The Evolution of the LeBron James Signature Sneaker
An in-depth examination of LeBron James' line of Nike signature sneakers.
The LeBron line is the flagship shoe for Nike Basketball. For the past eleven years it has balanced and integrated every flagship
Nike technology a shoe could have. Take the journey to learn every key
design element from the Air Zoom Generation all the way to the newly
released LeBron 12.
Air ZOOM GENERATION, 2003
Photograph by Joe Robbins-USA TODAY Sports
The King has arrived.
Photograph by Liz Barclay
Everyone knew LeBron James was special, but no one knew how quickly
he would change the game. Most players not named Michael Jordan had to
earn their signature product. But the folks in Beaverton laced ‘Bron
with his own shoe from day one. The Zoom Generation was a good
introduction to the line. It wasn’t a revolutionary shoe but it combined
existing technologies in a flawless way.
It was inspired by utilitarian objects, such as the Hummer H2, to
capture the mass and size of LeBron. The design featured an external
heel counter in chrome that locked the star's massive foot in place
during transitions. While the shoe was built like a tank it featured a
large ventilation window on the medial midfoot to lighten the load. One
of the most unique material uses on the shoe was the molded mesh that
featured predominantly through the heel and midfoot. That material use
gave a ballistic feel and indestructible presence to the first
signature Zoom Air provided the cushioning, while a composite plate
helped keep things stable.
Photograph by Liz Barclay
Chamber of Fear.
The LeBron II completely changed the direction of LeBron's signature
line. The Zoom Generation set the tone for LeBron, but it wasn’t headed
in any particular direction. It could have been any signature player’s
shoe or even a well-executed inline shoe, similar to a Hyperdunk. What
the shoe lacked was a solid presence, it was great but it didn’t pack
the punch. The LeBron II packed a very strong punch. There was no
denying when you saw it that it was a special shoe.
Photograph by Liz Barclay
The shoe featured an all-over ballistic mesh with leather overlays in
very specific areas. It was damn near indestructible, which was a theme
that started on the Zoom Generation. One new piece that was brought to
the II was the strap. It’s debatable as to how functional it was, but it
definitely packed a solid aesthetic option for one’s style and gave a
football feel to the signature model of a guy built more like a tight
end. Where the shoe really thrived though was the sole unit; it featured
double-stacked Zoom. DOUBLE STACKED. Easily one of the plushest rides
Nike has ever created. What also made the sole unit stand out were the
details of the tread pattern. LeBron is too big for herringbone so he
got his own pattern! The traction was made up of interlocking Ls and Js to leave his own print on the hardwood.
Zoom LEBRON iii, 2005
Photograph by Liz Barclay
Evolution At Its Best.
Excuse
the pun, but the LeBron III was a layup. The II brought serious heat,
like 1,000-degree heat and the III brought something lukewarm. It was a
solid shoe but just didn’t shift the line like it could have.
LeBron III
The III had very unique blocking straight from the start with the home colorway. The way the black split the white was ill—very fresh and very far ahead of its time in that respect. The area where you really see that come to life is the toebox. The toe really helped transition and balance the bold color blocking by splitting the forefoot from the rest of the shoe. It helped carry the white up and through the shoe. It was quite beautiful. It also featured hotograph by Liz Barclaya nice micro-perforation pattern that
gave a subtle touch to a luxury-made product.
The
shoe really focused on holding down the beast that LeBron is. It
started by incorporating a TPU chassis that featured molded-in leather
pieces. The chassis ran two-thirds the length of the shoe and
incorporated webbing that extended from the TPU and up into the lacing
system. The whole setup also wrapped below the foot giving him 360º of
support. It was an impressive approach to lock down the foot.
zoom LEBRON iv, 2006
Photograph by Liz Barclay
Revolutionary.
The IV changed the game for the LeBron line by ushering in a
technology that had been left on the shelf for a few years—Foamposite.
Foamposite was developed in the late ‘90s to create a shoe that was
completely molded and formfitting. The goal was to create a process that
would allow Nike to make shoes even if the price of labor became too
high. What they didn’t realize was that they had created one of the best
fitting and supportive technologies ever, especially for freakishly
large and agile athletes like LeBron.
Photograph by Liz Barclay
The Foamposite was created in a chassis form as well; it wrapped the
entire foot with flexible fingers on the upper that closed in around the
tongue. The real difference between the III and the IV though was how
much better the IV executed the concept. It was much more dramatic in
its look and it simply functioned better. The key thing the IV did was
incorporating the learning Nike had gained from the development of the
Free line. Foamposite can be challenging to make flexible, it takes some
time to really break them in. But by siping the structure it really
freed it up to make it move with the foot.
One other detail that can’t be overlooked is the introduction of the “Witness”
campaign. On the heel of the IV “Witness” is written vertically down
the heel wrapping the sole. It creates a nice hidden detail that nods at
the special moment in basketball history.
zoom LEBRON v, 2007
Photograph by Mark J. Rebilas-USA TODAY Sports
Locked In.
The V came at a time of expansion for the LeBron line. Nike was now
offering not only the signature shoe, but also lows, team shoes all the
way to lifestyle product. LeBron was on his way to becoming a brand unto
himself, leaving no area of the market untapped.
