Academy of Life Skills

This place is tucked away in a small building in Kips Bay. Again, let us see what is on the internet--
dang, not anything useful. Maybe you would do better than I have!

Duran Duran

Duran Duran.....very retro, huh? Wonder who is in it now...let me try internet:(Wikipedia)--

Duran Duran are an English band, formed in Birmingham in 1978. They were one of the most successful bands of the 1980s and a leading band in the MTV-driven "Second British Invasion" of the United States. Since the 1980s, they have placed 14 singles in the Top 10 of the UK Singles Chart and 21 in the Billboard Hot 100 and have, according to the Sunday Mercury, sold more than 100 million records.^[3][4] While they were generally considered part of the New Romantic scene along with bands such as Spandau Ballet when they first emerged, they later shed this image. The band worked with fashion designers to build a sharp and elegant image that earned them the nickname "the prettiest boys in rock."^[5] The band's controversial videos, which included partial nudity and suggestions of sexuality, became popular in the early 1980s on the then-new music video channel MTV. Duran Duran were among the first bands to have their videos shot by professional directors with 35 mm film movie cameras, which gave their videos a much more polished look. In 1984, the band were early innovators with video technology in their live stadium shows.
The group was formed by Nick Rhodes, John Taylor and Stephen Duffy, with the later addition of Roger Taylor and, after numerous personnel changes, Andy Taylor and Simon Le Bon. (None of the Taylors are related, and Roger Taylor is not to be confused with the Queen drummer of the same name.) The group has never disbanded, but the lineup has changed to include guitarist Warren Cuccurullo from 1989 to 2001 and drummer Sterling Campbell from 1989 to 1991. The reunion of the original five members in the early 2000s created a stir among the band's fans and music media.^[6][7] Andy Taylor left the band in mid-2006, and London guitarist Dom Brown has since been working with the band as a session player and touring member.

Affinia Hotel

This big hotel on 7th Avenue is now called the Affinia....wonder what its original name was. Let us see if googling gives any answers...No real luck, just advertising.

There are plenty of hotels in Midtown, but for Madison Square Garden events, this one can’t be beat. The prime location puts you right across the street from the Garden, where you can catch a Knicks or Rangers game, a championship boxing showdown, or a big-name concert. Penn Station, adjacent to the Garden, is a major subway stop and one of the world's busiest rail hubs, placing the city and the entire Eastern Seaboard at your feet. Stroll 3 blocks north to Macy's Herald Square, the world's largest department store, and visit the cellar-level market for gourmet foods, freshly baked goods, and designer chocolates. The incredible views at the top of the Empire State Building are just a 10-minute walk from the Affinia Manhattan, and the bright lights of Broadway beckon about a half-mile away.
The Affinia Manhattan's city-savvy Metro Concierge is happy to assist with theater and game tickets, restaurant reservations, shopping-and-sightseeing info, and tips on navigating the city's subway system (it's easier than you may think!). Just off the lobby, the Niles New York City Restaurant and Bar offers a sleek setting for contemporary cuisine. The bar, open till the wee hours, is especially lively on game nights at the Garden.

Lewis Carroll on Library Walk

Another great plaque in the Library Walk near the main NYC Public Library. When the snow goes away, I will be up there taking pix of more of them...

Calling 311

The 311 number was set up to handle all sorts of inquiries and reports from the public that are not real emergencies....before, people had been calling 911 for everything.

Jay Leno does funny bits on what people call 911 for in different parts of the country. Some of the problems are minor or ludicrous...

One funny video is at

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hVvVUh571bc

Astro's Creepy Crawlies

For some reason I don't understand ( Halloween coming?) Astro Gems and Minerals has this in their store window...

Homelessness in New York 2011

Doesn't look at first glance like there are any more or any less homeless people on the streets on NYC.

Let me check the internet:from Coalition for the Homeless--

State of the Homeless 2011:
"One in Three":
A Plan to Reduce Record New York City Homelessness and Reverse the Failed Policies of the
Bloomberg Administration

Download the full report here.
Send your letter to Mayor Bloomberg asking him to use what we know works - permanent, affordable housing - to fight the homelessness crisis he created here.

