Monday, August 27, 2007

* Grey Lady *

The eagle has landed, as *SN* is given a stiff nod from the grey lady herself, the New York Times, on Sunday. We even accept that the veritable tenement building is referred to as our 'West Village brownstone' . . . some people say God is in the details; we know that God is in the clerical errors.

The Remix

Blog Is the New Black

By SUSAN CERNEK

Published: August 26, 2007

Are designers the new journalists? God help us, but it may be true, judging from the number of young talents who have taken to the keyboard. Sue Stemp, known for her thigh-baring cocktail frocks, has a Web site to chronicle the adventures of herself and her daughter, Kitty Babe. Hanuk Kim keeps a visual diary, which he e-mails to a select group; Chris Benz regularly reports on the goings-on in his West Village brownstone; and Hollywould’s Holly Dunlap says her site attracts an average of 80,000 hits a day. Hedi Slimane posts his austere photography on MySpace (above), which is also where the London avant-garde darling Gareth Pugh announces casting calls and requests for assistants. Even Donna Karan has given blogging a try, as a guest on HuffingtonPost.com. Her reason for doing so is clearly resonating with her colleagues: “I’ve simply gotten to a point in my life,” she wrote, “where I want to ‘address’ people, not simply ‘dress’ them.”

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* STOOP *

In architecture, an urban stoop is a small staircase leading to the entrance of an urban apartment building or other building.

Etymology

Originally brought to the Hudson Valley of New York by settlers from the Netherlands, this word is among the few items of Dutch vocabulary that have survived there from colonial times until the present. Stoop, "a small porch," comes from Dutch stoep; the word is now in general use in the Northeast and is probably spreading.

History

Traditionally, the function of stoops in New York City was to provide formal access from the street to the principal or parlor floor, where the private living quarters in a single-family residence began. Both the parlor and dining room were on this floor. The kitchen and other service offices were in the basement, which had its own entrance on the street, usually a few steps below grade, and an interior staircase connected the basement with the parlor floor.

This arrangement was well suited to the single-family row houses that dominated New York until the end of the 19th century. Family and guests, by using the stoop, avoided tromping through the service section of the house. Deliveries of foodstuff and other supplies were made at the basement entrance, ensuring the privacy and order of the living quarters above.

In his book New York City: An Outsider's Inside View, author Mario Maffi suggests that originally New York stoops may have been a simple carry-over from the Dutch practice of constructing elevated buildings.

Stoop ... describe(s) the high entrance steps that almost give the old New York houses the appearance of small castles. In the ghetto neighborhoods especially, stoops served many different functions: projected outward into the great theater of the street, these elevated platforms were ideal for observation, courting, a chat, or gossip... The first builders in the city brought with them their customs of erecting buildings that were elevated (as protection against the havoc wreaked by North Sea floods) and flush to the street (to make up for the lack of space in a canal-dominated city like Amsterdam). The early village of New York thus assumed an identity that, three centuries later, it still retains --- and charmingly so along certain streets and in certain neighborhoods.

Urban Stoops as a Social Device

Traditionally, in North American cities, the stoop served an important function as a spot for brief, incidental social encounters. Homemakers, children, and other household members would sit on the stoop outside their home to relax, and greet neighbors passing by. Similarly, while on an errand, one would stop and converse with neighbors sitting on their stoops. Within an urban community, stoop conversations helped to disseminate gossip and reaffirm casual relationships. Due to forces like gentrification, this practice is diminished in many cities today.

Similarly, it was the place that children would congregate to play stoop ball.

In her pivotal book The Death and Life of Great American Cities, Jane Jacobs includes the stoop as part of her model of the self-regulating urban street. By providing a constant human presence watching the street, institutions such as stoops prevent street crime, without intervention from authority figures. In addition, they motivate better street maintenance and beautification, by giving it social as well as utilitarian value.

Popular Culture

A famous shot in the Francis Ford Coppola film The Godfather Part II, shows Vito Corleone sitting on the stoop of his Little Italy apartment with his family.

In the Spike Lee film Do The Right Thing, many characters spend the hot summer afternoon on their stoops.

In July 2005, a tenant shouted these words from the window of his Lower East Side apartment at a woman below whose dog was defecating on the stoop of his building: "Don't let your yuppie puppy poop on my stoop!" Overheard by passersby, this angry admonition entered the public consciousness as an often repeated catch phrase.

In the cartoon Hey Arnold, a character named Stoop Kid was afraid to leave his stoop.

Stoopids, a derogatory term describing teenagers who loiter around stoops has enjoyed periods of popularity in the Northeast.

"Johnny Ryall is the bum on my stoop I gave him fifty cents to buy some soup" is the first line of the song "Johnny Ryall" on the Beastie Boys album Paul's Boutique.

In the series Sex and the City, Carrie Bradshaw regularly had scenes on the stoop of her brownstone.