Photograph by Liz Barclay
The V seemed to represent a blend of all
of them. It was brutally honest in its aesthetic direction. The shoe was
split visually in the middle with its aggressive wrapping toe and
complementary wrapping heel. It was the first LeBron to be
double-lasted, which means the midsole is entirely internal with the
upper wrapping over it and the rubber from the sole locking the whole
thing together. The upper also featured a removable strap that locked in
the midfoot. It harkened back to the II and also tied in what made the
first LeBron Soldier successful.
zoom LEBRON VI, 2008
Photograph by Liz Barclay
The end of an era.
The LeBron VI was a transition period for Nike Basketball. It was the
end of the Ken Link era. Link had crafted the LeBron II-V and played a
large role in creating the Zoom Generation as well. The VI would be his
last design for the LeBron line as he was moving on to other areas
within the Swoosh.
Photograph by Liz Barclay
The VI wasn’t created without some controversy, as the original design
was scrapped at the last minute for unconfirmed reasons. The VI that
released would be a far cleaner and more lifestyle-friendly approach to
the line. Almost like a modern Air Force 1, the upper featured a clean
toe that extended around the forefoot. One area the shoe really focused
on was crafted quality. It had a triple-stitched midsole and wrapped
leather edges with subtle molded details. One key area of technology was
the heel counter as it featured a molded piece of carbon fiber that
wrapped the entire heel. It was a lightweight approach to functionality.
Well, relatively lightweight anyway.
air max LEBRON vii, 2009
Photograph by Liz Barclay
Maxed out on Air.
Photograph by Liz Barclay
The VII took the largest turn in the LeBron line since the
introduction of Foamposite on the IV. The LeBron line had traditionally
ridden on Zoom Air, but Nike was in the midst of re-establishing its
iconic Air Max platform and they chose to use it on the King’s signature
line. It was a logical partnering as LeBron’s mass always needed a
platform that had a presence but was still quick.
The VII would also be the first time the LeBron line featured Nike’s
newest technology at that time, Flywire. Flywire changed the game in
footwear because it revolutionized the construction of the upper making
it lighter but stronger. It removed layers and brought the support
closer to your foot by welding thin layers of thread between two layers
of synthetic material. This made the addition of Max Air to the line
compatible because it offset the weight of the sole unit. The clean
design was the brainchild of Jason Petrie, who took over from Link as
LeBron's Nike lead.
LEBRON 8, 2010
Photograph by Jayne Kamin-Oncea-USA TODAY Sports
Welcome to South Beach.
LeBron went to Miami and uprooted the entire basketball world, and in
doing so led to the introduction of one of the most iconic colorways of
the modern sneaker era.
Photograph by Liz Barclay
For the most part the LeBron 8 was just an evolution of the VII. It
featured Flywire but in a more focused way, an all-mesh tongue, minimal
layers and a Max Air platform. But what this shoe did that
revolutionized the entire industry was usher in the wave of colorways
and themed shoes that has taken the industry by storm ever since. The
“South Beach” colorway has been—outside of, perhaps, the “Red October”
colorway—the most popular since its introduction in 2008, and is
arguably the most sought-after shoe in the entire LeBron line.
Another important moment the LeBron 8 ushered in was the idea of
evolving a signature shoe to provide three different offerings for the
long NBA season (and postseason). V2 and V3 versions offered more
streamlined, lighter renditions. This really laid the groundwork for
what would become the current Elite editions.
LEBRON 9, 2011
Photograph by Liz Barclay
Champion.
The LeBron 9 really laid the groundwork for what the line is
currently. The LeBron is the flagship Nike Basketball product and
features almost every technology Nike offers; Flywire, Hyperfuse, Air
Max, Zoom Air and Pro Combat. It’s really not an easy task to balance so
many features, but the 9 did it seamlessly. It also added a performance
textile that visually looks like carbon fiber. The textile is not only
lightweight and supportive, but provided a dynamic presence as the aesthetic focal point of the shoe.
Photograph by Liz Barclay
This was also the first shoe to get the Elite treatment in the Nike
line, which was a pretty incredible feat in footwear. Never before have
we had a shoe that took its investment and added new tooling to it. That
means that it adds cost to the investment by creating essentially what
is a second shoe with the added carbon fiber support wing. This
mentality was monumental and changed the game going forward.
The 9 would go on to become the first shoe that LeBron won a
championship in. It will forever be an iconic piece of the LeBron legacy
simply because of that.
LEBRON x, 2012
Photograph by Anthony Gruppuso/ USA Today
Repeat.
The X is the crown jewel of the LeBron line. It ushered in an
entirely new aesthetic direction. The past nine models had an organic
form following flow, the X brought in a faceted design direction that
was inspired by a diamond.
Photograph by Liz Barclay
The X evolved where the line had been, but also took it forward.
Growing from the previous three models and its highly visible Air unit,
the X featured the first ever full-length visible Zoom Air unit. It was
quite impressive and created for an awesome and dominating aesthetic.
From a colorway standpoint, the X did every bit as much as the VIII had.
