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Chelsea, Manhattan
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Chelsea is a neighborhood on the West Side of the borough of Manhattan in New York City. Chelsea is divided between Manhattan Community Board 4 and Manhattan Community Board 5 and it contains the Chelsea Historic District and its extension, which were designated by the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission in 1970 and 1981 respectively. The district was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1977, the area has a large LGBTQ population. Chelsea is also known as one of the centers of the art world. Chelsea takes its name from the estate and Georgian-style house of retired British Major Thomas Clarke, the land was bounded by what would become 21st and 24th Streets, from the Hudson River to Eighth Avenue. Clarke chose the name Chelsea after the Royal Hospital Chelsea, a retirement home for soldiers in London, England. Clarke passed the estate on to his daughter, Charity, who, with her husband Benjamin Moore, added land on the south of the estate, the house was the birthplace of their son, Clement Clarke Moore, who in turn inherited the property. Moore is generally credited with writing A Visit From St. Nicholas and was the author of the first Greek and Hebrew lexicons printed in the United States. Covenants in the deeds of sale specified what could be built on the land – stables, manufacturing, in 1847 the Hudson River Railroad laid its freight tracks up a right-of-way between Tenth and Eleventh Avenues, separating Chelsea from the Hudson River waterfront. By the time of the Civil War, the area west of Ninth Avenue and below 20th Street was the location of numerous distilleries making turpentine and camphene, a lamp fuel. In addition, the huge Manhattan Gas Works complex, which converted coal into gas, was located at Ninth and 18th Street. As well as the piers, warehouses and factories, the area west of Tenth Avenue also included lumberyards and breweries. The social problems of the areas workers provoked John Lovejoy Elliot to form the Hudson Guild in 1897, one of the first settlement houses – private organizations designed to provide social services. A theater district had formed in the area by 1869, and soon West 23rd Street was the center of American theater, led by Pikes Opera House, Chelsea was an early center for the motion picture industry before World War I. Some of Mary Pickfords first pictures were made on the top floors of a building at 221 West 26th Street, while other studios were located on 23rd. London Terrace was one of the worlds largest apartment blocks when it opened in 1930, with a pool, solarium, gymnasium. The massive 23-story Art Deco Walker Building, which spans the block between 17th and 18th Streets just off of Seventh Avenue, was built in the early 1930s. It typifies the real activity of the district, as it has been converted in 2012 to residential apartments on the top 16 floors
2.
Herman Melville
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Herman Melville was an American novelist, short story writer, and poet of the American Renaissance period. His best known works include Typee, an account of his experiences in Polynesian life. His work was almost forgotten during his last thirty years and his writing draws on his experience at sea as a common sailor, exploration of literature and philosophy, and engagement in the contradictions of American society in a period of rapid change. Born in New York City as the child of a merchant in French dry goods, Melvilles formal education ended abruptly after his father died in 1832. Melville briefly became a schoolteacher before he took to sea in 1839 as a sailor on a merchant ship. In 1840 he signed aboard the whaler Acushnet for his first whaling voyage, after further adventures, he returned to Boston in 1844. His first book, Typee, a romanticized account of his life among Polynesians, became such a best-seller that he worked up a sequel. These successes encouraged him to marry Elizabeth Shaw, of a prominent Boston family and his first novel not based on his own experiences, Mardi, is a sea narrative that develops into a philosophical allegory, but was not well received. Redburn, a story of life on a merchant ship, and his 1850 expose of harsh life aboard a Man-of-War, White-Jacket yielded warmer reviews, Moby-Dick was another commercial failure, published to mixed reviews. Melvilles career as a popular author effectively ended with the reception of Pierre. His Revolutionary War novel Israel Potter appeared in 1855, from 1853 to 1856, Melville published short fiction in magazines, most notably Bartleby, the Scrivener, The Encantadas, and Benito Cereno. These and three stories were collected in 1856 as The Piazza Tales. In 1857, he voyaged to England, where he reunited with Hawthorne for the first time since 1852, the Confidence-Man, was the last prose work he published during his lifetime. He moved to New York to take a position as Customs Inspector, battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War was his poetic reflection on the moral questions of the Civil War. In 1867 his oldest child, Malcolm, died at home from a self-inflicted gunshot, Clarel, A Poem and Pilgrimage in the Holy Land, a metaphysical epic, appeared in 1876. In 1886, his son, Stanwix, died and Melville retired. Melvilles death from disease in 1891 subdued a reviving interest in his work. The 1919 centennial of his became the starting point of the Melville Revival
