This video is likely to be the closest thing we’ll ever have to a time machine thanks to a very skillful history buff and Youtube artist who calls themselves NASS. The footage shows three views of Fifth Avenue from the back of a moving vehicle. Each view runs from 60th
This week we’ve seen views of Greenwich Village in the 1940s, early 60s and late 60s verging on the 70s. Now we have a minute of deep 70s village at hand. In some ways this clip is so period-perfect that it doesn’t feel real–more like an expensively re-produced set (complete
Our Greenwich Village history week continues with this very nice one minute clip of color footage of the Village in the 1940s. We are in three locations–Washington Square North, MacDougal Alley and Eighth Street which, as you’ll see in this footage, was once lined with artists peddling their wares. (It’s
This is a real find–a lovely ten or so minute travelogue style journey around Greenwich Village featuring lots of the fashion of the time and plenty of views of streets and buildings that are all pretty much still there. From the look of things I think we’re in 1968–a close
In 1960 a filmmaker named Stewart Wilensky spent the summer shooting footage of New York’s Greenwich Village which he turned into a twelve minute doc called ‘Village Sunday’ which was completed in 1961. If you were watching the film back then then you’d likely see it as a sort of
There is something hypnotic and more than a little melancholy about this three minute silent reel of 8mm film shot in New York City in 1983 (our ‘year of the week’–see previous post). It appears to document a family outing on a warm spring or summer day. Our family appears
It’s easy to mock or criticize the 1980s but I have rose-colored glasses on when it comes to that decade. I turned 16 in 1980 and spent the happiest decade of my life roving around the quirky, edgy and still dirty and crime-laden New York City on display in this
Today’s “whatever happened to the real New York” video comes in the form a gussied-up tourist public relations ‘video’ (ten years before their were ‘videos’) shot in the early 70s. Lightning fast cutting and annoying music take us through a whiz-bang tour of the city during the John Lindsey era.
Here’s a few minutes of ghostly, black and white silent footage of the area around Broadway and 88th/89th streets in 1971. Nothing of any interest happens–which is what makes it oddly fascinating (to me at least). The everydayness of this portrait gives it an unintended weight–it achieves gravitas through its
Subscribe in a reader What on earth was the above video made for? It’s a short film in the style of a tourist-lure travelogue promoting New York. Only its point is how lousy New York is. The Youtube poster is at least ten years off in his estimation of when