State of the Homeless 2011

April 11, 2011
By Patrick Markee, Senior Policy Analyst, and Giselle Routhier, Policy Analyst
In the midst of high unemployment, the steady loss of affordable housing, and years of failed policies under the Bloomberg administration, an all-time high number of New Yorkers turned to homeless shelters last year and the New York City homeless shelter population is now larger than at any time since the City began keeping records.
• An all-time record 113,553 homeless people - including 42,888 children - slept in municipal shelters in FY 2010, an 8 percent increase from the previous year and a 37 percent increase from FY 2002 when Mayor Bloomberg took office.
• This includes a record 28,977 families, a 10 percent increase from the previous year and a remarkable 81 percent more than when Mayor Bloomberg took office.
• And by the end of February of this year, the nightly census of homeless adults and children in the municipal shelter system - 39,542 people - reached the highest point ever recorded.

J.A. Lobbia Bike Lane

Used to seeing street corners decorated with signs for famous people or people being honored for some significant reason....but a bike lane? And who is J.A. Lobbia"--wait, internet says she was an investigative reporter for the Village Voice who died some years back....

Peep World

"Adult Entertainment" nestled away near Herald Square.

Let me see if I can find something about remaining peep shows in Manhattan on the internet--well, here's part of a book review, the latest posting I could find

The Only Living Peep-Show Girl in New York 

by Ned Vizzini

The Last of the Live Nude Girls
By Sheila McClear
(Soft Skull)

The best New York stories admit that New York is sometimes boring. Here you are, in the Greatest City in the World, where every night should be the greatest night in the world, and your life is inundated with the absorbing minutiae that powered Spalding Gray. Where is the danger? The sex? The drugs? Although there's plenty of all three in The Last of the Live Nude Girls, Sheila McClear's artful memoir of late-aughts Manhattan, the moments that shine brightest are the quietest. "The sink in our bathroom was held up with a two-by-four,"McClear writes. Welcome to New York.
That sink may still be there in Gotham City Video, the "profoundly unsexy "Times Square porn emporium where McClear started working as a live nude girl in 2006. She makes it sound logical: after moving because auto-bust Detroit "would continue its death rattle whether I stayed or went," she can't make enough money in legit jobs to pay rent. She turns to stripping, but, as a self-confessed wallflower and late bloomer, finds it too involved. (Of a lap dance, she writes: "[S]hockingly intimate… unremarkable and only vaguely uncomfortable, just like the first time I'd had sex.") The peep booths of Gotham suit her better. There, dancing behind glass, she is exposed but protected, "naked and alone, untouchable, on display like a zoo animal." And she's paying bills.

Fake or Real Fur?

Real or fake fur? Does it make a difference?

Internet check on "fake fur":

Fake fur, also called fun fur or faux fur, is any material made of synthetic fibers designed to resemble fur, normally as part of a piece of clothing. It was first introduced in 1929^[1] and has been commercially available since the 1950s, but its increasing popularity has been credited to its promotion by animal rights and animal welfare organizations which claim that it is an animal-friendly alternative to traditional fur clothing.^[2]

 Uses

Faux fur is not only used in clothing, but also for stuffed animals, fashion accessory and home decorations like pillows. It is also sometimes used for craft projects because it can be sewn on a sewing machine. Real fur is generally thicker and requires a special machine, hand sewing or an awl to sew it.^[3] Lately, fake fur has been increasingly used in the main stream teen fashion, for example the stores Abercrombie & Fitch^[4] and American Eagle^[5] use it for trapper hats and jackets. In the Soviet, and now Russian Army, fish fur is used as a slang term for the fake fur used on winter clothing and the ubiquitous ushanka hats. Similarly, fashion design labels such as Ralph Lauren and Chanel have promoted the use of fake fur in their collections.^[6]



Advantages and disadvantages

 Advantages

• Fake fur is a fabric, therefore it is relatively easy to sew with.
• Fake fur doesn't require killing animals in factory farms like real fur.
• Fake fur does not require cold storage to prevent deterioration and is impervious to moths.^[7]
• A 1979 study commissioned by the Fund for Animals argued that the energy consumption for the production of one coat made out of fake fur was 120 MBtu, compared to 433 MBtu for trapped animals and 7,965 MBtu for animals raised in fur farms.^[8] This study has been criticized as being biased and outdated.^[9]

