[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]

(TV) TV Trivia: Answer to a question you didn't ask



Hi all,

Last night, Leo posed a question to me off-list:
"A former girlfriend, who for a time lived in and was quite familar with NYC,
told me when the Dreamtime vinyl album came out---- that it's back cover with
black & white photo of buildings, was a juxtaposition of NYC buildings that
does not exist in real life. (Fitting in with Tom's title/theme of Dreamtime?)
Is this something that is terribly obvious to all the New York TV fans (like
you), and not to people like me (who although they love it's architecture
wouldn't notice if a building from Uptown appeared next to one from Downtown)?"

She's right in the sense that Manhattan is rarely architecturally diverse
inside a small area; instead, certain types of architecture tend to
homogeneously dominate neighborhoods in the city - the Upper West Side,
Greenwich Village, Soho, etc. Offhand, there is one high-profile place where
this isn't true at all: the south side of Central Park, which has an outrageous
mix of grand old buildings and garish new ones c. 1970. Sure enough, my
girlfriend looked at the back of DREAMTIME and identified the building on the
right-hand side as the Plaza Hotel, on the southeast corner of Central Park,
but she wasn't sure about the rest of the photo, or the perspective. For
example, where is the body of water pictured in the foreground?

Realizing that I work only six blocks from the Plaza Hotel, I made my way up
there today. I quickly realized that yes, all of those buildings DO exist,
although the addition of the Trump Towers sometime between 1980 and 1983 (not
sure when, but I visited it in October 1983) has added one skyscraper to the
center of the scene. However, looking over the wall into Central Park, I still
couldn't figure out where the lake was, although I saw a lot of construction.
Then I noticed a sign: "The Pond", which dates from 1860, is being rebuilt
right now. It's completely drained at the moment - no sign of it anywhere.

So, yes, Virginia, DREAMTIME is a real place. You can even see a photo at:
http://mapquest.com/cgi-bin/ia_find?link=btwn/twn-map_results&aerial_photo_tab.x=1&aphoto=1&uid=u8a5dlvds8edp7td:zaly8lh6r&SNVData=3mad3-96,hr%3br20yrx%3d%3dtxhzaw%24tw2%28%3aS%2bdfMP%2b%15M%2b%12J%2bs%17M%2b%13AD%28RJ%19%2b%16XNI_WC%28nu6al%3dGG_q6t0qa%28.0a1a1f%28l%241w-u.wf7%3bxcx5sf7.grfe%7cs&pcat=

If you stood on the piece of land that juts out into "The Pond" and looked
South and slightly to the East, towards where the word "South" appears on the
map above, you'd be looking at the back cover of DREAMTIME. (See the tall white
building in the center of the photo? That's the black and white striped
building on DREAMTIME).

And if this is completely obvious to anyone who has lived in New York for more
than 2 years, I apologize for this unnecessary post!

--Philip


__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Make international calls for as low as $.04/minute with Yahoo! Messenger
http://phonecard.yahoo.com/
--------------
To post: Mail tv@obbard.com
To unsubscribe: Mail majordomo@obbard.com with message "unsubscribe tv"