3 ms·

Today is one of the 2 days each year when the sun lines up with Manhattan's grid

40 points by echair 18y ago

ivankirigin 18y ago
The best part about flying into LaGuardia is landing parallel to Manhattan's avenues. Seeing each street pass by is excellent.
deleted 18y ago
[deleted]
prakash 18y ago
why is this on HN?
- alabut 18y ago
  I don't know why this is on HN either but I'm a sucker for anything NY. It's the most usable and creative city on the planet and big part of it is the perfect grid system of its streets and subways. Wayfinding and transportation is a snap and there's an art gallery, museum, school, park or something else inspiring on practically every corner. Heck, even the libraries are awesome - the main branch of the ny public library is so beautiful that they film movies and host weddings in it, and its backyard is Bryant Park, which has its own website and been carpeted with free wifi since before it was cool. The effect of combining a quick and easy to use public transporation system with an amazing amount of technical and artistic talent is that it lowers the activitation energy of participation to almost zero. You don't have a good excuse to not check out some cool new gallery, exhibit or user group meeting, or simply hang out with a friend on short notice, because the cost in time and energy is as close to zero as you can get. Well, as close as you can get without a Jetsons- or Minority Report-style personal rapid transport system like the SkyTran: http://unimodal.com/ http://unimodal.com/
  - ojbyrne 18y ago
    "most usable and creative city." I think you need to travel more. "usable and creative" is fine, but "most" I object to. I love New York, but I also love Barcelona, Montreal, London and San Francisco. The best cities are a bit like beautiful women - uniquely great each in their own way.
    - alabut 18y ago
      "I think you need to travel more" You're making false assumptions about where I've lived or travelled without refuting my points about New York. I live in San Francisco (the bart+muni+caltrain system here is actually quite horrible - it's inefficient, expensive, the coverage is weak and frankly it's smelly) and it's nickname as "the most East Coast city on the West Coast" is not well-earned at all, it's just due to the rest of California being completely and utterly car-based and without decent public transportation. I've also travelled a lot, including Europe since all of my relatives are in Turkey. Barcelona is great, it's kind of like a cross between my hometown of San Diego (it's also 2 million people and sunny) and New York (great art scene, up-til-dawn nightlife and a city-wide metro) but it's on a much smaller scale. And it's not simply a bias towards big cities - trying to find my way around Tokyo was a nightmare. I love Japan and it was one of the most beautiful places I've ever been, but the trains inside cities (not the bullet trains between them) aren't even run by the same companies, there's several parallel networks in place. http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/87/Tokyo_subway_map.PNG http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/87/Tokyo_sub... I can see London being very similar, considering New York modelled its subway system on the London Underground. Just looking at the two different subway maps makes me think NY is a vast improvement though, considering that one is a grid that maps directly to the streets and the other is a confusing circular spaghetti-looking mess. Most large European cities tend to have a similar layout of concentric circles (due to castles and moats and whatnot) and I find that using polar coordinates to get around isn't very intuitive compared to simple square x-y grids. If I look at a map of New York, it's easy to say "ok, I need to go two over and 5 up to get where I want to be." Saying that cities are "uniquely great each in their own way" is fine, I'm not saying any other cities aren't great and that New York is better than them in all respects. In fact, New York is a horrible place to get lonely - if you don't already have a lot of friends, nothing's lonelier than being surrounded by millions of people all in a rush to get somewhere else and too busy to meet new people.
      - ojbyrne 18y ago
        I apologize for the pejorative tone. I overreacted to the word "most." It's entirely possible, of course, that all the cities we're talking about are too large to be the best city, that in fact smaller cities (I'm in one right now - Ottawa, Canada) actually function better overall.
- ojbyrne 18y ago
  35 people found it interesting enough, and it's somewhat science based, and the submission guidelines don't preclude it. Why would it not be on HN? It reminds me of the guy who mapped out the exact best spots for each day of the year to take pictures of the sun setting underneath the Golden Gate bridge, and he was a hacker, and was interested in that. Wish I could find that page...
- gaius 18y ago
  The analogy with Stonehenge I expect, arguably one of the earliest computers.
- davidw 18y ago
  "Slow news day"? I'm not really concerned about articles like this though... they don't wreck communities like political discussions do.
deleted 18y ago
[deleted]
wallflower 18y ago
Manhattan Solstice. There are three from yesterday's event but this photo from earlier in the year is visually stunning. I can't imagine the traffic slowdown driving sunwards. http://www.flickr.com/photos/kliman/2539479392/ http://www.flickr.com/photos/kliman/2539479392/ http://www.flickr.com/search/?q=manhattan+solstice&s=rec http://www.flickr.com/search/?q=manhattan+solstice&s=rec