Disadvantages

• Fake fur is not as warm or insulating as real fur.^[10]
• Fake fur is not a natural material, therefore the wearer's skin cannot breathe like it would in real fur or leather.^[10]
• Fake fur is made from several materials including blends of acrylic and modacrylic polymers derived from coal, air, water, petroleum and limestone. Unlike natural real fur, these materials can take a long time to break down (anywhere from 500 to 1,000 years).^[9]
• Fake furs are not able to keep snow from melting and re-freezing on the fiber filaments; this is very important, especially in hiking, mountain climbing, skiing and other outdoor activities which are done in extreme conditions.^[2]

 

Tourist information

People outside Empire State Building look at posted information that tells them where they are and what is in the neighborhood.

It seems to me the subway used to have maps at most of its stations that had arrows pointing to the station where you were and the letters " YOU ARE HERE.".... a lot of them seem to have disappeared or maybe it is just that I don't notice them anymore.

They used to give out free subway maps at the token booths. Tokens are a thing of the past, we now use this plastic Metrocard. Free maps are a thing of the past I guess too.

People visiting New York should go on the internet and try to get a map of the subway system. You can ask people for information on the trains but you can never be sure they really know what they are talking about.

Tourists or locals?

There used to be a time when people thought there was such a thing as a "typical (white) New Yorker--that is, someone who looked pale and Jewish or Italian. This just is not true anymore, especially in neighborhoods like Kips Bay...

This picture was taken in Midtown but the people were headed towards Kips Bay, where there are tons of young families who look just like this one. I don't know if the term "yuppie" means anything really anymore, but Manhattan has an awful lot of well to do young white families who are usually doing pretty well. They have to be to afford the rents.

Uniqlo continued

As noted, this Uniqlo company advertising is all over the place...you can check them out on the internet. You can be sure if they come anywhere near you, you'll hear about it.

One Park Avenue

This place is emblazoned in my memory because one of my clients, Loews Representation International, used to have its headquarters here. Its placement is part of NYC history...

About Park Avenue from the internet:

Park Avenue (formerly Fourth Avenue) is a wide boulevard that carries north and southbound traffic in New York City borough of Manhattan. Through most of its length, it runs parallel to Madison Avenue to the west and Lexington Avenue to the east.
The flowers and greenery in the median of Park Avenue are maintained by the Fund for Park Avenue. Begonias are a flower of choice for the Funds gardeners because there is no automatic watering system and they can cope with hot sun.^[1]
Each December, Christmas trees are placed in the median in a tradition that started in 1945 as a memorial to soldiers killed in action.^[2] The first time they were erected colored lights were used and accidents occurred because of confusion with traffic signals in front of them. Today only yellow and white lights are used.^{[citation needed]}

Contents  [show]

[edit] Route

Park Avenue in the Upper East Side

Park Avenue Viaduct, 2008

The section with the Henry P. Davison House, Percy Rivington Pyne House, Oliver D. Filley House and William Sloane House is one of the original house ensembles left on Park Avenue.