Nike offered NSW (Nike Sportswear) colorways for the first time,
introducing LeBron's line to an entirely new audience. The first NSW
colorway set the world on fire as it was made out of cork.
LeBron would go on to win his second championship while wearing the
Elite version of the X, which laid the groundwork for many iconic
colorways to come.
LEBRON xi, 2013
Photograph by Steve Mitchell/ USA Today
Powerful Precision.
The X created the faceted approach to designing the line and the XI
mastered it by applying it to a technology that hadn’t been used on the
line in seven years — Foamposite.
Photograph by Liz Barclay
The X was inspired by a diamond to celebrate the pressure that it
took for LeBron to win his first ring. The XI provided a protective suit
for LeBron’s powerful playing style. The shoe looked like the Dark
Knight's Tumbler or a Lamborghini Aventador, but no matter the reference
we had never seen a shoe like it before. It was hard to argue the
presence it had whether LeBron wore it on court or off. An element that
was really new to the footwear world was the level of finishes that
could be applied to the Foamposite pieces. The XI featured automotive
paint, graphic films, high-gloss polished, gold, chrome and denim
amongst other finishes. It put a clinic on for what you can do with
molded materials.
Much like the previous models the shoe balanced every Nike technology
flawlessly, integrating them in a seamless matter that created one of
the plushest LeBrons ever.
LEBRON 12, 2014
Photograph by Ken Blaze/ USA Today
Homecoming.
In many ways the 12 is a return to LeBron’s roots. The obvious
comparison is the fact that LeBron left Miami and returned to Ohio, but
if you break down the 12 it’s really a combination of the best elements
of all the previous LeBrons. — Brett Golliff | COMPLEX
Roger Federer looked for help from security when a spectator made his way to the court for a selfie at Roland Garros.CreditJason Cairnduff/Reuters
Roger Federer Is Not Amused With Fan’s Selfie
PARIS ("Wee! Wee!!) — A traditionalist, Roger Federer has long struggled to adapt to the new, cheek-to-cheek world of the selfie. “The camera phones, they’re everywhere now,” he once complained, sad to see his zone of privacy further reduced. As if to prove Federer’s point, on the opening day of the French Open, a young male fan managed to step over a barrier and walk unobstructed onto Philippe Chatrier Court shortly after Federer’s first-round victory on Sunday. He approached Federer, who had just beaten Alejandro Falla, 6-3, 6-3, 6-4, extended his camera and insisted on taking a picture next to Federer before being escorted away — after too long a delay. It was the latest in a series of security breaches at Roland Garros through the years, and Federer was quite rightly not amused. “Obviously, not one second I’m happy about it,” he said, calling for immediate action from the French Open organizers. “Normally I only speak on behalf of myself, but in this situation, I think I can speak on behalf of all the players, that that’s where you do your job. That’s where you want to feel safe. And so clearly I’m not happy about it. But nothing happened. So I’m relieved, but clearly it wasn’t a nice situation to be in.”
Gilbert Ysern, the French Open tournament director, apologized to Federer in the locker room after the match and later attributed the incident to “a lack of judgment” on the part of the security guards rather than a lack of proper security structure. “What happened today does not show that the risk level is high,” Ysern said. “We’re talking about an error in judgment. The guards are well prepared. If a guy went running on the court with an aggressive attitude, he would not have made it to the player.” At times on Sunday, Ysern seemed to play down the incident. “Of course, we should not make too big a case of that,” he said. “But it’s embarrassing, of course, for Roland Garros when something like that happens.”
At times he also seemed more concerned about underscoring the importance of the willingness of players from this generation to interact with youth than with focusing on the essential: player security. But on balance, Ysern made it clear that Sunday’s incident, as innocuous as it turned out, was unacceptable. He said the young fan, who French news outlets reported is 14, had been barred from the remainder of the tournament. Among the urgent needs for the French Open site is a roof over the main court, where umbrellas are an inevitable accessory for spectators. “The court is sacred,” Ysern said. “It’s forbidden at any moment for any reason in any possible context to put so much as a toe on the court. All the spectators should know it.” Above all, all the security guards should know it. Tennis history should be a constant reminder that such situations can turn out as anything but a joke.
It has been 22 years since Monica Seles, then the No. 1 women’s player in the world and the reigning French Open champion, was stabbed in the back on April 30, 1993, on a changeover in Hamburg, Germany, by a deranged German fan of Seles’s archrival, Steffi Graf.
The psychological damage proved greater than the physical damage, and though Seles did eventually return to the circuit and win the 1996 Australian Open, she was never the same irresistible force after the stabbing. “There was clearly a before and an after Monica Seles,” Ysern said of security as he faced a room full of reporters on Sunday. “After that, all security in tennis stadiums and tennis courts was totally reviewed.”
That was certainly true, and yet there continue to be breakdowns in security involving both major stars and minor figures. In 2009, the year Federer won his only singles title at the French Open, an intruder jumped onto the court in the middle of the final against Robin Soderling and tried force a hat onto Federer’s head as he sought refuge behind the baseline. Federer was rattled but was not nearly as critical of tournament organizers as he was on Sunday. Ysern, who was also the tournament director in 2009, vowed then that no such breach would recur. And yet it did — four years later on the same court, when a protester carrying a flare jumped out of the stands during the 2013 men’s final between Rafael Nadal and David Ferrer.
