Officials in New York have determined that Airbnb is illegal, despite efforts by the online firm to persuade the city otherwise. The law violated is the illegal hotel law, which prevents residents from renting out their property for less than 29 days. According to CNET, the law originally meant to prevent landlords from turning residential properties into hotels.
The ruling doesn’t necessarily mean all Airbnb hosts will be cracked down on, as the city only enforces the rule when a complaint is filed.
This cataloging of buildings has “become an almost ritualistic undertaking, a therapy of sorts, helping me to organize the overwhelming infinity and chaos of New York into something I can know and understand.”
NYC tech startup, On Deck Capital, is running a contest to celebrate the opening of its new NYC headquarters. The contest will connect one deserving New York City-based small business with $10,000. All you have to do is describe in 100 words or less how the money would help your business grow….
This “Airbnb For Storefronts” Is Creating New Opportunities In A New York Neighborhood
Operating in the Lower East Side, miLES is trying ignite the community by filling empty commercial space with interesting businesses and organizations on short-term leases while the landlords wait for the right long-term tenants.
Applications to join miLES are due on March 22, which include a brief description of how you’d use the space, and miLES hopes to fill its first space with co-workers in the day, classes and events in the evenings, and a pop-up shop on the weekends.
What did 2012 look like on New York City’s subways? From video journalist Rebecca Davis’s perspective, it was a mix of loneliness, intimacy, exhaustion, and, of course, smart phone-gazing. Davis’s video Commuters 2012 is a voyeuristic glimpse of life in New York’s connective tissue, the subway—hundreds of snapshots of regular people living their lives underground, selected from more than 3,000 photos she took last year.
“So often on the train we bury ourselves in something we’re reading or music we’re listening to and forget to look around and take in some great human drama that is constantly being played out in New York,” Davis says. The best moments in her video are of children and of couples—kissing, laughing, or just sitting there. “I hope it makes people stop and look more deeply into all the different faces and human moments we encounter each day in a city like New York where privacy is hard to come by.”
Just because you don’t need them to make phone calls anymore doesn’t mean that phone booths are totally useless—especially if you add a screen and some Wi-Fi. What do you think of the way New York City company City24x7 is giving these superhero changing rooms a makeover?
What’s so difficult about building a floating pool, you ask? What distinguishes +Pool from a big, expensive above-ground pool is its filtration system. +Pool’s team wants to actively improve the water quality of the East River, by constructing the pool out of a unique series of filters that would make the notoriously toxic waters fit for humans. The pool would release 500,000 gallons of filtered water back into the channel every day. And after a year of testing systems in the river, the team feels confident enough to install a test pool, with a tentative goal of opening the +Pool in summer of 2015. Beyonce, they hope, will play opening day.
Add this to your list of Ultimate New York Tributes: thousands of still photographs animate this motion picture homage to Joey Ramone and New York City.
Joey Ramone himself makes an appearance in the video, via never-before-seen archival footage shot by his friend George Seminara.
Some details in the film will only be recognizable to hardcore Ramones fans. For example, one shot takes place at 53rd and 3rd in Manhattan, which was the title of The Ramones second single about bassist Dee Dee Ramone’s experiences hustling on that corner. “Of course, the spot has cleaned up a lot since then,” says the movie’s director, Greg Jardin.
Here’s an inside look of our newest installation downtown! Hive, a giant LED light installation by Leo Villareal was recently completed at the Bleecker Street Station. The LED sculpture takes the form of an ever-changing colorful honeycomb, dramatically filling an architectural elliptical-shaped space above the stairs that marks the brand new transfer point connecting the IRT (6) and IND (B,D, F, M) subway lines. Hive (Bleecker Street) has a playful aspect in its reference to games. Riders will be able to identify individual elements within a larger context and track this movement. The work explores the compulsion to recognize patterns and the brain’s hard coded desire to understand and make meaning. The patterns also take inspiration from the research of the mathematician John Conway who invented the Game of Life, the best-known cellular automata program. Whether you concentrate on mapping the movement, or just appreciate the colors changing this piece is sure to catch your eye.
Top: Artist Leo Villareal testing his piece before complete, Photo Credit: Rob Wilson
Check out more of Villareal’s bright installations on Co.Design.
