Forum Home

Master Index of Archived Threads


Things that have changed (but not really) thread ...

Kong76
May 26 2013 10:16 AM

Examples:
Used cars - certified previously owned vehicles
Extermination - pest management

Frayed Knot
May 26 2013 10:31 AM
Re: Things that have changed (but not really) thread ...

What was once the Jungle is now the Rain Forest.
Much better for pr purposes; just try getting people to contribute money in order to preserve a fucking jungle if you don't believe me.

I also get a kick out of the fact that the phrase 'Colored People' is not only out (just ask Sergio) but considered to be backwards and insulting, yet 'People of Color' is considered both hip and enlightened.

MFS62
May 26 2013 11:09 AM
Re: Things that have changed (but not really) thread ...

What was once the Jungle is now the Rain Forest.
Much better for pr purposes; just try getting people to contribute money in order to preserve a fucking jungle if you don't believe me.

I also get a kick out of the fact that the phrase 'Colored People' is not only out (just ask Sergio) but considered to be backwards and insulting, yet 'People of Color' is considered both hip and enlightened.

The best of these is Gorge Carlin's step by step morphing of "shell shock" into "Post traumatic stress disorder".

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jeGKuTZtkpg

Later

Mets – Willets Point
May 26 2013 05:43 PM
Re: Things that have changed (but not really) thread ...

I was thinking the same exact thing MFS62.

Edgy MD
May 27 2013 07:40 AM
Re: Things that have changed (but not really) thread ...

It's the Ed Koch Bridge, not the Queensoboro Bridgie.

Frayed Knot
May 27 2013 10:42 AM
Re: Things that have changed (but not really) thread ...

Edgy MD wrote:
It's the Ed Koch Bridge, not the Queensoboro Bridgie.


I predict this change will catch on a little while after 'Avenue of the Americas' does.
So, I'd give it a little time, the other one hasn't even been in effect for seven decades yet.

Mets – Willets Point
May 27 2013 06:34 PM
Re: Things that have changed (but not really) thread ...

I didn't realize the Avenue of Americas renaming occurred in 1945. When I was a kid everyone acted like it was a recent change so I figured it happened in the 1970s.

The renaming of Triborough Bridge to RFK Bridge is something else I don't expect will catch on in popular lingo.

A Boy Named Seo
May 27 2013 07:11 PM
Re: Things that have changed (but not really) thread ...

I did work as an extra this weekend and a couple times the director caught himself after saying 'extra' and said, "Sorry, background artists". Fuckin A right, background artist.

Frayed Knot
May 27 2013 08:15 PM
Re: Things that have changed (but not really) thread ...

Mets – Willets Point wrote:
I didn't realize the Avenue of Americas renaming occurred in 1945. When I was a kid everyone acted like it was a recent change so I figured it happened in the 1970s.


That's kind of the point, seven decades later and people are still treating it as if the change happened only recently.

Ceetar
May 28 2013 07:24 AM
Re: Things that have changed (but not really) thread ...

Was it actually 'renamed'? in that the old name is no longer valid? I always thought it was one of those ceremonial names.

The signs say Ed Koch Queensboro bridge, at least, the entrance to the upper level from Van Dam street as of Saturday night around midnight. There's no way people are going to call it the Ed Koch bridge with that sorta dual name.

Edgy MD
May 28 2013 07:38 AM
Re: Things that have changed (but not really) thread ...

Didn't mean to hijack. I was just referring to this ol' thread, in which FK also transitions to his Sixth Avenue beef.

Mets – Willets Point
May 28 2013 08:13 AM
Re: Things that have changed (but not really) thread ...

Frayed Knot wrote:
Mets – Willets Point wrote:
I didn't realize the Avenue of Americas renaming occurred in 1945. When I was a kid everyone acted like it was a recent change so I figured it happened in the 1970s.


That's kind of the point, seven decades later and people are still treating it as if the change happened only recently.


Yup, meant that as confirming evidence of your point. Until yesterday I had no idea that the name change occurred shortly before my parents were born when they acted like it was still something new.

Frayed Knot
May 28 2013 10:13 AM
Re: Things that have changed (but not really) thread ...

Edgy MD wrote:
Didn't mean to hijack. I was just referring to this ol' thread, in which FK also transitions to his Sixth Avenue beef.



