I think the 4:30 Movie week long series - Japanese monster movies, WWII week, etc - is where I learned there was such a thing as curating.

I mostly remember this as where I learned to appreciate black & white Hollywood movies from the 30s and 40s, largely for their endless stock of tough-talking, sharp-witted dames.

My pals and I would stay up late (on either Friday or Saturday?) for the Channel 5 movie, which came a built-in aura of "quality" and served as a kind of gateway art-house drug. I distinctly recall two life (or at least 10-year-old mind) altering nights with the Channel 5 Late Movie, one spent with 2001, the other with a moderately edited cut of Straw Dogs. No wonder my cohort of boys grew up a little bent!

Not exactly the neighborhood I grew up in, but close enough. h/t That Bitch!

florent, by flickr user DrewVigal

I wasn't a regular at Florent, but had three to four good meals a year there while I lived in New York. (More before I got the day job in '99.) This tidbit from the NYT's coverage of the place closing kind of blew my mind:

On June 29 Florent will close. Its rent was to rise to more than $30,000 a month, said [owner] Mr. Morellet, now 54. He started out paying $1,350. The neighborhood, the city and the people who felt it belonged to them were different then.[full story]

30k a month!