Three years ago, a five-year-old boy lost his treasured stuffed monkey Ah-Ah while on a camping trip with his parents. Somehow just the other day, his mother found the missing monkey and reunited Ah-Ah with her son. You can watch the emotional reunion below! While it is a beautiful and touching moment now, I'm pretty sure that when he becomes a teenager, this kid will never forgive his parents for putting this on the internet.
I love this album. Perhaps it's because it instantly takes me back to the beginning of my senior year of college in 2007, and to a much simpler time in my life in terms of responsibilities, but Kanye West's third album Graduation is at times a largely forgetting piece in his catalog. It shouldn't be. Within the album he expresses growth as an artist and departs from the warm soul samples of The College Dropout and the lush chamber pop orchestration of Late Registration and moved towards a more atmospheric, rock-tinged, electronic soundscape. He dropped the album on the same day that 50 Cent dropped Curtis. 50 Cent claimed that there was no rivalry between the two as Kanye West didn't even belong in the same arena as him (in terms of record sales). To 50's surprise it was West's album that debuted at #1. Listen to it here.
Earlier this week, Devin Graham released his latest video which brings Assassin's Creed's main character to life doing some crazy acrobatic moves in the city streets. Now, you can check out how he created this ridiculously awesome video using a 5D Mark III, a Glidecam, and some green screen work. Check out both videos below!
On Coney Island in Brooklyn stands a once majestic theater named The Shore. Leased to the Loews chain, it opened in 1925. For nearly fifty years the 2,387 seat auditorium entertained the masses that crowded the streets on hot summer days. It's opening was "presided over by Loew’s theater chain founder Marcus Loew, and included many of that era’s stars of stage and screen. Some of the celebrities at the opening were Barbara La Marr, Mae Busch, Dorothy Mackaill and Virginia Lee Corbin. The opening feature was the movie “The Sporting Venus” and later a live performance by conjoined twins Violet and Daisy Hilton was added. According to an account by the “Brooklyn Citizen,” the crowd at the opening was so large it had to be cordoned by police. The theater was designed to be a combination house, showing both vaudeville and motion pictures, but eventually phased out the vaudeville performances." By 1973 the theater (which was sold by the Loews in 1964) was showing adult films. When it closed the main level seats were removed in order to use the space to make a bingo hall. In 2010 the theater's facade was declared a city landmark but, the theater inside can potentially be destroyed.
It doesn't have to.
Someone needs to buy this theater and restore it. If I had the money and the time to deal with all the headaches, I'd buy it myself. New York is a place of nostalgia. That is because most things we see built in our lifetime we'll also see destroyed. It's a negative drawback to the engine that makes this a city of hope and new life. Sometimes, however, hope and new life can be achieved by restoring something to its once proud glory. Coney Island was once considered "the world" between the last Monday in May and the first in September. It won't be that again anytime soon, but a restoration such as this could put the world on notice that whenever Coney's ready, it's a title she plans to take back. See the inside of this once magnificent theater as it stands today in the photos below.