“Some children came onto the court, and nobody from security reacted,” he said. “It’s already happened to me twice in two days and in 2009 in the final as well. The reaction should be faster. It should, in principle, never happen.”
Federer said he was not concerned only about the French Open. “It’s for all the tournaments on the circuit,” he said. “It’s essential that the security team be well trained and know what it’s doing. Just wearing a suit and a tie is not enough. It’s not a joke. “I am waiting for a reaction from the tournament. They have apologized. I appreciate that. But I want to see what happens from here.” It might be tempting to think Federer is overreacting, and some other players adopted a much lighter tone on Sunday. When asked how he might respond to a court intruder, Ernests Gulbis, one of the game’s resident quipsters, answered, “If it’s somebody big, I’m going to run, and if it’s somebody smaller, I might stay.” But there should be no room for snap courtside judgments by security guards about whether a person walking onto the court is a real threat or an essentially harmless selfie seeker.
“He had a big scare here in 2009; we are certainly not going to blame the player for complaining about a security breach,” Ysern said of Federer. “We’re in a sport where there are no big fences, no barbed wire around the courts. There is no unpleasant physical barrier around a court. But it’s clear that we owe it to the players to give them peace of mind.” For the moment, Federer, who knows Seles personally and routinely deals with big crowds and big excitement worldwide, does not have that feeling at Roland Garros. “Just pure luck that nothing happened,” Thomas Johansson, the former Australian Open champion and Stockholm Open tournament director, said on Sunday. “Next time, the guy might have some bad intentions.” It would be best, where the French Open is concerned, that there not be a next time at all. — The New York Times
Streaming revenues surpass CD revenues for the first time ever
As streaming music gains popularity, record companies have insisted it’s not threatening their sales. But newly released statistics suggest that streaming music may be killing a format instead. For the first time ever, streaming revenues have surpassed those made by compact discs. A new report from the Recording Industry Association of America shows that streaming outlets generated $1.87 billion in 2014—while CD sales fell to $1.85 billion. Streaming music’s edge is slight but significant: it now accounts for 27 percent of the industry’s total revenues. And while permanent downloads still dominate the digital music market (with $2.58 billion in revenues, they bring in about 38 percent more than streaming services), streaming is catching up quickly.
With digital music now capturing 65 percent of the market’s revenues, it’s easy to predict the demise of all physical formats. But there is one dark horse in the game. The RIAA’s report also showed that vinyl sales continue to rise (revenues are up 50 percent since 2013). LPs have staged what the Wall Street Journal calls “the biggest music comeback of 2014,” and the format is making gains with the same under-35 demographic that’s fueling streaming music. The humble CD isn’t the only format that’s being edged out by a changing music market, either. Streaming music is threatening another mainstay: the car radio. The New York Post reports that terrestrial radio is being edged out by streaming services like Sirius XM and Pandora—and by 2018, more than 60 percent of new vehicles in the United States will come equipped with the technology it takes to stream on the go. — Erin Blakemore | Smithsonian
The Rat Paths of New York How the city’s animals get where they’re going. Most New York animals stay close to home. Yes, itinerant coyotes will traverse the parks by night, and raccoons might travel half a mile in search of better trash, skunks a little less. But feral cats won’t stray three blocks beyond where they were born, and few mice will venture more than a hundred feet from their burrows in a lifetime. Rats seldom stray far from home, either. But they get where they’re going more easily than other New York animals, because they are more like us. The city suits them. “With rats, the map is almost three-dimensional: the surface, the buildings, everything underneath,” Jason Munshi-South told me. We were rat-spotting in Lower Manhattan, and Munshi-South, an urban ecologist who is an associate professor at Fordham, was explaining what he’d discovered after studying New York rats, also known as Norway rats or brown rats, for three years. They cannot, as legend has it, collapse their skeletons to fit through cracks, nor are they especially bold; indeed, they’re “neophobic,” which means they won’t touch a new object, even unfamiliar food, for at least two days and sometimes as long as a week. They nearly always follow the same routes to their food sources. They sleep, on and off, for about 10 hours a day, and the rest of the time they travel in tight, well-worn paths. Munshi-South’s back-of-the-envelope estimate is that they take at least 2,800 steps a day, compared with the average American human’s 5,000 or so. Rats live in colonies of 40 or 50 and sometimes relocate to new homes, but over the course of their one-year life span they rarely walk more than 600 feet from their birthplace. When they do, they seem to move north and south, with the subways, but, Munshi-South emphasized, no one is sure exactly how they do it. “We don’t even know if they move between stations, under- or above-ground,” he said. “That’s something we hope to figure out.”