Y'know I drove from Manhattan on the Bridge with Three Names
it felt good to get out to the game
When the Mets play, you can't embellish your shame
cuz there ain't no one to take up all the shame.
Na-NAH-Na Na-Na-Na-Nah ...

Edgy MD
May 28 2013 10:21 AM
Re: Things that have changed (but not really) thread ...

Secretaries have long since become administrative assistants, acknowledging in name that they do all the work, if not in salary.

Similarly but differently, strippers are nowse exotic dancers, hopefully making them feel a little bit less horrible in any moments of reflection.

And Mike Stanton is now Giancarlo Stanton, which makes him feel a little bit less like a disposable roster part.

A Boy Named Seo
May 28 2013 11:33 AM
Re: Things that have changed (but not really) thread ...

I think if I was a flight attendant, I'd prefer to be called a steward. Sounds classier. (unless my name was Stewart)

RealityChuck
May 28 2013 12:12 PM
Re: Things that have changed (but not really) thread ...

Ceetar wrote:
Was it actually 'renamed'? in that the old name is no longer valid? I always thought it was one of those ceremonial names.
According to the USPS, it's officially "Avenue of the Americas." I would assume they'd deliver to 6th Avenue, but the businesses on it use "Avenue of the Americas."

Benjamin Grimm
May 28 2013 12:18 PM
Re: Things that have changed (but not really) thread ...

When I was in college, in the 1980's, the signs along Sixth Avenue only said "Avenue of the Americas", but any tourists who asked for directions were always confused by references to "Sixth Avenue", which appeared not to exist.

At some point, I don't know when, the city decided to put Sixth Avenue signs up below (I think) the Avenue of the Americas signs. It was a concession to practical reality.

I remember during my freshman year at NYU I was working in the stockroom at Lord and Taylor. A friend from Long Island (who didn't know the city very well) was going to meet me after I got out of work. I was on the phone with him giving directions, and I said that he would turn on "Avenue of the Americas". I called it that because I didn't want him to get lost or confused. An older co-worker overheard me and, with contempt, said, "It's Sixth Avenue!" After I got off the phone I had to explain why I used the forbidden name.

Ceetar
May 28 2013 12:32 PM
Re: Things that have changed (but not really) thread ...

well they renamed part of 6th avenue Lenox avenue in 1887 (and also Malcolm X in 1987) so maybe it'll catch on in a couple of years.

LeiterWagnerFasterStrongr
May 28 2013 12:33 PM
Re: Things that have changed (but not really) thread ...

Edgy MD wrote:
Similarly but differently, strippers are nowse exotic dancers, hopefully making them feel a little bit less horrible in any moments of reflection.


And I wonder how members of White's, Commonwealth Club, or the Yale Club feel about the fact that they share a descriptive name with the places you used to call "strip clubs" or "nudie bars."

Frayed Knot
May 28 2013 12:34 PM
Re: Things that have changed (but not really) thread ...

The story I heard was that it was named both in a spate of patriotism following WWII but also because 6th avenue lacked the recognition or cache that some of the other N/S aves had-- 5th Ave was high end shopping, Park was high end living, Madison was advertising, 7th was fashion, etc.-- so the merchants and building owners along there wanted to spruce things up and give the street a new identity.
Obviously things worked out real well.

Ceetar
May 28 2013 12:45 PM
Re: Things that have changed (but not really) thread ...

6th avenue now is the avenue you note as "only one more block to Penn Station!"

Edgy MD
May 28 2013 01:24 PM
Re: Things that have changed (but not really) thread ...

And to stay on the seedy side of the tracks, we now have "sex workers" instead of any number of more derisive terms.

metsmarathon
May 28 2013 01:25 PM
Re: Things that have changed (but not really) thread ...

Edgy MD wrote:
And to stay on the seedy side of the tracks, we now have "sex workers" instead of any number of more derisive terms.


gynecologists?

MFS62
May 28 2013 10:04 PM
Re: Things that have changed (but not really) thread ...

Adam Clayton Powell Blvd. What was it before the name change? Lennox Ave.?

Later

Frayed Knot
May 28 2013 10:09 PM
Re: Things that have changed (but not really) thread ...

Edited 1 time(s), most recently on May 28 2013 10:10 PM

MFS62 wrote:
Adam Clayton Powell Blvd. What was it before the name change? Lennox Ave.?

Later


That's the continuation of what is 7th Ave below Central Park so it's not really a complete renaming as only a portion of the road is named ACP Jr Blvd
And it's probably one of those deals like 6th where both the new and old addresses would work if you addressed a letter there.