40 points by echair 18y ago

The best part about flying into LaGuardia is landing parallel to Manhattan's avenues. Seeing each street pass by is excellent.

deleted 18y ago

[deleted]

prakash 18y ago

why is this on HN?

alabut 18y ago
I don't know why this is on HN either but I'm a sucker for anything NY. It's the most usable and creative city on the planet and big part of it is the perfect grid system of its streets and subways. Wayfinding and transportation is a snap and there's an art gallery, museum, school, park or something else inspiring on practically every corner. Heck, even the libraries are awesome - the main branch of the ny public library is so beautiful that they film movies and host weddings in it, and its backyard is Bryant Park, which has its own website and been carpeted with free wifi since before it was cool. The effect of combining a quick and easy to use public transporation system with an amazing amount of technical and artistic talent is that it lowers the activitation energy of participation to almost zero. You don't have a good excuse to not check out some cool new gallery, exhibit or user group meeting, or simply hang out with a friend on short notice, because the cost in time and energy is as close to zero as you can get. Well, as close as you can get without a Jetsons- or Minority Report-style personal rapid transport system like the SkyTran: http://unimodal.com/ http://unimodal.com/
- ojbyrne 18y ago
  "most usable and creative city." I think you need to travel more. "usable and creative" is fine, but "most" I object to. I love New York, but I also love Barcelona, Montreal, London and San Francisco. The best cities are a bit like beautiful women - uniquely great each in their own way.
  - alabut 18y ago
    "I think you need to travel more" You're making false assumptions about where I've lived or travelled without refuting my points about New York. I live in San Francisco (the bart+muni+caltrain system here is actually quite horrible - it's inefficient, expensive, the coverage is weak and frankly it's smelly) and it's nickname as "the most East Coast city on the West Coast" is not well-earned at all, it's just due to the rest of California being completely and utterly car-based and without decent public transportation. I've also travelled a lot, including Europe since all of my relatives are in Turkey. Barcelona is great, it's kind of like a cross between my hometown of San Diego (it's also 2 million people and sunny) and New York (great art scene, up-til-dawn nightlife and a city-wide metro) but it's on a much smaller scale. And it's not simply a bias towards big cities - trying to find my way around Tokyo was a nightmare. I love Japan and it was one of the most beautiful places I've ever been, but the trains inside cities (not the bullet trains between them) aren't even run by the same companies, there's several parallel networks in place. http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/87/Tokyo_subway_map.PNG http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/87/Tokyo_sub... I can see London being very similar, considering New York modelled its subway system on the London Underground. Just looking at the two different subway maps makes me think NY is a vast improvement though, considering that one is a grid that maps directly to the streets and the other is a confusing circular spaghetti-looking mess. Most large European cities tend to have a similar layout of concentric circles (due to castles and moats and whatnot) and I find that using polar coordinates to get around isn't very intuitive compared to simple square x-y grids. If I look at a map of New York, it's easy to say "ok, I need to go two over and 5 up to get where I want to be." Saying that cities are "uniquely great each in their own way" is fine, I'm not saying any other cities aren't great and that New York is better than them in all respects. In fact, New York is a horrible place to get lonely - if you don't already have a lot of friends, nothing's lonelier than being surrounded by millions of people all in a rush to get somewhere else and too busy to meet new people.
    - ojbyrne 18y ago
      I apologize for the pejorative tone. I overreacted to the word "most." It's entirely possible, of course, that all the cities we're talking about are too large to be the best city, that in fact smaller cities (I'm in one right now - Ottawa, Canada) actually function better overall.
ojbyrne 18y ago
35 people found it interesting enough, and it's somewhat science based, and the submission guidelines don't preclude it. Why would it not be on HN? It reminds me of the guy who mapped out the exact best spots for each day of the year to take pictures of the sun setting underneath the Golden Gate bridge, and he was a hacker, and was interested in that. Wish I could find that page...
gaius 18y ago
The analogy with Stonehenge I expect, arguably one of the earliest computers.
davidw 18y ago
"Slow news day"? I'm not really concerned about articles like this though... they don't wreck communities like political discussions do.

deleted 18y ago

[deleted]

wallflower 18y ago

Manhattan Solstice. There are three from yesterday's event but this photo from earlier in the year is visually stunning. I can't imagine the traffic slowdown driving sunwards. http://www.flickr.com/photos/kliman/2539479392/ http://www.flickr.com/photos/kliman/2539479392/ http://www.flickr.com/search/?q=manhattan+solstice&s=rec http://www.flickr.com/search/?q=manhattan+solstice&s=rec