Up from the Streets

Up from the Streets
Author: Jeffrey Abt
Publisher: Elaine L. Jacob Gallery Wayne State University
Total Pages: 104
Release: 2001
Genre: Art
ISBN: 9780971097308

Picking Up

Picking Up
Author: Robin Nagle
Publisher: Macmillan + ORM
Total Pages: 276
Release: 2013-03-19
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1466836733

A “gripping” behind-the-scenes look at New York’s sanitation workers by an anthropologist who joined the force (Robert Sullivan, author of Rats). America’s largest city generates garbage in torrents—11,000 tons from households each day on average. But New Yorkers don’t give it much attention. They leave their trash on the curb or drop it in a litter basket, and promptly forget about it. And why not? On a schedule so regular you could almost set your watch by it, someone always comes to take it away. But who, exactly, is that someone? And why is he—or she—so unknown? In Picking Up, the anthropologist Robin Nagle introduces us to the men and women of New York City’s Department of Sanitation and makes clear why this small army of uniformed workers is the most important labor force on the streets. Seeking to understand every aspect of the Department’s mission, Nagle accompanied crews on their routes, questioned supervisors and commissioners, and listened to story after story about blizzards, hazardous wastes, and the insults of everyday New Yorkers. But the more time she spent with the DSNY, the more Nagle realized that observing wasn’t quite enough—so she joined the force herself. Driving the hulking trucks, she obtained an insider’s perspective on the complex kinships, arcane rules, and obscure lingo unique to the realm of sanitation workers. Nagle chronicles New York City’s four-hundred-year struggle with trash, and traces the city’s waste-management efforts from a time when filth overwhelmed the streets to the far more rigorous practices of today, when the Big Apple is as clean as it’s ever been. “An intimate look at the mostly male work force as they risk injury and endure insult while doing the city’s dirty work [and] a fascinating capsule history of the department.” —Publishers Weekly “[Nagle’s] passion for the subject really comes to life.” —The New York Times “Evokes the physical and psychological toll of this dangerous, filthy, necessary work.” —Nature “Nagle joins the likes of Jane Jacobs and Jacob Riis, writers with the chutzpah to dig deep into the Rube Goldberg machine we call the Big Apple and emerge with a lyrical, clear-eyed look at how it works.” — Mother Jones

Roll Up the Streets

Roll Up the Streets
Author: John Bladek
Publisher: Kane Press
Total Pages: 213
Release: 2010
Genre: Juvenile Fiction
ISBN: 9781935279624

Jake Machet has moved to a lousy little town filled with creeps and an ever-present stink that no one else notices. Along with his new friend Sammie, Jake probes the smelly underbelly of his new home, following the trail of stench straight to J.P. Rumblegut, corndog and doll maker extraordinaire. They uncover a hideous conspiracy involving sticky streets, sewage, doped-up corndogs, Space Planet Janet dolls, and a mysterious portrait of a beauty queen that won't stop frowning at him. Eventually Jake and Sammie discover the secret behind the brainwashing meatsticks... a plot to zombify the entire country!

Up from Orchard Street

Up from Orchard Street
Author: Eleanor Widmer
Publisher: Bantam
Total Pages: 402
Release: 2007-12-18
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0307418685

In the tradition of Like Water for Chocolate and A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, this exhilarating novel centered around a memorable immigrant family brings to vibrant life the soul and spirit of New York’s legendary Lower East Side. Up from Orchard Street... ...where three generations of Roths live together in a crowded tenement flat at number 12. Long-widowed Manya is the family’s head and its heart: mother of dapper Jack, mother-in-law of frail and beautiful Lil, and adored bubby of Elka and Willy. She’s renowned throughout the teeming neighborhood for her mouthwatering cooking, and every noontime the front room of the flat turns into Manya’s private restaurant, where the local merchants come to savor her hearty stews and soups, succulent potato latkes and tzimmes, preserved fruits and glorious pastries. She is just as renowned for her fierce sense of honor, her quick eye for charlatans, and her generosity to those in need. But Manya is no soft touch–except, perhaps, where her adored granddaughter Elka is concerned. It is skinny, precocious Elka who is her closest companion and confidante–and the narrator of this event-packed novel. Through Elka’s eyes we come to know the fascinating characters who come in and out of the Roths’ lives: relatives, eccentric locals, doctors, busybody neighbors–as well as the many men who try fruitlessly to win voluptuous Manya’s favors. We live through the bittersweet world of these blunt, earthy, feisty people for whom poverty was endemic, illness common, crises frequent, and zest for living intense. Money may have been short but opinions were not, and their tart tongues and lively humor invest every page. In this riveting story lies the heart of the American immigrant experience: a novel at once wise, funny, poignant, anguishing, exultant–and bursting with love.