MFS62
May 28 2013 10:10 PM
Re: Things that have changed (but not really) thread ...

Thanks.
I have a feeling Avenue of the Americas will continue to be 6th Avenue as long as cab drivers don't have to ask, "Where's that?".

Later

RealityChuck
May 29 2013 01:33 PM
Re: Things that have changed (but not really) thread ...

Frayed Knot wrote:
The story I heard was that it was named both in a spate of patriotism following WWII but also because 6th avenue lacked the recognition or cache that some of the other N/S aves had-- 5th Ave was high end shopping, Park was high end living, Madison was advertising, 7th was fashion, etc.-- so the merchants and building owners along there wanted to spruce things up and give the street a new identity.
Obviously things worked out real well.
Sixth Avenue had the El (as did Third Avenue), which made it undesirable until the El came down in 1938. The street was pretty shabby (no one liked being on an El route) and the renaming in 1945 was to give it some cachet, along with the hope that South American countries might set up consulates there.

batmagadanleadoff
May 29 2013 01:51 PM
Re: Things that have changed (but not really) thread ...



About New York; No Way To Name An Avenue
By DAN BARRY
Published: September 21, 2005

AVENUE OF THE AMERICAS.

This drives Gary Madovoy mad, oh, boy.

Avenue of the Americas.

An abomination in nomenclature.

Several times Mr. Madovoy has been on the subway, the D, the B, rocking, rocking, the bilious stew over that name roiling within, when he has suddenly called out to his fellow passengers. Yes, he's the kind of person who calls out to fellow passengers. Anyway, he has called out, ''How many people here call the street we're traveling under the 'Avenue of the Americas'?''

Nobody raises a hand. This could mean that nobody in the subway calls the street above the ''Avenue of the Americas.'' Or it could mean that nobody wants to violate subway etiquette, in which unsolicited words are interpreted as a threat, a come-on, or a plea to return to Jesus. The accepted response to a subway ''good morning,'' by the way, is a dead-eyed stare.

Mr. Madovoy finds encouragement in this lack of reaction, and so continues his rigorous testing with another question: ''How many people call it Sixth Avenue?''

Several people usually raise their hands -- perhaps one for every million of the eight million in this city. These results do not surprise him.

Mr. Madovoy may live in Brighton Beach, in Brooklyn, but his ''one-man business'' of selling electronics often takes him to Manhattan, where he must contend with his Avenue of the Americas issues. One day he tackled it head-on by conducting research at the New York Public Library -- one street mercifully east of That Avenue.

He learned that 60 years ago this week, two years before his birth, the City Council voted to rename Sixth Avenue the Avenue of the Americas. He learned that Mayor Fiorello H. La Guardia argued that the change enjoyed the support of many ''reputable and well-established organizations,'' and had ''caught hold not only in this city but all over the Western Hemisphere.''

Why the Avenue of the Americas? Beyond the lofty goal of promoting relations with Central and South America, it seems, the answer is simply vanity.

Powerful businessmen had lobbied for years to spruce up the tired thoroughfare, in part by having the Sixth Avenue El demolished. According to the Web site for the Avenue of the Americas Association, nee the Sixth Avenue Association, the name change was intended to ''better reflect the grandeur of the reconstructed Avenue.''

Oh, the granjer.

CITY elders were mistaken if they thought that ''Avenue of the Americas'' would roll freely from the corrugated New York tongue. One reader wrote to The New York Times in September 1945 to voice a common sentiment: ''To me it has been Sixth Avenue since I was a lad -- it will be Sixth Avenue as long as I live. No power on earth can make me say to a cabman, 'Thirty-fourth Street and the Avenue of the Americas, please.'''

Exactly, thought Mr. Madovoy. He had driven a cab for several years, and never once did someone direct him to someplace called Avenue of the Americas. Nor had his father and grandfather ever uttered the words ''Avenue of the Americas.'' That they had little cause to do so in Brooklyn does not weaken the point. It's the principle!

About the only ones who refer to Sixth Avenue as the Avenue of the Americas are the aforementioned Avenue of the Americas Association and the aforementioned Times. On Oct. 13, 1945, The Times reported that a speeding Pontiac sedan struck and killed an upstate New York woman as she was ''crossing the Avenue of the Americas at Carmine Street.'' It has been so ever since.

