Nikola Tesla spent the last 10 years of his life making daily pilgrimages from the New Yorker Hotel to Bryant Park to see the pigeons, especially a particular gray and white one. He wasn’t the only New Yorker preoccupied with pigeons: producer Benjamen Walker reports on other real-life and fictional New York men who liked them as well.
Related:
Pigeons made the news last year when New York City Councilmember Simcha Felder announced a plan to ban pigeon feeding and fine lawbreakers $1,000. Listen to this Brian Lehrer segment on “The Pestilence of Pigeons“:
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Author Andrew D. Blechman’s book Pigeons: The Fascinating Saga of the World’s Most Revered and Reviled Bird is considered by many to be the modern-day pigeon bible. Blechman was a guest on The Leonard Lopate Show last year. Listen to the segment:
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January 24th, 2008 at 1:48 pm
awesome video on pigeons or pigioni as they say in italian. i love the outro with bert singing. classic.
January 26th, 2008 at 8:45 am
excellent work - makes me think about pigeons in a whole new light. and want to see ghost dog again.
January 27th, 2008 at 11:50 am
What a top movie and a great tribute to the best birds in town. Nice one.
Your pal, Brian Pigeon
January 31st, 2008 at 2:39 pm
The video streaming software on this site is inferior to what is commonplace today.
Look at YouTube and other video sites. They are able to provide videos of good appearance in a fraction of the time your current SW does.
Update your software to current day standards.
February 8th, 2008 at 8:46 am
This video made me cry. I haven’t thought of this since I was a kid. My neighbor used to let me take care of his pigeons in Laurelton Queens, too bad his children didn’t care about them. I was fascinated by the sight of them and I can remember as a kid, I was totally distraught when my friends and I would pick them off the top of telephones and buildings with our slingshots. Maybe this is the thing for me to work on. Thank you WNYC.