Judyta Banach Activity#9

For this activity I explored others blogs that were related to “urban life”. I was trying to find blogs that I can relate to the most, and the first one that caught my attention is called “urban legends”- http://www.blogcatolog.com/blog/urban-legends-1. I picked this blog first because the themes of it are very similar to the blog that I and my group have. We as well as the author of the blog, who is a young Indian woman, explore New York City through different activities. She talks about taking a train and exploring the neighborhoods around her, and presents her blog as a small guide for tourists. It is written by an urban planner who is living in London, and explores the city as a flaneur. I found her blog very interesting because she shows many pictures of the city through as she stated”her professional city-trained eyes”. Although I am not trained as an urban planner, this class and other blogs related to this topic help me to explore the city that I live in, differently than before.
Another blog that I found through recommendation of the first one is also written by a woman that lives in London-http://www.janeslondon.com. Her blog is about the London’s cool places, but not the ones that are the main attractions of the city, but about places that tourists normally don’t see. I like this blogs because it gave me an opportunity to see London in different perspective. The author of the blog shows pictures of graffiti, and old buildings that make people realize that this city could be known for something else than famous Tower Bridge or Buckingham Palace that can be found in every tourist guide. Unlike my blog where I and my group members mostly explore places in New York where there are high density of tourists, this blog shows hidden but interesting places of London.
My next step in searching for blogs related to mine was to find something about New York City. I wanted to see how NYC bloggers react to different things happening around them, and how they represent their perspective about the city they live in. This is what caught my attention: http://ny.curbed.com/
This blog is mostly designed around real estates in New York. I found it interesting because of the fact how expensive houses and apartment are in our area and I decided to explore this topic more by looking at this blog. It has a section where bloggers can search for news about real estates by neighborhoods. Because my last project for the class was to talk about a place that I remember and I picked Greenpoint, I turned my attention to this neighborhood. I found there an interesting picture that was taken in Leonard Street in Greenpoint. The landlord posted a sign on the apartment door of the tenant stating that she doesn’t pay rent. Because Polish people largely occupy this community, the landlord posted the sign in Polish and English. In my opinion this blog is very helpful because it shows New Yorkers the real estates prices by neighborhoods.




Here are the links to the blogs where I posted comments:

http://ny.curbed.com/archives/2010/03/22/warm_weather_kicks_off_crazy_signmaking_season_in_north_brooklyn.php#comment-574553

http://londonist.com/2009/04/the_london_blogger_interviews_12_fl.php#_login