We walked north from City Hall Park into the southern edge of Chinatown. Munshi-South was confident we’d see some rat activity, even on this bright, crisp morning. In the city, rats hug structural edges (“feeling” the walls with whiskers), and their routes are marked by sebum, oil from their hair that rubs off and darkens the concrete landscape. Pay attention, and you’ll see these lines on walls, an inch or so above the sidewalk, sometimes smattered with little clumps of fur. Rats build their colonies wherever they can burrow: in dirt, certainly, but really anywhere crumbly and close to constant food, usually in the form of trash, which is more or less everywhere. (A few pockets of the Upper East Side are free of large permanent rat colonies, but that’s about it.) Every few minutes, Munshi-South pointed to a lumpy mound, usually under a bush or near a trash can, pocked by silver-dollar-size holes. Rats tend to use just one entry and exit, but they like to build extra escape routes just in case. “This is insane,” Munshi-South said. “It looks like a prairie-dog town.” We had reached Columbus Park, an asphalt playground near the original Five Points, the slum where men would pay up to $5 during the 1870s to watch fox terriers battle rats in the backs of saloons. Now a few seniors practiced tai chi, while others set out bowls of rice as offerings to passing spirits. What small patches of green remained had been scraped flat by rats. They weren’t eating the grass, Munshi-South explained, just dragging a lot of trash across it. “I bet if we just wait, they’ll come out,” he said.
Not more than a minute passed before a big rat emerged from under a bush and approached a woman who was putting out rice bowls. He inched forward slightly — it was a male; we could see his testicles — then rested, waiting. A minute passed, and a bigger rat emerged, also a male. He ignored the rice, though, and instead ambled from one rathole to the next, occasionally snapping up a loose crumb. There was a practiced efficiency to his movements, but he was old and missing an eye. “He’s making the rounds,” Munshi-South said — looking for the scraps that more successful rats had discarded. “He’ll probably be dead in a few days.” For now, though, the city would provide. New York is the rat’s ideal habitat. Our idea of what a park or public space should look like mirrors its native environment, which, contrary to the animal’s common name, was almost certainly the grassy Asian steppe. We mow grass, plant a few shrubs and low bushes, a line of trees. Then we improve on nature by adding a constant source of food, our trash. Now at least two million rats live here, maybe millions more, depending on which scientist you ask. If we’d like fewer of them around, we might start thinking about how to make the city more attractive to other animals. But most animals have a hard time getting around the city. When Munshi-South first moved to New York eight years ago, he studied white-footed mice, which live in heavily wooded parks, where there are many fewer rats. (Rats eat baby mice.) He took genetic samples from hundreds of mice that had been trapped in 15 parks, on a hunch there might be some differences among them. A mouse in Pelham Bay, after all, would rarely if ever interbreed with a mouse in Central Park; the journey would simply prove too daunting. His results confirmed the disconnection: White-footed mice so rarely leave their forested home territories that, over time, each population of city mouse became for practical purposes marooned, and genetically distinct. A white-footed mouse from the Bronx, indeed, never makes it to Manhattan or any other borough. Still, new animals do show up from time to time — turkeys, red foxes, coyotes. Leslie Day has been watching them come and go most of her life. She lived on a houseboat at the West 79th Street Boat Basin for nearly 40 years, falling in love with the wilder aspects of this urban space. A middle-school science teacher, she eventually got her Ph.D. in science education and wrote three books drawing on her observations and research, including the “Field Guide to the Natural World of New York City,” with entries on, among other city animals common and uncommon, Eastern gray squirrels, rabid wolf spiders, opossums, red-backed salamanders, cabbage white butterflies, common snapping turtles, the Northern rock barnacle, the double-crested cormorant, little brown bats, big brown bats, the American eel, the pyralis firefly and, inclusively, earthworms, which, she notes, “were brought to North America by the early European settlers.”
Day recently moved to land, in Washington Heights, near the George Washington Bridge. Down at the basin she watched raccoons and squirrels, but up in Washington Heights she follows skunks. “Oh, my God, we have a million of them,” she said when we met at her apartment. Skunks have terrible eyesight and live their lives low to the ground, smelling, smelling and being startled. One had taken up residence under Day’s front stoop, she said, and we went out to take a look. There were hundreds of tiny, perfect divots in the lawns surrounding her apartment building, where skunks had stuck their noses into the soil, rooting for bugs. We walked over to the Heather Garden in Fort Tryon Park. Day pointed to a gap along the terrace — last summer, she said, she had been walking past this very spot with her friend Mike Feller, who worked as the chief naturalist for the city’s Parks Department for 31 years, and they noticed something unusual: a mound of brilliant white sand pierced by a pinhole leading down into the earth. Day thought it might be a sand trap made by an ant lion, a predatory insect, but Feller told her no, it was probably just plain ants. He’d bet anything, he continued, that it was sand someone dredged from the Rockaways and trucked up long ago to make this terrace. The ants go down and excavate it, reminding us of our past. Like the rats, and the woodchucks, and the skunks, and all the burrowing creatures, even us, the ants don’t just walk back and forth, but up and down, through time.