The road that becomes Park Avenue originates as the Bowery. From Cooper Square at 8th Street to Union Square at 14th Street, it is known as Fourth Avenue. Above 14th Street, it turns slightly east of north to align with other avenues of the Commissioners' Plan of 1811. From 14th Street to 17th Street, it forms the eastern boundary of Union Square and is known as Union Square East; its southbound lanes merge with Broadway for this distance. From 17th Street to 32nd Street, it is known as Park Avenue South, and above 32nd Street, for the remainder of its distance, it is known as Park Avenue.
Between 33rd Street and 40th Street, the left-hand northbound lane descends into the Murray Hill Tunnel. Immediately across from 40th Street, the center lanes of Park Avenue rise onto an elevated structure that goes around Grand Central Terminal and the MetLife Building (formerly the PanAm Building), carrying each direction of traffic on opposite sides of the buildings. The bridge, one of two structures in Manhattan known as the Park Avenue Viaduct, returns to ground level at 46th Street after going through the Helmsley Building (also referred to as the New York Central Building or 230 Park Avenue). The IRT Lexington Avenue Line runs under this portion of the street. Once the line reaches Grand Central, it shifts east to Lexington Avenue.
As Park Avenue enters Midtown north of Grand Central Terminal, it is distinguished by many glass-box skyscrapers that serve as headquarters for corporations such as JPMorgan Chase at 270 Park Avenue and 277 Park Avenue, UBS at 299 Park Avenue, Citigroup, Colgate-Palmolive, and MetLife at the MetLife Building.
From Grand Central to 97th Street, Metro-North Railroad tracks run in a tunnel underneath Park Avenue (the Park Avenue Tunnel). There are no cross-walk signals or overhead traffic lights along this stretch of Park Avenue due to the presence of the tunnels underneath, and the inability to anchor the heavy devices into solid ground.^{[citation needed]} At 97th, the tracks come above ground, rising onto the other Manhattan structure known as the Park Avenue Viaduct. The first street to pass under the viaduct is 102nd Street; from there to the Harlem River the railroad viaduct runs down the middle of Park Avenue.
In the 1920s the portion of Park Avenue from Grand Central Terminal to 96th Street saw extensive apartment building construction. This long stretch of the avenue contains some of the most expensive real estate in the world. Real estate at 740 Park Avenue, for example, sells for several thousand dollars per square foot.^[3] Current and former residents in this stretch of the thoroughfare include Blackstone Group co-founder Stephen Schwarzman, former Morgan Stanley executive Zoe Cruz, private equity investor Ronald O. Perelman, John D. Rockefeller Jr. and others. James Cash Penney lived at 888, and Leonard Bernstein at 898.
Park Avenue ends north of 132nd Street, with connections to the Harlem River Drive. The name is continued on the other side of the river in the Bronx by the street just east of the railroad.

Rose Hill House

Rose Hill House is one of those designated places that stands out...in this case because it is white clapboard in an area of all stone and brick buildings.

About its history --this will continue to remain obscure because I couldn't google up anything about it!

There are a lot of Rose Hill places designated as historic places and landmarks in the U.S., but nothing listed that I could find about this place in Midtown Manhattan...

Well, that means we can imagine anything about its past. My presumption is it is just a historic house that once had a farm to go with it or something.

Village Vanguard- Lorraine Gordon

Uniqlo has gone wild with all sorts of advertising posters...this one salutes the founder of the Village Vanguard, Lorraine Gordon.

Wikipedia says about Village Vanguard:

The Village Vanguard is a jazz club located at 178 7th Avenue South in Greenwich Village, New York City.^[1] The club was opened on February 22, 1935, by Max Gordon. At first, it also featured other forms of music such as folk music and beat poetry, but it switched to an all-jazz format in 1957.

 History

Over 100 jazz albums have been recorded at the venue since the (originally single) album under Sonny Rollins' name in 1957. The two most famous engagements in the club's history are probably those of Bill Evans and John Coltrane, both of which took place in 1961. Joe Zawinul made his recording debut at the venue on The Cannonball Adderley Sextet in New York (1961).^[2] Wynton Marsalis regularly recorded at the club in the early 1990s; the results were issued in a multi-disc set. Other musicians to release notable albums recorded live at the Village Vanguard include John Coltrane, Dexter Gordon, Art Pepper, Chris Connor, Keith Jarrett, Bill Frisell, Woody Shaw, Joe Henderson, Gerry Mulligan, Michel Petrucciani, Kurt Rosenwinkel, Barbra Streisand and Brad Mehldau.
Since Max Gordon died in 1989, the club has been run by Lorraine Gordon, his widow.^[3]

 

Milton Glaser Studio

Milton Glaser has for a very long time been one of the biggest names in the advertising design world. His studio now seems to have moved to this building in Kips Bay which I have shown before without knowing who was there exactly. To quote Wikipedia:

Biography

Glaser was born into a Hungarian Jewish family in New York.^[3] Glaser was educated at Manhattan's High School of Music & Art (now Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts), graduated from the Cooper Union in 1951 and later, via a Fulbright Scholarship, the Academy of Fine Arts in Bologna under Giorgio Morandi He was greatly inspired by his sister's partner, who studied typography at a great depth at the current time.^[4]
In 1954 Glaser was a founder, and president, of Push Pin Studios formed with several of his Cooper Union classmates.^[5] Glaser's work is characterized by directness, simplicity and originality. He uses any medium or style to solve the problem at hand. His style ranges wildly from primitive to avant garde in his countless book jackets, album covers, advertisements and direct mail pieces and magazine illustrations.^[6] He started his own studio, Milton Glaser, Inc, in 1974. This led to his involvement with an increasingly wide diversity of projects, ranging from the design of New York Magazine, of which he was a co-founder, to a 600-foot mural for the Federal Office Building in Indianapolis.^[7]

I Love New York campaign by Milton Glaser.