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San Francisco
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San Francisco, officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the cultural, commercial, and financial center of Northern California. It is the birthplace of the United Nations, the California Gold Rush of 1849 brought rapid growth, making it the largest city on the West Coast at the time. San Francisco became a consolidated city-county in 1856, after three-quarters of the city was destroyed by the 1906 earthquake and fire, San Francisco was quickly rebuilt, hosting the Panama-Pacific International Exposition nine years later. In World War II, San Francisco was a port of embarkation for service members shipping out to the Pacific Theater. Politically, the city votes strongly along liberal Democratic Party lines, San Francisco is also the headquarters of five major banking institutions and various other companies such as Levi Strauss & Co. Dolby, Airbnb, Weebly, Pacific Gas and Electric Company, Yelp, Pinterest, Twitter, Uber, Lyft, Mozilla, Wikimedia Foundation, as of 2016, San Francisco is ranked high on world liveability rankings. The earliest archaeological evidence of habitation of the territory of the city of San Francisco dates to 3000 BC. Upon independence from Spain in 1821, the became part of Mexico. Under Mexican rule, the system gradually ended, and its lands became privatized. In 1835, Englishman William Richardson erected the first independent homestead, together with Alcalde Francisco de Haro, he laid out a street plan for the expanded settlement, and the town, named Yerba Buena, began to attract American settlers. Commodore John D. Sloat claimed California for the United States on July 7,1846, during the Mexican–American War, montgomery arrived to claim Yerba Buena two days later. Yerba Buena was renamed San Francisco on January 30 of the next year, despite its attractive location as a port and naval base, San Francisco was still a small settlement with inhospitable geography. The California Gold Rush brought a flood of treasure seekers, with their sourdough bread in tow, prospectors accumulated in San Francisco over rival Benicia, raising the population from 1,000 in 1848 to 25,000 by December 1849. The promise of fabulous riches was so strong that crews on arriving vessels deserted and rushed off to the gold fields, leaving behind a forest of masts in San Francisco harbor. Some of these approximately 500 abandoned ships were used at times as storeships, saloons and hotels, many were left to rot, by 1851 the harbor was extended out into the bay by wharves while buildings were erected on piles among the ships. By 1870 Yerba Buena Cove had been filled to create new land, buried ships are occasionally exposed when foundations are dug for new buildings. California was quickly granted statehood in 1850 and the U. S. military built Fort Point at the Golden Gate, silver discoveries, including the Comstock Lode in Nevada in 1859, further drove rapid population growth. With hordes of fortune seekers streaming through the city, lawlessness was common, and the Barbary Coast section of town gained notoriety as a haven for criminals, prostitution, entrepreneurs sought to capitalize on the wealth generated by the Gold Rush
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Abstract expressionism
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Action painting, sometimes called gestural abstraction, is a style of painting in which paint is spontaneously dribbled, splashed or smeared onto the canvas, rather than being carefully applied. The resulting work often emphasizes the act of painting itself as an essential aspect of the finished work or concern of its artist. The style was widespread from the 1940s until the early 1960s, a comparison is often drawn between the American action painting and the French tachisme. According to Rosenberg the canvas was an arena in which to act, to Greenberg, it was the physicality of the paintings clotted and oil-caked surfaces that was the key to understanding them. – Clement Greenberg, Post Painterly Abstraction and it is essential for the understanding of action painting to place it in historical context. Action painting took this a further, using both Jung and Freud’s ideas of the subconscious as its underlying foundations. The paintings of the Action painters were not meant to portray objects per se or even specific emotions, instead they were meant to touch the observer deep in the subconscious mind, evoking a sense of the primeval and tapping the collective sense of an archetypal visual language. This was done by the artist painting unconsciously, and spontaneously, creating an arena of raw emotion and action. Action painting was influenced by the surrealist emphasis on automatism which influenced by psychoanalysis claimed a more direct access to the subconscious mind. Important exponents of this concept of art making were the painters Joan Miró, however the action painters took everything the surrealists had done a step further. Action Writing, Jack Kerouacs Wild Form, Carbondale, IL, auction record including a color image of a 1960 action painting by Elaine Hamilton. 9th Street Art Exhibition-abstract expressionist artists reminisce—YouTube video
5.
