1946 was a good time to take the subway in New York City. You could buy a printed horoscope from a vending machine right on the platform, and if you posed just right in front of a sleeping guy at 81st Street, Stanley Kubrick might take your photo. Kubrick's series, originally commissioned by LOOK Magazine with the very un-Kubrickian title, "Life and Love on the New York City Subway," is available in full from the Museum of the City of New York. [MCNY via Gothamist]
Recent infographic projects published by the data team at WNYC have revealed some interesting trends about behaviors in the New York Metro area. Everything from marital happiness, to what people name their dogs, and more serious topics like flooding patterns.
Last week the team published a new interactive map plotting in which NYC neighborhoods people just don't vote. Although much of Brooklyn's non-voting tendencies remain a mystery, it's interesting to compare the map with their New New Yorkers map, which may explain why newcomers on Manhattan's West Side don't make it to the polls.
Check out a few of their recent maps embedded below.
The most famous item in Museum's permanent collection is the shoe thrown at George W. Bush during a press conference in Baghdad. The other exhibitions, collections of "modern day artifacts from around the world" may not have been part of international news stories, but are equally curious. Museum specializes in found items: last month's stack of rejected menu photos from a burger place in Cambodia, or, currently on view, creepy transcriptions from pornographer Al Goldstein, and rocks and tools from artist Tom Sachs' Mars expedition.
Museum occupies only a single elevator shaft, but has all of the trappings of large institutions, including a café (a single espresso machine), and a gift shop (on single shelf).
Museum is located in Cortlandt Alley between Franklin and White Streets in Lower Manhattan. It's open on weekends from 11am to 7pm. Find Museum on Instagram. 
In the early '80s, the South Bronx DJ Afrika Bambaataa created "Planet Rock" for Soul Sonic Force, a staple track for breakdancers everywhere and a foundation for all hip-hop thereafter. Bambaataa was a seasoned sound system DJ, community activist, and founder of the Universal Zulu Nation. While he's known for harnessing the rhythmic power of electronic beats and drum machines, his record crates were deeper than the Kraftwerk he referenced on those early electro funk jams. Now, we have a chance to dig those crates, too, which are by any measure American cultural artifacts.
This month and until August 10, Johan Kugelberg and Gavin Brown's Enterprise are hosting an open archiving project in which the public gets to visit and hear gems from this important collection before it moves to Cornell University's Hip Hop Collection in the fall. In 2012 Afrika Bambaataa was appointed visiting scholar at Cornell, home to the largest collection on hip hop culture in the world. During the day at the gallery, archivisits will be sorting, organizing, and spinning selections from the hundreds of crates for the public. Visiting DJs will be announced via Facebook and mailing list. Visit Gavin Brown online for more info.
Best Made Co. already had our attention with an iron-clad concept—releasing one new product a week in its online catalog, usually something basic, essential, low-tech, and no-bullshit. Best Made's axes caught on, for example, with DIY cabin-dwellers and weekenders with a strong interest in chopping and hacking things. As of today, fans of Best Made can make a pilgrimage to the epicenter of all things lasting and durable, Best Made's flagship shop at 36 White Street, NYC. The brand has also released a front-loading metal toolbox this week that we'd like to get to know better.
Best Made Co. hosts an axe restoration class at 36 White Street, NYC on May 18.
We saw our share of woodsy campsite lookbooks in 2012, so the urban jungle of Left Field's SS13 images by photographer Pepper Davies are a welcome alternative. Shot right in Left Field's homebase of Ridgewood, Queens, the photos feature Greenpoint Tattoo Co., where Left Field founder Christian McCann can oft be found. We're excited to get our hands on the new collection, which features rough and ready and all American-made (from American and Japanese materials) camo shorts, tough T-shirts, selvedge canvas chinos, and work shirts. It looks to rate highly in wearability, durability, and style longevity.
Visit Left Field NYC online for city-tough, American-made threads.
Signmaker and street artist Jay Shells' new project Rap Quotes annotates NYC locations with homemade traffic signs bearing site specific lyrics from rap tracks. Shells has the installation down to a science: he pops out of his car with a sign, a footstool, and his cell phone, and has each quote hung and tweeted in just a few moments. The tweets aren't just for vanity purposes, he guesses each sign probably won't last longer than a week before another fan steals it, so the quick photos are likely his only record. When asked about the theft, Shells doesn't seem to mind. "It's my gift to you," he says. [via Animal]
Three data scientists, James Cheshire, Ed Manley, and John Barratt, have analyzed around 8 million tweets sent from New York City to create an interactive language map of the New York Metro area. Some of the data is less than surprising. Midtown Manhattan appears to have an even blending of every language and the vast majority of non-English tweets, around 228,000, were sent in Spanish. Areas that have had an ethnic identity for decades, like the Russian community in Brighton Beach, Brooklyn, are clearly represented on the map. One of the most surprising findings, however, is the prominence of Portuguese tweets. Even though Portuguese is the second most tweeted foreign language, at about one fifth the number of Spanish, there doesn't seem to be a concentrated population anywhere in the city, except for a small cluster in Newark, NJ.
Drill down on the data at ny.spatial.ly.