When I got home I called Feller, and he told me about another small but significant journey that happens each spring, one that has been happening since not long after the glaciers retreated thousands of years ago. It isn’t historic, Feller said. Just beautiful. “On warm, rainy nights, the spotted salamanders emerge from underground and walk 100 yards down to vernal ponds — wetlands that only exist in the spring and beginning of summer — to breed,” he said. “It’s a highly ritualized, synchronized thing that they do: Coming up out of the forest floor, they amble down to the water’s edge, and a male and female do this very intricate nose rubbing. They swim together, then apart, and the male swims down and leaves a little mushroom, a sperm-containing sack, and the female dives down, picks it up and implants it in her. It is a bizarre, aquatic ballet. In a few small spots in the city, it’s happening, right now.”
Most animals make city living better, or more interesting, but animals that eat rats might be especially welcome. Coyotes from the Bronx have devoured many rats in Riverside Park and Central Park, and in April a coyote was sighted all the way down in Chelsea. Smaller rat catchers, like foxes, are not uncommon in London, but they are rare in New York. We don’t make it easy for them. If you’re a fox or a coyote coming in from the countryside, you might try to stick with what you know: dirt, low cover, bushes that hug the ground. You would follow the rail lines, which are open to the air but still overgrown in places, or the parkways, the great green strips that Robert Moses built, or even the older, abandoned Long Island Motor Parkway, between Alley Pond Park and Cunningham Park, in eastern Queens. You would follow them until the concrete takes over completely. And then? Well, it gets harder. (It’s worth noting that probably the greatest predator of rats in Manhattan right now is the red-tailed hawk, which of course moves with far more freedom.)
In Central Park, I met Timon McPhearson, a professor of urban ecology at the New School. McPhearson studies how animals and plants get from one place to the next; for the last 10 years, he has been thinking about how to connect big “reservoirs of biodiversity,” like Central Park, to everything else. Even things as small as the walled-in tree pits all along the sidewalk outside the park. “That’s a dot,” he said, pointing to one. “I want to connect the dots.” Sometimes, as in the case of the tree pits, connecting the dots can be as simple as adding a green strip between them. Open up the sidewalk a little, add some dirt, pull a few benches apart and, presto, all kinds of animals suddenly have a space for darting and hiding. Or run a pipe under the road, maybe put some soil in there to make it slightly more comfortable. “It’s all open,” McPhearson said. “You just need to start thinking about negative spaces, spaces that aren’t being used for anything else.” Most of McPhearson’s proposals for building a connected city are modest (“If you can imagine where to put a bike rack, you could imagine where to put a green element”). But he has a larger vision of what the city might be, which begins with turning five blocks of Midtown into a pedestrian plaza with a natural, historic creek running through the middle. “That would be the new, future park,” McPhearson said. “The whole world would gasp.” It wouldn’t be cheap, but the countervailing revenue potential in real estate is huge; according to McPhearson, a tree in front of a house increases that house’s value by as much as 15 percent. A new ecological infrastructure could have an impact worth billions of dollars, not just in the form of pricier lofts and storefronts but in the form of better mental and physical health. We are fundamentally natural beings, as McPhearson points out, and we are drawn inexorably to wild spaces, no matter how small — an affinity that E. O. Wilson, drawing from Erich Fromm, called biophilia. (“Mysterious and little-known organisms live within walking distance of where you sit,” Wilson wrote in 1984. “Splendor awaits in minute proportions.”) McPhearson’s fundamental point is that spaces where animals can move freely are good for people too.
The animals will come if we let them. Northern Manhattan alone has six large parks, and it is connected by five bridges to substantial woodlands in New Jersey, the Bronx and the forested suburbs beyond. In recent years, woodchucks have begun to make their way into Manhattan from the north. They are leaving the suburbs for the same reason rats began heading uptown long ago: overpopulation. As farming near the city has subsided, the woods have returned, and with the woods the wildlife. It’s natural dispersal, driving the woodland creatures to follow the landscape into the city. Soon, thanks to a series of city- and state-sponsored greenway projects, the woods in the highlands that spill down to the Hudson will be interconnected, and a path will run along the river from the northernmost point of Manhattan down to the Battery — a great route for a bike ride or run, and a new, complete byway for the wild things coming down from the north. A fisher, a sort of weasel that preys on rodents, was seen in the Bronx last summer. That was unusual, but there could be more, moving farther south, as the paths into the city ease. When I was walking with Leslie Day through Fort Tryon Park, the heath was beginning to come in, shades of purple and lavender against the brown and gray. We stared out at the great gray river, treetops tumbling down to its shore, and I mentioned how it was interesting that all these animals would come into the city, and that so many would choose to stay. “Oh, but just look at what’s here!” Day said, and she swept her arm across the vernal land. — Ryan Bradleyapril | The New York Times
Directed by Tony Silver and produced by Tony Silver and Henry Chalfant, it was awarded the Grand Prize for Documentaries at the 1983 Sundance Film Festival. STYLE WARS is regarded as the indispensable document of New York Street culture of the early ’80s, the filmic record of a golden age of youthful creativity that exploded into the world from a city in crisis.
STYLE WARS captured the look and feel of New York’s ramshackle subway system as graffiti writers’ public playground, battleground and spectacular artistic canvas. Opposing them by every means possible were Mayor Edward Koch, the police, and the New York Transit Authority. Meanwhile MCs, DJs and B-boys rocked the city with new sounds and new moves and street corner breakdance battles evolved into performance art.