Throughout his career he has had a major impact on contemporary illustration and design. His work has won numerous awards from Art Directors Clubs, the American Institute of Graphic Arts, the Society of Illustrators and the Type Directors Club. In 1979 he was made Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and his work is included in the Museum of Modern Art, the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Israel Museum and the Musee de l'affiche in Paris. Glaser has taught at both the School of Visual Arts and at Cooper Union in New York City. He is a member of Alliance Graphique International (AGI).^[4]
Glaser is the subject of the 2009 documentary film To Inform & Delight: The World of Milton Glaser.^[8]

Milton Glaser Inc.

Milton Glaser, Inc. was established in 1974 in Manhattan, and is still producing work in a wide range of design disciplines, including: corporate identities (logos, stationery, brochures, signage, website design, and annual reports), environmental and interior design (exhibitions, interiors and exteriors of restaurants, shopping malls, supermarkets, hotels, and other retail environments), packaging (food and beverage packaging), and product design. Some of the firm's current clients include The Brooklyn Brewery, Jet Blue, Target, Coach, Trump, Eleven Madison Park, Alessi, Juilliard, The Rubin Museum of Art, Theatre For A New Audience, The School of Visual Arts, Bread Alone, and Philip Roth, amongst others.
In addition to Milton, this small Manhattan studio employs three designers (Nicholas Pattison, Sue Walsh, and Molly Kromhout) and a studio manager (Scarlett Rigby).

 Awards

In 2004, Glaser won a Lifetime Achievement award from the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum.^[9] In 2009, he was awarded the National Medal of Arts by President Barack Obama.^[10]

 Shows

In addition to commercial enterprises, Milton Glaser’s work has been exhibited world-wide. His most notable single-man shows include:
• Museum of Modern Art, New York (1975)
• Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris (1977)
• Lincoln Center Gallery, New York (1981)
• Houghton Gallery, The Cooper Union, New York (1984)
• Vicenza Museum (1989)
• Galleria Communale d’Arte Moderna, Bologna (1989)
In 1991, he was commissioned by the Italian government to create an exhibition in tribute to the Italian artist, Piero della Francesca, for part of the celebrations on the occasion of his 500th anniversary. This show opened in Arezzo, Italy and one year later (under the sponsorship of Campari) moved to Milan. In 1994, The Cooper Union, Mr. Glaser’s alma mater, hosted the show in New York.
In 1992, an exhibition of drawings titled “The Imaginary Life of Claude Monet” opened at Nuages Gallery, Italy, and in 1995, an adapted version of this show was exhibited in Japan’s Creation Gallery. 1995 also brought a Glaser exhibition to the Art Institute of Boston.
In 1997, the Suntory Museum, Japan, mounted a major retrospective of The Pushpin Studios, featuring past and present works by Milton Glaser and other Pushpin artists. In October 1999, Mr. Glaser’s illustrations of Dante’s Purgatorio were exhibited at the Nuages Gallery in Milan, Italy, and Nuages organized a large exhibition of Mr. Glaser’s work during the 2000 Carnevale in Venice.
Mr. Glaser's work is now represented in the permanent collections at the Museum of Modern Art, New York; The Israel Museum, Jerusalem; the National Archive, Smithsonian Institute, Washington, D.C.; and the Cooper Hewitt National Design Museum, New York.

Hoboken Farms

Hoboken is one of those New Jersey towns just across the river from New York....hardly the place for a farm! Remember reading the line once that Hoboken " sounded like the punch line for a joke" or something. ( New Jersey also has a Ho-ho-kus, or used to, which is funnier sounding).

