New York Archives - Laurie Smithwick

Old New York

By Lauriehistory, photos, retro vintage ephemera2 Comments

Oh my heavens. Hundreds of gorgeous photos of old New York. Shots you’ve never seen before. Like the one above of painters on the Brooklyn Bridge. With no safety harnesses or anything! I could look at these all day. In fact, I just did. The New York City Municipal Archives has just released a database of over 870,000 photos from its collection of more than 2 million images of New York throughout the 20th century. Here are just a few of the great ones, curated by Alan Taylor from The Atlantic. (Click images to enlarge.) To see more (and there are SO MANY MORE),…

Metropolitan Etiquette Authority

By Lauriecaught my eye, clever, design8 Comments

Have you ever lived in Manhattan? I have. And as much as I loved it there, one of the things that can be challenging is the sheer number of people — and their habits — you have to interact with every time you walk around. The lack of courtesy you might encounter on a 2 minute walk to the deli is astounding. Well artist Jay Shells has launched a guerilla art project that addresses just that — street etiquette. The signs are now popping up all around Manhattan. In addition to the fantastic “Pay Attention While Walking” sign he had a…

Voices of the Year. And a Gala too!

By Laurieconferences2 Comments

As you may know, in addition to LEAP, I am also a co-founder of Kirtsy, a website where you can find some of the coolest things you ever saw online. The past few weeks, the Kirtsy team has been working like crazy on a big party that we’re throwing with BlogHer at their conference next week, and friends? It is going to be the raddest party ever! The event actually has an official name, and it’s a mouthful: BlogHer 2010 Voices of the Year Gala and Art Auction Curated by Kirtsy. So we’ve been calling it the BlogHer Kirtsy Party…