How about “My Banal Blog Post”?

I started sleeping with my eyes open at 30 seconds in.

Is this the most interesting thing happening in architecture and design these days?

Comment by Jessica Karrington — November 20, 2009, @ 6:41 pm

I love learning about how neighborhoods evolve, how evolution and design are related on many different levels. Will visit Yorkville and Heidelberg Restaurant when I’m in town soon. Mr. Pedersen is forward thinking … maybe the ‘not so hip’ areas of the world that you write about today will the ultra hip areas of tomorrow. Looking forward to next installment.

Comment by Martin O'Brien — December 1, 2009, @ 8:27 pm

The best thing about NY is that even the most banal of streets carries a rich and eclectic history. To hear commentary from a native is to give credence to all the wonderful nooks and crannies of a city with a heartbeat which can be heard each time you walk its streets. While not a great fan of the title of this series (ie banal) I do look forward to its prospective! thanks, barbara

Comment by imb4ubunny — December 4, 2009, @ 7:34 am

I found this exceptionally thin and quite frankly, un-informed. I moved into a “banal” buiding at 88th & First Avenue (which I call “upper Yorkville” with my tongue firmly in cheek) in 1988 and have witnessed the change this neighborhood, like all of Manhattan, has undergone during the last quarter of a century. To describe the neighborhood as having somehow been “modeled” differently than the Lexington Avenue corridor is pure revisionism. And, while the neighborhood was once home to a large German/American concentration, it was a fairly brief period, at most 75 years having been born from large migration north of German immigrants from the Lower East Side as a result of the sinking of the General Slocum steamship in the East River in 1904. To decry a neighborhood as “banal” is to miss entirely the one pure constant, and which Ken Burns makes clear in his “New York, New York”, that is, change is the neverending force underlying the success of New York City. Perhaps a more nuanced and balanced approach would have been to point out the soot, dirt and embers from the first elevated steam trains that forced women to don asbestos parisols while walking anywhere near the Third Avenue “El”. Or the teenage Irish gangs that roamed the 80’s and 90’s in the 1960’s and 70’s. To complain without context is just curmudeonly.

Comment by bedwards — January 29, 2010, @ 1:46 pm

hey, I liked it.

Comment by will — January 29, 2010, @ 9:04 pm

My dad was a member of an Irish boys gang in the 1890’s and early 1900’s. They were tough and often mean. After serving in WWI in France and Belgium, he became a NYC cop and served for 30 years. Some of the other boys in the gang ended up in SingSing prison or on death row and three ended up as attorneys and judges. I had a great time listening to his stories about those interesting times

Comment by Barnegat Blummis — February 19, 2010, @ 4:29 pm