Let me see if there is anything on the internet about Hoboken--yes, and to my surprise Hoboken is now way upscale:

Hoboken is a city in Hudson County, New Jersey, United States. As of the 2010 United States Census, the city's population was 50,005. The city is part of the New York metropolitan area and contains Hoboken Terminal, a major transportation hub for the region. Hoboken is also the location of the first recorded baseball game in the United States, and of the Stevens Institute of Technology, one of the oldest technological universities in the United States.
Hoboken was first settled as part of the Pavonia, New Netherland colony in the 17th century. During the early 19th century the city was developed by Colonel John Stevens, first as a resort and later as a residential neighborhood. It became a township in 1849 and was incorporated as a city in 1855. Its waterfront was an integral part of the Port of New York and New Jersey and home to major industries for most of the 20th century. The character of the city has changed from a blue collar town to one of upscale shops and condominiums. Hoboken is part of the New Jersey Gold Coast.

Metro free paper

Free papers come and go in NYC but at the moment the most popular is this Metro one...see people reading it everywhere. I have checked it out...it is very readable and concise.

Blahnik shoes

Someone just left this newspaper page lying on the sidewalk... Understand women pay a lot more for their shoes than men do ( and have a lot more of them).

What is there about Blahnik on the internet? His name is Manolo Blahnik Rodriguez...and--

Biography

Display of a Manolo Blahnik shoe

Born to a Czech father and a Spanish mother and born and raised in the Canary Islands (Spain), Blahnik graduated from the University of Geneva in 1965 and studied art in Paris. He moved to London in 1968 to work at fashion boutique "Zapata" and write for Vogue Italia. After showing his portfolio of fashions and set designs to Diana Vreeland, she told him that he should design only footwear. In 1972, Ossie Clark invited him to create shoes for his runway show. With a loan of £2,000, Blahnik bought Zapata from its owner and opened his own boutique.^[2]
In the 1970s, when chunky platform shoes and boots were the mainstream footwear styling of the day, Manolo Blahnik turned back his attention to the stiletto heel, which has remained the brand's mainstay to this day. Manolo Blahnik shoes have rapidly become a symbol of pure classical style for the 21st century.
Manolo Blahnik's flagship store remains to date in Old Church Street, Chelsea London.
Blahnik's boutiques are located in London, New York, Las Vegas, Dublin, Athens, Madrid, Istanbul, Dubai, Kuwait, Hong Kong, Seoul and Singapore. Bloomingdales (for which he created his first American collection), Nordstrom, Neiman Marcus, Barneys, Bergdorf Goodman and Saks Fifth Avenue carry his line in the United States and newly opened in Dubai Mall.
Blahnik was awarded the honorary title of Commander of the British Empire in 2007 for his service to the British fashion industry.

Manolo Blahniks worn by actress Whitney Port

Awards
Council of Fashion Designers of America (CFDA)^[3]

• 1997 – The Stiletto
• 1990 – Accessory Designer of the Year
• 1987 – Special Award

British Fashion Council^[4]

• 1999 – Accessory Designer of the Year
• 1990 – Accessory Designer of the Year

Wine store celebrates Halloween

Local wine store celebrates Halloween in an upscale way...those big bottles are Taittinger champagne.

Let us see what the internet says about Taittinger:

Personal life

Born in Paris, Pierre Taittinger's family were originally from Lorraine and had left the Moselle département when it had been annexed by the German Empire in 1871 in order to remain French citizens. A young officer in the cavalry during the First World War, Pierre Taittinger received several citations and was decorated with the Légion d'honneur. In 1919 he was elected deputy of the Charente-Inférieure département.
Pierre Taittinger married Gabrielle Guillet (1893–1924) in 1917. In 1925 he married again to Anne-Marie Mailly (1887–1986). He died in Paris in 1965 and was buried in Reims at the cimetière du Nord with his third son François (1921–1960) who had run the Taittinger champagne house between 1945 and 1960. His son Michel, a French military hero and second lieutenant in the 66th African Artillery Regiment of the French Army, died on June 15, 1940 at the age of 20 in the city of Saint Parres-aux-Tertres, near Troyes in the Champagne region. He had held off for five hours a Panzer division of General von Kleist with his fellow soldiers, many of whom were Moroccan, Algerian and West African. Michel had been a student in the French military academy Ecole Polytechnique. Another of Pierre Taittinger's sons, Jean Taittinger, was deputy mayor of Reims from 1959 to 1977, Secretary of State for Budget from 1971 to 1973 and State Minister of Justice from 1973 to 1974 in the administration of Gaullist President of the French Republic Georges Pompidou.

