Classic New York Trips

by Kelly Amabile on

The Gothamist provides much more than the latest goss on NYC
happenings. Last month, they began featuring a series of classic New York trips that go beyond the traditionally hyped
attractions and remind us that there is more to the great city than just Manhattan.

When planning a trip to NY, even if it is your first visit, be sure to make it out to at least one other borough
besides Manhattan. Use the subway and see just how easy it is to explore all parts of this great metropolis!

Here are the first five trips suggested by writer Garth Johnston to get you started on an urban adventure:

Ride the Staten Island
Ferry

Visit the Queens Museum of
Art (which I didn’t mention in last week’s post)

Visit Wave Hill in the
Bronx

Visit the New York Transit
Museum in Brooklyn

Visit the New York Marble
Cemetery

One side-note, for those who may want to venture even further from the city, I was happy to see Gothamist food
writer Tamara Lover suggest a trip through the Hudson Valley to sample
Wine on the Road. NYC rocks, but don’t
forget that there really are many wonderful things worth seeing outside the epicenter of the city.

Ethiopia’s Omo Valley

by Adrienne Wilson on

Omo Valley located in Ethiopia is rich with palaeo-anthropological remains, several daunting blue-grey ridges of volcanic basalt and granite tower the Omo River which sees white-water rafters between September to October. This picture of the valley grabbed my attention as I never quite imagined any of Ethiopia’s landscape to look anything like this. I always envision dry and tough terrain, but the Omo shows quite the opposite with much history to go along. It is said that hominid remains found in the Omo Valley probably date as far back as four million years. The area is pretty much free of human habitation today, but home to colobus monkey, blue-breasted kingfishers, white-cheeked turacos in the surrounding forest of tamarinds and figs.

For those interested in visiting the Omo, Tourism Ethiopia has a suggested 11 day photo safari itinerary found here. There are several other ways to plan your adventure into the area, but I thought this one looked like a good starter.

The Airplane Book

by Adrienne Wilson on

Nice little art piece I spotted in
Gridskipper while killing
time online this evening. Having tampered with children’s picture book writing and now going to through the lengthy process of finding a
publisher (Grrr), this came off as a very relaxing, humorous and perhaps unsettling read.
The Airplane Book, written by Bob Ottum and illustrated
by Art Seidan from 1972 takes children, adults, or anyone that’s willing to read the book on a
psychedelic journey through Ward-O-Matic Airlines. This splendid retro piece found in the
Retro Kid Flickr pool shows what flying the friendly
skies was like in the 70’s and even how frightening the paint job and hairstyles were. In other words, they
were ‘far out’ and ‘groovy.’

Walking Tours of Philly

by Kelly Amabile on

In honor of my pending Greyhound bus ride to Philly in a few hours, I leave you with this
useful guide: Seven Walking Tours of Philadelphia, a virtual version
of the original tours written by John Francis Marion in 1974.

Each web page provides a map, significant historical background and photos of all buildings on the tour. As I clicked
through this easy-to-read guide it dawned on me that it may actually be a better site to read if you can’t get
to Philly, the virtual tour is simple and a breeze to get through without ever moving a muscle!

If you do decide to try some of these tours on your next trip to the “Birthplace of America”, just remember to stop as
often as necessary to refuel on cheese steaks, water ice and pretzels. Here is an
article by R. W. Apple Jr. to point hungry
stomachs in the right direction.

The Condor Club: World’s First Topless Bar

by Erik Olsen on

It’s Friday. Time for a history lesson.

It’s not everyday you get to write about the place where topless dancing was born. That’s right. Now, you might have
thought that women dancing in public with their breasts exposed is as old as, well, at least as old as pasties, but the
fact is that one little bar in San Francisco (of course it HAD to be San Francisco) is the reputed spot on which a
woman dancer first removed her top and bared her glowing white mammaries to an admiring throng of drunken males.

The place is the Condor Club, located in North Beach. It was here that a Condor
waitress named Carol Doda leapt atop a white baby grand piano and wagged her pendulous, um, gazongas, for all to
admire. There was music of course, followed immediately by the sound of dozens of male tongues hitting the floor. And
it gets better.

Doda, apparently unsatisfied with the gravitational properties of her breasts (which were carefully studied by various
scientists from nearby Berkeley laboratories who came to the Condor strictly for professional reasons), subsequently
underwent breast enlargement surgery to increase her bust size from 34 to 44 inches, an impressive achievement to say
the least.

Wait, there’s even more titillating stories to tell about the Condor. In 1983, one night after closing, one of the
dancers and one of the bouncers at the club did the horizontal mambo on top of the piano, which apparently had some
kind of hydraulic system beneath it allowing it to be raised or lowered. The piano was “accidentally” raised to the
ceiling, crushing the bouncer to death and leaving Hill pinned there beneath him until a janitor found them the next
morning. Now if that isn’t a story to tell the grandkids, I don’t know what is.