Allan M. Siegal, an assistant managing editor at The Times and guardian of its style, argued that, for better or worse, Avenue of the Americas is the street's official name. In an e-mail message he wrote, ''I guess my answer would be that the city doesn't edit our paper, and we don't rename their streets.''

This does not mollify Mr. Madovoy. He left four long messages on the voice mail of this columnist, three for another Times columnist, and other messages for other Times reporters. One began with no introduction, no salutation, just this: ''Yeah, on Sept. 21, 1945, the City Council renamed Sixth Avenue the Avenue of the Americas, a name that never took. Now The Times always calls it Avenue of the Americas even when it sounds ridiculous. ''

And the more he talked, the more it seemed that he was the only person in this city who even utters that avenue's awkward name.


http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.h ... A9639C8B63

______________


Few Emblems of Americas Remain on Their Avenue

By DAVID GONZALEZ

The Americas have nearly vanished from Avenue of the Americas.

Lampposts up and down the street were once festooned with round signs showing the national seals of all the nations in the Western Hemisphere. But almost all the signs, also called medallions, are gone now, and the few that remain are faded and streaked with rust stains.

Were the signs banished in a fit of that native impulse to reduce the Americas to America, as in the United States of? Maybe they fell victim to a hometown craze that prefers banners promoting nightclubs, fashion and the All-Star Game. Or perhaps somebody decided that there is no need for national symbols when there are plenty of people from the Americas living and working in New York.

Actually, the signs were taken down in the early 1990s when many of the lampposts along the avenue were replaced. A spokesman for the city’s Department of Transportation said several years later that the agency was reviewing how to restore and replace the signs.

The wait continues. In the intervening 16 years, civil wars have ended in Central America, Gen. Augusto Pinochet of Chile was indicted on human rights charges, then died, and Cuba has a different leader (still named Castro).

A current spokesman for the Transportation Department, Craig Chin, said the city had no plans to replace the signs.

“In the interest of safety, we have removed some medallions, but the spirit of the avenue will live on with the Avenue of the Americas street signs attached to lampposts alongside the Sixth Avenue signs,” he said.

The surviving medallions remain on lampposts only from Canal Street to Washington Place and from West 56th Street to Central Park South.

An informal survey found that the seals of some countries, like the Dominican Republic, had vanished altogether, even if that nation’s countrymen and -women are here in great numbers. Honduras and Costa Rica have two surviving signs each. Cuba has three, including one in Greenwich Village whose sorry state seems an echo of that country: rusting, with a surveillance camera nearby.

Back in the 1940s, the suggestion to rename Sixth Avenue, as most New Yorkers still call it, was a big deal. Civic and business boosters backed the change as part of a plan to promote trade with the rest of the hemisphere. The idea was to line stretches of Sixth from Canal to 57th Street with various markets of different nations “in buildings physically and psychologically designed for this purpose,” according to an article published in The New York Times on June 12, 1941.

The actual renaming ceremony took place in October 1945, attracting thousands of onlookers and the president of Chile. An editorial in The Times praised the change as “helping solidify good relations” among all the nations of the hemisphere.

“The new name, still a little awkward on the lips of old residents, will be a welcome one to the many Pan-American visitors who now flock to New York,” the editorial concluded. “The Avenue of the Americas symbolizes a bond of social union which should long outlast such strains as those imposed by the current upheavals in Argentina and Venezuela.”

The signs are mostly gone, but some things are constant. Venezuela is still in upheaval.


http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/04/nyreg ... venue.html

Ceetar
May 31 2013 10:52 AM
Re: Things that have changed (but not really) thread ...



Taken not twenty minutes ago in the bead district. (did you know there was a bead district?)

seawolf17
May 31 2013 11:34 AM
Re: Things that have changed (but not really) thread ...

Of course there is. It's attached to the garment district.

Edgy MD
May 31 2013 11:55 AM
Re: Things that have changed (but not really) thread ...

It's been around a while. We in the fashion industry have taken to calling it the Venerable Bead District.

Ceetar
May 31 2013 12:20 PM
Re: Things that have changed (but not really) thread ...

Edgy MD wrote:
It's been around a while. We in the fashion industry have taken to calling it the Venerable Bead District.


Ha. I was working in it for 6 weeks before I realized it was even called that. I guess I only half noticed the billions of bead shops I was walking by daily. I should start telling people I work in the Bead District and see if they have any clue, I've just being saying Herald Square.