 Political career
He was mayor of Saint-Georges-des-Coteaux, in the same département, from 1919 until 1937, and again from 1953 until his death in 1965. In 1924 he was elected deputy of the 1st arrondissement of Paris, and held this mandate until 1940.
In 1924, Pierre Taittinger founded the Jeunesses patriotes (Patriotic Youths), a right-wing group, recruited mostly from university students and financed by industrialists. Taittinger took inspiration for the group's creation in the Boulangist Ligue des patriotes. Pierre Taittinger was also deeply influenced by the Bonapartist movement, during which he was a member of the French Parliament. In the end of the 1920s, the Jeunesses patriotes became one of the far-right's major anti-Communist movements, challenging the Action française and the Croix de Feu under Colonel de Laroque.
In 1937 he was elected to the municipal council of Paris and to the departmental council of the Seine. In March 1940 he was elevated to the rank of Commander in the Order of the Légion d'honneur. He became president of the municipal council of Paris in May 1943, as the Germans occupied the city, and held this position until the Liberation of Paris in August 1944.
On August 17, 1944, concerned that explosives were being placed at strategic points around Paris by the Germans, Taittinger met with the German military governor Dietrich von Choltitz. On being told that Choltitz intended to slow up as much as possible the Allied advance, Taittinger, along with the Swedish consul general Raoul Nordling, attempted to persuade Choltitz not to destroy Paris. As the Allies rolled into the Paris Basin, Pierre Taittinger made an incredible change from collaborator to a member of the resistance. After the war, he published a book called ...et Paris ne fut pas détruit ("...and Paris was not destroyed") which was awarded a prize by the French Academy. In 1954 he became honorary deputy (a title given to ancient members of the French National Assembly).

 Champagne business

Pierre Taittinger, who before the First World War had run a business involved in the distribution and export of champagne with one of his brothers-in-law, acquired in 1931 the venerable champagne firm of Forest-Fourneaux, founded in 1734 by Jacques Fourneaux and the third oldest champagne house in existence. The next year he bought the Château de la Marquetterie and its champagne estate, near Épernay, which he had first visited during the war while stationed in the area. In the following years, he bought hundreds of acres of vineyards in the finest producing areas of Champagne, taking advantage of the cheap price of land due to the 1930s economic crisis. Forest-Fourneaux, renamed Ets Taittinger Mailly & Cie, was transformed by Pierre Taittinger into a world famous champagne house, Champagne Taittinger, operating from the cellars of the Saint-Nicaise Abbey in Reims. Pierre Taittinger restored the House of the Counts of Champagne in the center of Reims, damaged by the Germans during the First World War, which had been the residence of the Counts of Champagne during the Middle Ages and which is now the property of Champagne Taittinger. He bequeathed to the city of Reims his estate of La Grainetière on the Isle of Rhé, which has become a summer camp for the children of Reims.

 

Barami Fall Fashion

I don't know how fashionable Barami clothes are, really....they seem more daring than a lot of the traditional fall stuff I have seen in shop windows.

Let me see if I can find something about them on the internet--well, this is one person's comment:

Has anyone ever bought stuff from them? They have shops in NYC and the suburbs in the malls. They have some cute stuff and sometimes they have sales. They have a mix of nice clothes to wear to work (suits) and weekend clothes that are a little original from stuff you see in department stores.

I just saw some really cute stuff in one of their shops recently. (I think NYC people might be more familiar with this store. I don't know if they have shops on the west coast...)

Yale Club

Yale Club facade on Vanderbilt Avenue is extremely restrained compared to Harvard Club a few blocks away.

