New York is a city that looks better from a distance. The gap can be temporal – the poverty of youth becomes, in time, one’s golden freedom – or spatial. A friend from Chicago complained that Manhattan lacked alleyways: in the summer, our garbage stunk and burned on the sidewalks. On the Brooklyn Bridge, the smell disappears, and all you can see are buildings massed at the edge of the island, the offices crowned with lights, glowing like bottles in a dark bar. The boundaries of other cities blur – at what point do the sprawling lights become suburb? – but Manhattan is an island, cut cleanly against the night. As pure image, New York is flawless: tidy, discrete, simple to hold in your mind, and for this reason particularly easy to romanticize. Emblem, icon, colophon: its skyline stands for a story.

» elizabeth gumport: in which nothing will cut new york but a diamond

Next month a love affair lasting more than 60 years will end. The last batch of Polaroid film will pass its use-by date and the era of instant Polaroid photography, one of the greatest inventions of the 20th century, will draw to a close.

» polaroid last picture show (telegraph)

in a digital age, enjoy the poladroid.

» glastonburry 2009 (the big picture)
» google - der große literaturräuber? (deutschlandradio kultur)
» in defense of google books (reuters)

» die verpflichtung seines körpers (diedrich diederichsen, faz)
» sei kein frosch, mein prinz (georg seeßlen, freitag)
» michael jackson (steven shaviro)

» unser aller freiheit (slavoj zizek, faz)

» j. rosenbaum on pynchon's "gravity's rainbow" (1973)
» irre im schweinskostüm (jungle world)
» killer, künstler, krisenfresser (dietmar dath für die faz)
» marcel berlins on taking photographs in museums (guardian)
» what makes us happy (the atlantic)

» jon savage and wilson neate discuss wire and punk (the quietus)
» auf der suche nach einer eigenen kunstsprache (spex)
» grrrl power (guardian)
» "der kapitalismus ist noch göttlich" (goethe-institut)
» nicht vom selben planeten (jungle world)

» inside the head of sam peckinpah (guardian)
» woody allen's diary (guardian)
» lust an der apokalypse (spon)
» the axxo files (the independent)
» unter kleingärtnern (diederichsen/jetzt)

» über edgar allan poe (jungle world)
» bargain hunting for books (new york times)
» my mars (ray bradbury/national geographic)
» interview with dave gibbons (wired)
» the man who invented mars (boston globe)

» interview with ari folman (salon)
» umberto eco: innerer monolog eines ebooks (faz)
» a defence of hunter s. thompson (guardian blogs)
» bruno s. (new york times)

» a higher calling. on philip seymour hoffman.
» kapital fürs kapital. slavoj zizek.
» rambo: in all his glory.
» bush ist ein unglücksmensch. alexander kluge im gespräch.
» earbuds, the shuffle, and thousands & thousands of songs: the ipod's impact on culture

» top 50