Double Dutch's Forgotten Hip-Hop Origins. All art by Chris Kindred In November of 1982, the New York City Rap Tour came to Paris, bringing with it a culture that had never been seen in Europe— hip-hop.
The group of young and black New Yorkers wore a variety of leathers, sneakers, jumpsuits, puffer coats, caps, and hoodies. And, according to a write-up by David Hershkovits for Sunday News Magazine, they "blindsided the Europeans [in the audience] with their burst of personality and freedom of creation. " Afrika Bambaataa DJed. The Infinity Rappers rhymed next to him. The names of those DJs, rappers, and graffiti writers who performed that fateful day have become fixtures in hip-hop lore. "In France they were like, 'The American's are coming to town! ' "The tour in France was New York City rap, and [double dutch] was part of the street culture," Fab 5 Freddy says. But today double dutch has disappeared from hip-hop consciousness. So what happened to double dutch? So Mike set out to make an event where the females could shine.
British Pathé. Segregation Now ... 'Last of the Moken Sea Nomads' – A culture fallen victim to overfishing in Thailand. Origins Of Popular Jewish Surnames. Correction, Jan. 29, 2014: Some of the sources used in the reporting of this piece were unreliable and resulted in a number of untruths and inaccuracies.
The original post remains below, but a follow-up post outlining the errors, as well as further explanation, can be found here. Ashkenazic Jews were among the last Europeans to take family names. Some German-speaking Jews took last names as early as the 17th century, but the overwhelming majority of Jews lived in Eastern Europe and did not take last names until compelled to do so. A Square Grows at Yonge and Dundas. As Yonge-Dundas Square celebrates its tenth anniversary, a look at how it evolved.
By Jamie Bradburn When Yonge-Dundas Square officially opened to the public a little over ten years ago, in the spring of 2003, there was plenty of head-scratching. Touted as the latest curative for an ailing Yonge Street, it appeared to be little more than a granite-covered space amidst construction hoarding and video displays. 1939 New York in HD Color - Looks Like Filmed Yesterday! The Cults and Utopias of the 1890s. Historicist: Defending Fort York… From Ourselves. Local government wasn't always so keen on maintaining Fort York.
By David Wencer Entrance to Fort York, August 26, 1953. City of Toronto Archives. Fonds 200, Series 372, Subseries 1, Item 1832. Today, Fort York is generally considered to be one of Toronto’s most significant historic sites—which might lead you to believe the site has been consistently respected ever since the Americans left in August of 1813. Rise and fall of the boot-scraper - House & Home - Property. Known as a "decrottoir" in French, which taken literally implies the need to remove excrement, the cast-iron contraptions feature in London, New York and other major world cities but abound in Belgium's 18th and 19th century streets.
Nowhere is the implement crafted to scrape mud off shoes more visible than in this country, according to academics from the Free University of Brussels, or Universite Libre de Belgique. "Boot-scrapers were born at the same time as footpaths. This mundane contraption from daily life is a key to urban history," ULB history professor Christian Loir told AFP. "It is part of the history of walking in our cities. " Set in semi-circular niches beside the front doors of most homes, the ground-level scrapers have long fascinated the tens of thousands of expats sent to Brussels each year to work at the many EU-linked institutions and diplomatic missions. "I like to tell children they are the front doors of the house gnomes," said a blogger. (www.hallessaintgery.be) ( Historical Maps of Toronto. The Problematics of the Fake Harlem Shake. Cross-posted at Racialicious.
The Harlem Shake is a syncopated dance form that first appeared on the New York hip-hop scene in the early 1980s. Here is what it looks like: In 2012 music producer Baueer created an electronic dance tune, unfortunately calling it The Harlem Shake. Baueer’s song inspired an Internet meme in which people rhythmlessly shake their upper bodies and grind their hips in a tasteless perversion of the original dance. For example: This fake Harlem Shake meme has become so ubiquitous that it has been “performed” by the English National Ballet, and gone further globally with a video from the Norwegian army, and in Tunisia and Egypt, where the song and imitation dance has become a protest anthem.
A major problematic of this meme is that it takes an already marginalized group in America, one whose history and culture has often been appropriated and co-opted in fetishistic ways by the white majority, and makes a mockery of not just them, but an entire dance tradition. P.S. The Power of Culture: Plummeting Birth Rates in the 1960s. The ’60s is often held up as a time of dramatic upheaval in American life.
It brought us civil rights victories, the sexual revolution, the women’s movement, the gay liberation movement, and anti-war activism. It was, in short, antiestablishmentarian. Suffrage and suffering at the “Women’s Suffrage. Prohibition: What Did They Do With All the Booze?