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Monthly Archives: April 2010
Multifunctional Desserts
In a 1976 episode of Saturday Night Live, Dan Ackroyd, Chevy Chase, and Gilda Radner starred in a short ad for New Shimmer: a miraculous new product that was “both floor wax and a dessert topping!” IMAGE: “New Shimmer” on Saturday Night Live, “for the greatest shine you ever tasted!” While a close look at [...]
Posted in Digest, Uncategorized 1 Comment
Cow Tunnels
In her study of beef and its role in American culture, Raising Steaks, historian Betty Fussell describes the impact of the train on New York City's meat-processing infrastructure:
As the railroads massively increased cattle traffic to Manhattan, the Pennsylvania Railroad built holding pens in New Jersey, whence barges would ferry cattle across the Hudson to slaughterhouses along Twelfth Avenue and Thirty-fourth Street. Traffic was so heavy in the 1870s that a "Cow Tunnel" was built beneath Twelfth Avenue to serve as an underground passage, and it's rumored to be there still, awaiting designation as a landmark site.
Posted in Uncategorized 5 Comments
The Towns That Chocolate Built
IMAGE: Cadbury’s Dairy Milk chocolate bar vs. Hershey’s Milk Chocolate bar. When iconic American chocolate-makers Hershey announced an (ultimately unsuccessful) bid to take over the equally iconic British confectionery company, Cadbury, most discussion revolved around one of two things: business reporters focused on the stock price implications of any deal, while the food media conducted [...]
Posted in Uncategorized 6 Comments
Bodega Cartographics
Jeff Sisson of I Like Nice Things has a new project called The Bodega List. His goal is simple: to create a homepage for every single bodega in New York City, most of which currently exist only in the physical world. IMAGE: Bodega in Sunset Park, by Flickr user gkjarvis. His methodology relies on using [...]
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Marmite Linguistics