About Jesse Coburn

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Before the Spate of LES Towers, There Was Confucius Plaza

This week, we continue our series of deep dives into the histories of storied addresses.

(Photo by Jesse Coburn)

(Photo by Jesse Coburn)

Shopkeepers across the Bowery tracked its progress: 42 stories, 43, and finally 44. Pedestrians on Canal Street craned their necks up to take in the expanse of brick that stretched across the slow curve of its facade.

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Over 200 Arrested As Thousands Return to the Streets to Protest Police Killings

(Photo: Christopher Troost)

(Photo: Christopher Looft)

Thousands of demonstrators returned to the streets of New York last night to protest a grand jury’s decision not to indict a white police officer in the death of Eric Garner, an unarmed black man, in July. For hours the marches fanned out across the city, snarling traffic in downtown Manhattan and Brooklyn, and leading to more than two hundred arrests. The charges included disorderly conduct and obstructing vehicular traffic, according to the New York Police Department.
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Yup, Even Your Christmas Tree Vendor Is a Chain, But You Gotta Love Em Anyway

If you’re the type that curses every time you pass a Dunkin’ Donuts, we’ve got some bad news: you may have bought your Christmas tree from a chain.

You wouldn’t know it from the name, but SoHo Trees doesn’t just do business at the corner of Sixth Avenue and Spring Street. Each year owner Scott Lechner oversees, give or take, nine locations throughout the city. He claims his stock of 2,500 trees is the largest in the country.
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The Bushwick Trailer Park Lives On! (Sort Of)

(Photo: Jesse Sposato)

No, that crow isn’t alive. (Photo: Jesse Sposato)

Ever wonder what happened to all those trailers from the Bushwick Trailer Park, the arts collective/trailer haven that popped up on a vacant Bushwick lot a few years ago? Shortly after the park’s demise in 2011, collective founder Hayden Cummings told City Room that a third of them were sold on Craigslist; but what about the rest? Well, a few — four Airstreams from the 1950s through the ’70s, to be exact — have made their way to a smallish lot on the border of Greenpoint and Williamsburg. And Morgan O’ Kane, a banjo player and subway busker, lives in one of them.
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