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Observatory

Sports

07.31.12: Alexandra Lange

The Critical Olympics
What the best sports commentary does is just like criticism: it makes you care about the previously abstract.
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01.30.12: Owen Edwards

Designers Leap, Users Lag
Trying to meet the challenges designers and engineers set for us is pretty much hopeless, though we can have a lot of fun trying.
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11.23.10: Alexandra Lange

New City Reader: Sidewalk Sale
How Atlantic Yards became Barclays Center and disappeared from Brooklyn in the process.
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05.02.10: Mark Lamster

Dandies at the Ballpark
What, you ask, did the well-dressed gentleman wear to the ballpark in 1870? The sartorially inclined team outfitter might have turned to the lovely "New York Fashions" lithograph above for inspiration.
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01.25.10: Mark Lamster

(Not) Basic Training
The J-E-T-S are out of the playoffs following a valiant effort yesterday afternoon. That's not a shocker, though their appearance in the AFC Championship Game certainly was surprising.
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09.13.09: John Cantwell

The Big Screen in Big D
The brand new $1.2 billion home of the Dallas cowboys has a design feature that promises to turn football games there into a weird mashup of football and pinball.
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08.10.09: Mark Lamster

The Curious Architecture of Albert Spalding
The house that the Spaldings — of baseball fame — built for themselves was an oriental fantasy.
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07.31.09: Mark Lamster

Ballparks Redux
Metropolis has posted a slideshow of the outtake photographs by Sean Hemmerle for my story on New York's ballparks.
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07.22.09: Mark Lamster

Play Ball: The Last Word on New York's New Ballparks
My comprehensive, last word on New York's ballparks can be found in Metropolis.
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06.23.09: Steven Heller

Take Me Out to the Old Yankee Stadium
The new Yankee stadium, like most retro stadiums, bears the burden of being faux, a recreation, like a Disney version of reality. It works and it doesn’t.
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06.15.09: Mark Lamster

Bottom of the Ninth
My review of Michael Shapiro's new book on the aborted life of the Continental League, a would be addition to the majors, appears in today's Los Angeles Times.
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04.16.09: Mark Lamster

Curse of the Bambino Strikes Again!
Good Lord! Is the new house jinxed?
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04.15.09: Mark Lamster

Auction Block
I'm not much of a buyer, but I do like to keep an eye on the baseball memorabilia market, a project undertaken with a combination of curiosity, envy, bemusement, and sheer stupefaction.
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04.09.09: Mark Lamster

Bronx Cheer
To say that I've been disappointed by coverage of the new Yankee Stadium by the design press would be an understatement, as noted in this "rant" column for ID magazine.
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03.12.09: Mark Lamster

Splendor on the Grass
What makes a great tennis match great? I started asking myself this question while I was putting together a review of A Terrible Splendor, a new book hooked on a 1937 Davis Cup.
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02.08.09: Mark Lamster

Roid Rage
The baseball world is up-in-arms over the revelations that Alex Rodriguez tested positive for steroid use a few years ago. My suggestion: move along, folks.
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01.14.09: Mark Lamster

Who Needs Two?
In this brutal economy, the Yankees have enlisted Prudential Douglas Elliman to help them move high-end seats at their new stadium.
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01.11.09: Mark Lamster

If the Wire Cast Was a Football Team
The Baltimore Ravens look pretty formidable going into the AFC Championship game, but I wonder if this squad from Charm City could give them a run for their money.
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01.06.09: Mark Lamster

Malcolm and Alex
Just how much of an outlier is Alex Rodriguez?
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12.29.08: Mark Lamster

Memories of Yankee Stadium
The opportunity to sit in the Yankee Stadium cheap seats close to the field and to become a part of a community was very special. One of the things I find most troubling about the new ballpark is that this opportunity will be dramatically compromised.
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12.25.08: Mark Lamster

Practice Does Not Make Perfect
The J-E-T-S spent $75 million this year on a state-of-the-art new training facility designed by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, but they may still miss the playoffs.
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07.20.08: Michael Bierut

My Handicap
I've come to know a little bit about demographics, customer profiling and market segmentation, and I can tell I'm supposed to care deeply about golf. But I don't.
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03.31.08: Michael Bierut

The (Faux) Old Ball Game
Since 1992, every ballpark in America has been designed on the nostalgic model of Baltimore's Camden Yards, including the new parks for the Yankees and the Mets. Why is it impossible to build a baseball stadium that looks like it belongs in the 21st century?
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02.24.08: William Drenttel

Any Baseball is Beautiful
Baseball spring training opens Tuesday. It is in this spirit that I stumbled upon the photographs of Don Hamerman. For the past few years, as he's walked his dog at a local park, he's picked up lost and forgotten baseballs. There are dozens of them now, all lovingly photographed.
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06.06.07: Adrian Shaughnessy

The 2012 Olympic Logo Ate My Hamster
Designers often bemoan the lack of coverage given to graphic design in mainstream media. Yet when design catches the attention of journalists and commentators it usually results in a vicious mugging rather than hearty praise.
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08.23.04: Michael Bierut

The Graphic Design Olympics
The event graphics and pictograms created for the Olympics by designers such as Otl Aicher, Lance Wyman and Deborah Sussman are part of a historic tradition that continues to this day.
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