Streets

Streets
Author: Bella Spewack
Publisher: Feminist Press at CUNY
Total Pages: 153
Release: 2017-03-15
Genre: History
ISBN: 1936932121

“A startling, clear-eyed” memoir of an immigrant girl’s childhood in early 20th century NYC from the journalist and Tony-winning co-author of Kiss Me Kate (Booklist). Born in Transylvania in 1899, Bella Spewack arrived on the streets of New York’s Lower East Side when she was three. At twenty-two, while working as a reporter with her husband in Europe, she wrote a memoir of her childhood that was never published. More than seventy years later, the publication of Streets recovers a remarkable voice and offers a vivid chronicle of a lost world. Bella, who went on to a brilliant career write for stage and screen with her husband Sam, describes the sights, sounds, and characters of urban Jewish immigrant life after the turn of the century. Witty, street-smart, and unsentimental, Bella was a genuine American heroine who displays in this memoir “a triumph of will and spirit” (The Jewish Week).

The Third Tower Up from the Road

The Third Tower Up from the Road
Author: Kevin Dolgin
Publisher: Santa Monica Press
Total Pages: 262
Release: 2009-06-01
Genre: Travel
ISBN: 1595808744

The Third Tower Up from the Road is a humorous and entertaining collection of travel essays made up of old favorites as well as new commentaries from Kevin Dolgin’s popular McSweeney’s Internet Tendency column, Kevin Dolgin Tells You About Places You Should Go. The work celebrates the distinctive qualities of locales the world over, and each globetrotting essay focuses on a specific place, capturing the flavors and cultures through individual observations and exceptional experiences. Funny, irreverent, and insightful, these writings eschew the bland, touristy veneer experienced by most travelers as they seek to discover what is special and unique about each destination. Covering a wide range of places and interests, from unusual experiences and humorous traveler’s foibles to voyages that are intensely personal and moving, the selected columns include "The Best Falafel in the World: Beirut, Lebanon," "The Door to Hell: Paris, France," "Kafka’s Erotic Dream: Prague, Czech Republic," "The Nesting Habits of Roman Cars: Rome, Italy," "Of Romans and Pussycats: Provence, France," and "The Third Tower Up from the Road: Huanghuacheng, China." Also featured is "The Corsican Swallowtail: Corsica, France," which was nominated for a Pushcart Prize.

Dancing in the Streets

Dancing in the Streets
Author: Judy Cooper
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2021
Genre: African American fraternal organizations
ISBN: 9780917860829

"Explores the history, social ties, fashion, dance, and music of second lines, participatory parades put on by New Orleans's network of social aid and pleasure clubs. "Dancing in the Streets" brings together historical photographs with the work of ten contemporary second line photographers, profiles all clubs active today, and explores the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on the tradition"--

All Hopped Up and Ready to Go: Music from the Streets of New York 1927-77

All Hopped Up and Ready to Go: Music from the Streets of New York 1927-77
Author: Tony Fletcher
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Total Pages: 512
Release: 2009-10-26
Genre: Music
ISBN: 0393076717

A penetrating and entertaining exploration of New York’s music scene from Cubop through folk, punk, and hip-hop. From Tony Fletcher, the acclaimed biographer of Keith Moon, comes an incisive history of New York’s seminal music scenes and their vast contributions to our culture. Fletcher paints a vibrant picture of mid-twentieth-century New York and the ways in which its indigenous art, theater, literature, and political movements converged to create such unique music. With great attention to the colorful characters behind the sounds, from trumpet player Dizzy Gillespie to Tito Puente, Bob Dylan, and the Ramones, he takes us through bebop, the Latin music scene, the folk revival, glitter music, disco, punk, and hip-hop as they emerged from the neighborhood streets of Harlem, the East and West Village, Brooklyn, the Bronx, and Queens. All the while, Fletcher goes well beyond the history of the music to explain just what it was about these distinctive New York sounds that took the entire nation by storm.

Living Up The Street

Living Up The Street
Author: Gary Soto
Publisher: Laurel Leaf
Total Pages: 178
Release: 1992-02-01
Genre: Young Adult Fiction
ISBN: 0440211700

In a prose that is so beautiful it is poetry, we see the world of growing up and going somewhere through the dust and heat of Fresno's industrial side and beyond: It is a boy's coming of age in the barrio, parochial school, attending church, public summer school, and trying to fall out of love so he can join in a Little League baseball team. His is a clarity that rings constantly through the warmth and wry reality of these sometimes humorous, sometimes tragic, always human remembrances.

All Hopped Up and Ready to Go: Music from the Streets of New York 1927-77

All Hopped Up and Ready to Go: Music from the Streets of New York 1927-77
Author: Tony Fletcher
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Total Pages: 513
Release: 2009-09-22
Genre: History
ISBN: 039333483X

From the acclaimed biographer of Keith Moon comes a vibrant picture of mid-20th-century New York and the ways in which its indigenous art, theater, literature, and political movements converge to create an original American sound.