From the internet (Wikipedia):

Clubhouse

The Yale Club's main entrance on Vanderbilt Avenue

The club is located at 50 Vanderbilt Avenue, at the intersection of East 44th Street,^[2] across Vanderbilt Avenue from Grand Central Terminal and the MetLife Building. Four other clubs affiliated with Ivy League universities have clubhouses in the surrounding neighborhood: the Harvard Club of New York, the Princeton Club of New York, the Penn Club of New York City, and the Cornell Club.^[3] The neighborhood also includes similar clubs not affiliated with universities, like the New York Yacht Club and the University Club of New York,^[3] as well as the flagship stores of Brooks Brothers, J. Press, and Paul Stuart, which traditionally catered to the club set.^[4]
The 22-story clubhouse contains three dining rooms (a grill room, a tap room, and a roof dining room and terrace), two bars (the grill room and the main lounge), banquet rooms for up to 500 people, 140 guestrooms, a library, an athletic center, and a barber shop, among other amenities.^[5][6] The heart of the clubhouse is the main lounge, a large room with a high, ornate ceiling and wood-paneled walls lined with fireplaces and portraits of the five Yale-educated American presidents, all of whom are or were members of the Yale Club: William Howard Taft; Gerald R. Ford; George H.W. Bush; William Jefferson Clinton; and George W. Bush.^[7] Outside the lounge above the main staircase hangs a posthumous portrait of Elihu Yale by Francis Edwin Elwell.

 History

The roots of the club reach back to 1868 and the foundation of the Old Yale Alumni Association of New York. In response to the association's desire for a permanent clubhouse, it formally established the Yale Club in 1897. One of the incorporators was Senator Chauncey Depew, whose portrait by the Swiss-born American artist Adolfo Müller-Ury painted in 1890 hangs in the building. The first president of the Yale Club was attorney Thomas Thacher, founder of Simpson, Thacher & Bartlett. The first clubhouse was a rented brownstone at 17 East 26th Street.^[5] Thereafter, in 1901, the club built and opened a new, twelve-story clubhouse at 30 West 44th Street,^[5] which today is home to the Penn Club of New York.^[3]
The current clubhouse opened in June 1915, designed by architect and Yale alumnus James Gamble Rogers.^[2] It was largely paid for by money raised or contributed by President George C. Ide of Brooklyn (whose portrait by Adolfo Müller-Ury also hangs in the building). It purposely was situated on the very corner where Yale alumnus Nathan Hale was hanged by the British Army for espionage during the American Revolution.^[8] Today, the site of Hale's execution is disputed.^[8]

 Membership

Today, membership is restricted to alumni, faculty, and full-time graduate students of Yale University.^[9] The club also offers legacy memberships for any Yale-affiliated member's children and grandchildren. The club sends out a monthly newsletter to all members.
Yale College did not allow women to become members until 1969.^[10] Wives of members even had to enter the club through a separate entrance (today the service entrance), and were not allowed to have access to much of the clubhouse.^[11] Once Yale opened to women, however, the club quickly followed suit on July 30, 1969,^[11] although the club did not open its bar, dining room, or athletic facilities to women until 1974^[12] and did not open its swimming pool (known as "the plunge") to women until 1987.^[13] Now, though, women constitute a large percentage of the club's membership.
Three other, smaller clubs also are in residence at the Yale Club: the Dartmouth Club, the Virginia Club, and the Delta Kappa Epsilon Club. Members of these other clubs have the same access to the clubhouse and its facilities as members of the Yale Club itself.
According to a book published for the club's 1997 centennial, members at that time included George H. W. Bush, Hillary Rodham Clinton, Bill Clinton, Gerald Ford, John Kerry and George Pataki. Among others were architect Cesar Pelli and author David McCullough. Today, the Yale Club has over 11,000 members worldwide.^[1]

 Recent events

Heisman Trophy which was awarded to USC Trojans quarterback Carson Palmer at the Yale Club in 2002.

Dress code

In July 1999, the Yale Club became the first of New York's Ivy League university clubs to change its dress code to business casual, a move which upset some members and was received with polite scorn from other clubs.^[14] Today, the dress code remains business casual, except in the roof dining room, where formal business attire is required, and in the athletic facilities.^[15]

 

Murray Hill rents

Despite the drab exterior, this location just off the exit ramp of the Midtown Tunnel is technically in Murray Hill and you can bet they want a LOT for the rents....other side of building advertises new three bedroom "loft style" condos...can imagine what they want for those.

Park Avenue Traffic Island

Median strip of Park Avenue just North of Grand Central Terminal....like the lyrics from the song from "Evita"-- "...dressed up to the nines, when sixes and sevens would do."

I am curious who is in charge of decorating the median strip. Let me see if I can find something on the internet...no, I cannot find anything specifically about it. Probably some local civic association....