New York’s legendary kings of graffiti and b-boys own a special place in the hip hop pantheon. STYLE WARS has become an emblem of the original, embracing spirit of hip hop as it reached out across the world from underground tunnels, uptown streets, clubs and playgrounds.
"A breakthrough documentary."— A.O. Scott, The New York Times
“The best hip hop film ever made. Reveals hip hop in its purest state, capturing it before it was part of pop culture and a source of revenue for major corporate entities. The film shows the innocence of these young innovators who are considered forefathers of a movement bigger than they could have ever imagined. A superb job of showing the bond between the different elements, displaying how the art, music and dance are interchangeable and maintain a close symbiotic relationship.” — Insomniac DVD Highlights
"The Holy Grail of hip-hop movies." — XLR8R
“Hip hop’s Rosetta Stone.” — VIBE
Style Wars (1983) - the critically-acclaimed cult classic was originally broadcasted on PBS and won the grand prize for documentaries at the 1984 Sundance Film Festival
Henry Chalfant – Producer
Starting out as a sculptor in New York in the 1970s, Henry Chalfant turned to photography and film to do an in-depth study of hip-hop culture and graffiti art. He became one of the foremost authorities on New York subway art and other aspects of urban youth culture. His photographs record hundreds of ephemeral art works that have long since vanished. To Chalfant’s credit are three of the most influential documentations of aerosol art. He co-authored the book Subway Art (1984) with Martha Cooper and he co-produced the film Style Wars (1983) with the film’s director Tony Silver. In 1987 Chalfant co-authored the book Spraycan Art with James Prigoff, documenting the global expansion of graffiti. Each one of these documentary efforts have been embraced by the international graffiti community and they have served as cultural blueprints for graffiti art movements around the world. Chalfant also directed with Rita Fecher a documentary on South Bronx gangs, Flyin’ Cut Sleeves (1994) and he directed From Mambo to Hip Hop (2006) portraying two generations of Latino youth growing up in the South Bronx.
Tony Silver – Director / Producer (April 15th, 1935 – February 1st, 2008)
Tony Silver was a native of New York City, where he attended Columbia University and briefly pursued an acting career, before becoming the leading independent maker of movie trailers on the east coast. He began making his own films in 1970. Following Style Wars, he directed and produced a feature documentary, Arisman Facing The Audience, tracing the artistic and spiritual journeys from Manhattan to Guangzhou, China of Marshall Arisman, master painter, teacher, and storyteller, Marshall Arisman. Admired worldwide for uncompromising images of worldly violence and terror Arisman is seen as “an enchanter, a shaman,” perceived as a painter of “serial killer syndrome,” and the possessor of knowledge about the afterlife, that, says a colleague, he “won’t tell us [about it], he’s so fucking perverse.” Silver’s public television film Anita Ellis, For The Record documents a rare recording session by the legendary jazz-pop singer with the pianist Ellis Larkins. Broadcast on PBS and in England, Germany and Scandinavia. Silver’s first film, The Miss Nude America Movie (1970), documents the strange journey of a wheelchair-bound boy, founder of Naked City, Indiana. The film was shown at the New York Film Festival.
CES 2015: Death of Laptop, Desktop PCs Isn't About to Happen
IN-DEPTH ANALYSIS: There is a renewed interest in laptops and desktop this year at the CES, and the manufacturers are ready for the attention.
An awful lot of smartphones continue to sell each year as old ones die and new ones become hot items -- all told, a shade more than 1 billion in 2013 worldwide, and an expected 1.3 billion in 2014. The same goes for tablets, which are expected to sell nearly 200 million units worldwide in 2015. Despite those formidable sales numbers, there is still a strong market for laptop and desktop PCs, no matter what trends the market research people are producing. About 300 million portable PCs were sold in 2014, a tick up from the previous year, and prospects look good for sales increases to continue in 2015. The facts are that smartphones and tablets simply cannot do what larger-form PCs can do, especially in a business setting. They certainly cannot perform as quickly or efficiently as laptops or desktop PCs for most of the work force. In fact, smaller form computers never will be able to do what larger ones can do. Period.