Los Angeles Times
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The Los Angeles Times, commonly referred to as the Times or LA Times, is a paid daily newspaper published in Los Angeles, California, since 1881. It was the largest metropolitan newspaper in circulation in the United States in 2008, the Times is owned by tronc. The Times was first published on December 4,1881, as the Los Angeles Daily Times under the direction of Nathan Cole Jr. and it was first printed at the Mirror printing plant, owned by Jesse Yarnell and T. J. Unable to pay the bill, Cole and Gardiner turned the paper over to the Mirror Company. Mathes had joined the firm, and it was at his insistence that the Times continued publication, in July 1882, Harrison Gray Otis moved from Santa Barbara to become the papers editor. Otis made the Times a financial success, in an era where newspapers were driven by party politics, the Times was directed at Republican readers. As was typical of newspapers of the time, the Times would sit on stories for several days, historian Kevin Starr wrote that Otis was a businessman capable of manipulating the entire apparatus of politics and public opinion for his own enrichment. Otiss editorial policy was based on civic boosterism, extolling the virtues of Los Angeles, the efforts of the Times to fight local unions led to the October 1,1910 bombing of its headquarters, killing twenty-one people. Two union leaders, James and Joseph McNamara, were charged, the American Federation of Labor hired noted trial attorney Clarence Darrow to represent the brothers, who eventually pleaded guilty. Upon Otiss death in 1917, his son-in-law, Harry Chandler, Harry Chandler was succeeded in 1944 by his son, Norman Chandler, who ran the paper during the rapid growth of post-war Los Angeles. Family members are buried at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery near Paramount Studios, the site also includes a memorial to the Times Building bombing victims. The fourth generation of family publishers, Otis Chandler, held that position from 1960 to 1980, Otis Chandler sought legitimacy and recognition for his familys paper, often forgotten in the power centers of the Northeastern United States due to its geographic and cultural distance. He sought to remake the paper in the model of the nations most respected newspapers, notably The New York Times, believing that the newsroom was the heartbeat of the business, Otis Chandler increased the size and pay of the reporting staff and expanded its national and international reporting. In 1962, the paper joined with the Washington Post to form the Los Angeles Times-Washington Post News Service to syndicate articles from both papers for news organizations. During the 1960s, the paper won four Pulitzer Prizes, more than its previous nine decades combined, eventually the coupon-clipping branches realized that they could make more money investing in something other than newspapers. Under their pressure the companies went public, or split apart, thats the pattern followed over more than a century by the Los Angeles Times under the Chandler family. The papers early history and subsequent transformation was chronicled in an unauthorized history Thinking Big and it has also been the whole or partial subject of nearly thirty dissertations in communications or social science in the past four decades. In 2000, the Tribune Company acquired the Times, placing the paper in co-ownership with then-WB -affiliated KTLA, which Tribune acquired in 1985
6.
Time Out (magazine)
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Time Out is a magazine published by Time Out Digital Ltd. In 2012, the became a free publication with a weekly readership of over 307,000. In addition to print, the Time Out London website has seven million unique users, Time Outs global market presence includes partnerships with Nokia and mobile apps for iOS and Android operating systems. It was the recipient of the International Consumer Magazine of the Year award in both 2010 and 2011 and the renamed International Consumer Media Brand of the Year in 2013 and 2014. Time Out started as a magazine created in 1968 by Tony Elliott, the first product was titled Where Its At, before being inspired by Dave Brubecks album Time Out. The magazine was initially a counter-culture publication which took a non-conformist stance on such as gay rights, racial equality. As one example of its editorial stance, in 1976 Londons Time Out published the names of 60 purported CIA agents stationed in England. Early issues had a print run of around 5,000, Elliott launched Time Out New York, his North American magazine debut, in 1995. The magazine procured young and upcoming talent to provide cultural reviews for young New Yorkers at the time, the success of TONY led to the introduction of Time Out New York Kids, a quarterly magazine aimed at families. The expansion continued with Elliott licensing the Time Out brand worldwide spreading the magazine to 39 cities including Istanbul, Dubai, Beijing, Hong Kong, additional Time Out products included travel magazines, city guides, and books. In 2010, Time Out became the publisher of travel guides. The group, founded by Peter Dubens, was owned by Tony Elliott and Oakley Capital until 2016, Time Out has subsequently launched websites for an additional 33 cities including Delhi, Washington D. C. Boston, Manchester and Bristol. when it was listed on Londons AIM stock exchange, in June 2016, Time Out Group underwent an IPO and is listed on Londons AIM stock exchange. The London edition of Time Out became a magazine in September 2012. This strategy increased revenue by 80 percent with continued upsurge, Time Out has also invited a number of guest columnists to write for the magazine. The columnist as of 2014 was Giles Coren, in April 2015, Time Out switched its New York magazine to the free distribution model to increase the reader base and grow brand awareness. This transition doubled circulation by increasing its Web audience, estimated around 3.5 million unique visitors a month, Time Out increased its weekly magazine circulation to over 305,000 copies complementing millions of digital users of Time Out New York. Free magazines are distributed at bars, restaurants, gyms, subway stations, and theaters, in addition, a subscription service is offered to those that prefer the magazine to be physically delivered and paid subscribers have access to a digital edition of the magazine
