Here’s what’s making us happy this week.
This week, we’re calling all flâneurs. We’re striding—sometimes jumping—into new worlds, or finding fresh gold in the familiar. We’re probing pole ends of the AM dial, and trawling the archive. It’s an August for discovery.
Last week, Calvin Kasulke got an amateur radio license. Now he highly recommends taking up a niche hobby and developing a skill for its own sake. This week our resident deejay is enjoying this map of all the Pirate Radio stations in Brooklyn.
Speaking of maps, James Folta has also been exploring. In the 1940s, the WPA and NYC’s Tax Department sent photographers out to document most of the city’s buildings. These images were digitized a few years back, but recently a whole site of outtakes went live.
In addition to making great fodder for urban spelunkers, the photos carry their own curious history. “A lot of them are hole-punched,” notes James. Which was a fun mid-century technique to render a pic unpublishable.
When it comes to walking, Jonny Diamond’s toddler is done with small steps. A certain two year old just learned to jump. “Seriously, both feet off the ground is a big deal for first timers,” says our editor. And for the witness? “It’s a delight.”
Drew Broussard is exploring an old familiar. This week he’s celebrating the 25th anniversary of “one of the inarguably top-ten-best-ever websites,” Homestarrunner.com. They say you can’t step in the same river twice, but you can in fact go back to a website.
This week I, Brittany Allen, am also in the back catalog. I recently discovered that many choice episodes of MTV’s Unplugged are available for streaming on Paramount Plus. With thanks to the anonymous family member whose login facilitated this discovery, I am here to tell a thousand acquaintances—some 33 years late—that I’m sorry for my belligerence before, at that party, re: that playlist. I think I finally get R.E.M. now.
In the 2001 episode shot above Times Square, the poet Michael Stipe sits regal in a Victorian skirt and peppers Automatic for the People and Reveal songs with a rant about George Bush’s nuclear energy policy. (This one was shot before September.) It’s quietly transporting, and the songs bop.
Really, this whole series is just a nice reminder that live music can be captured onscreen. The gauzy, dark concerts from (famously) Nirvana, Sinéad O’Connor, and Alicia Keys render the operatic intimate, and highlight good tunes in a way stadium polish just can’t. I wish unplugged life was still common practice. But in the meantime we have NPR’s Tiny Desk Concerts, and plenty to revisit.
Wishing you a weekend of big leaps and bounds, scavenger hunting, and found treasure.