While smartphones and tablets drew most of the attention at the Consumer Electronics Show last year, things have cooled down a bit in 2015. Tablet sales, especially by the Apple and Google knockoffs, have dropped, and even iPads and Android tablets have seen sales level off or drop in the last 12 to 18 months. Thus, there is a renewed interest in laptops and desktop this year at the CES, and the manufacturers like Dell, Hewlett-Packard, Lenovo, Acer, Asus, Samsung, and Toshiba -- to name just a few -- were ready for the attention. "When your kid goes off to college, are you going to give him only a cell phone?" Dell Inc. founder and CEO Michael Dell asked recently during an interview in Laguna Beach, Calif. Dell told eWEEK that the PC sales are on the rise for his company, which recently received an order for 10,000 laptops from one customer. Dell also said his PC business is posting a much larger margin ["multiple times the profit"] than the slim 1 percent profit margin its biggest competitor, China's Lenovo, shows in financial statements. Dell said PCs will continue to play an increasingly important role for his company. PCs are important for everything from customer acquisition to having a complete enterprise offering, he said. Despite the declining sales worldwide over the past three years—due in large part to the growth in popularity of tablets—PCs are still a fundamental computing tool for much of the world's population. That is even truer in developing markets, where hardware continues to be a high priority. Businesses in these countries still need networking and other technologies, "but they start with the basics," Dell said. "If you give people the tools they need to make them more productive, you give them a PC," he said. "Maybe not just a PC; maybe a PC and a smartphone. But the PC is important." In 2015, the number of PC shipments—which include traditional desktops and notebooks as well as premium ultramobile systems—will climb to almost 317 million units, up about 2.9 percent from this year and almost equaling the number of units shipped in 2013. Much of that will come in the commercial PC space, according to Ranjit Atwal, research director at Gartner. "2014 will be known by a relative revival of the global PC market," Antwal said. "Business upgrades from Windows XP and the general business replacement cycle will lessen the downward trend, especially in Western Europe. This year, we anticipate nearly 60 million professional PC replacements in mature markets."
CES 2015 was crammed with innovative new laptop and desktop PCs from a variety of vendors. The vast majority of them are running Intel's new fifth-generation Core Broadwell processors, the first to leverage the company's latest 14nm process and architecture. Toshiba, Acer, Hewlett-Packard, Dell, Samsung, Asus and Lenovo are in an intense battle for market share by adding features, lowering weights and prices, and increasing battery life in a flotilla of new personal computers that can put mere 6-month-old laptops to shame. New PCs at CES Here is an overview by respected IT analyst Charles King on new PCs from three major PC vendors -- HP, Dell, and Lenovo -- being shown at CES 2015: --HP is a longstanding CES attendee, and the company arrived this year with a host of new products and some excess baggage -- the fact that this will be the last CES HP attends as a unified company. On the PC side, HP's new Pavillion Mini Desktop and Stream Mini Desktop squeeze the performance of a conventional PC into a package that's approximately 6-inch x 6-inch x 2-inch in size, and weighs less than 1.5 pounds. What makes the Mini products run are fanless Intel CPUs that don't require mechanical cooling. Despite their diminutive size, HP's Minis can be upgraded/expanded and have numerous ports for attaching external devices.
HP - Envy Phoenix Desktop - Intel Core i7 - 16GB Memory - 1TB + 16GB Hybrid Hard Drive - Black | Retail: $1,199.99
The company calls its new HP ZBook 14 and 15u the industry's thinnest, lightest workstations, and is positioning them for mobile-minded engineers and designers. HP is pitching its new ultra HD monitors as "interactive virtual reality displays" that enable a variety of immersive experiences. The new Officejet 8040 AIO printer includes Neat software that allows the device to seamlessly integrate with mobile devices and also supports HP's Instant Ink discount ink replacement service. --Dell hasn't had a high profile at recent CESs, but the company hit the show this year with an expanded portfolio of laptops and tablets that earned it seven CES Innovation awards -- the most in the company's history.
Dell - Precision Tower Workstation - 1 x Intel Xeon E5-1620 v3 3.50 GHz - Black | Retail: $1,859.99
Leading Dell's pack is the new Venue 8 7000 that at 6mm qualifies as the world's thinnest tablet (it also captured a coveted CES Best of Innovation award). Other award-winning Dell products include the redesigned XPS13 laptop, which packs a 13-inch display into an 11-inch laptop frame; the XPS15, which is now available with a 4k ultra HD display; the Alienware Area 51 gaming desktop; the Latitude Education 13-inch laptop and Mobile Cart; the Inspiron 15 7000 Series laptop; and two new monitors -- the curved Dell UltraSharp 34 and the Dell UltraSharp 27, a 5K ultra HD display. The company also introduced new Alienware 15 and 17 laptops and said it is adding Intel RealSense 3D Camera Front F200 to Inspiron 15 5000 Series laptops and Inspiron 23 all-in-one (AIO) desktops. --Lenovo arrived at CES shortly after manufacturing its 100 millionth Thinkpad laptop and introduced a host of new products to that line. The pick of the litter is the new ThinkPad X1 Carbon, which the company calls the world's lightest 14-inch performance ultrabook. The ThinkVision 24 is an attractive new borderless display, and the company's new Thinkpad Stack offers an innovative approach to taking accessories like back-up batteries, storage and Bluetooth speakers on the road.
Lenovo - ThinkStation P500 Tower Workstation - 1 x Processors Supported - 1 x Intel Xeon E5-1630 v3 Quad-core (4 Core) 3.70 GHz - Multi | Retail: $2,098.69
Lenovo also highlighted new additions to its respected Yoga line, including the YOGA Tablet 2 featuring the compa-ny's AnyPen technology which allows owners to use a common pencil or pen for handwriting and navigation instead of a special stylus. There were also two new YOGA 3 models (11-inch and 14-inch) and three new YOGA Thinkpads (12-inch, 14-inch and 15-inch) that are designed to blend the best aspects and features of the company's signature laptop lines. — Chris Preimesberger | EWeek
