include your first and last names, type of business, email and phone number.  Also, if you think you could assist with organizing this sort of NITN meet up on a regular basis, please include that, too.

You just never know where your next best opportunity lies in wait.  So sign up, and come out to tell your tales of sole proprietorship, of building your website, hiring your graphic designer or lawyer, navigating your tax forms, and developing your business.  You don't even need your Metrocard for this one.  Because NITN means networking right here.  Hyper locally.

Facebook and Linked In: eat your hearts out!


By Caitlin Hawke
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