At the foot of the Flatiron Building 1903

[goback3spaces]

Voh-doh-di-oh-doh. 23 Skidoo. I'll kiss la later, I'm eatin' a potato.

[marty1901]

This was filmed during the great Hat-Holding Windstorm of 1903...many ppor souls lost their derbys that day.

[rclark231]

I just luv the ladies long skirts, imagine what they had to go thru every day to get dressed up and go out... No throwing on shorts and a tube top LOL...

notice how everyone( men and women) are wearing hats. I remember my grandfather used to always wear a hat when he went out... How times have changed in such a relatively short time..

[mrthebillman]

'Black' was the color of the day !

[LandondeeL]

Forget about that lady with the cell phone in that Chaplin movie. At 0:22, there's a woman with a child, holding a HULA-HOOP, more than 50 years before the fact!

[JALflight1628]

@LandondeeL ha. actually, hula hoops have been around since ancient times...

[LandondeeL]

@JALflight1628 That was supposed to be tougne-in-cheek. It's probably just a hoop for a hoop skirt. And remember at 0:28, the wind does not discriminate!

[ZZAZZAAZZA]

'What a terribly windy Monday!', they all must have thought...

[RippleAffectMedia]

Wow, so interesting to me. People in their everyday life like us. I always imagine them as stiff and stern, but this shows we are all human at any point in time and they are just like us, maybe one day they will watch our daily lives in amazment. Nice to see some emotion from the time at 1:22 laughter!. I wonder what they were doing and thinking...

[webmail111]

1:40 key stone cop

[webmail111]

1:40 key stone cop?

[JLogic72]

I work across the street from this building now (2010) and i walk past this exact spot everyday. It blows my mind the history and the simple moments in time that we never really think about. The random moments in time.... like this...

[NYC1927]

You also have to wonder if the ladies 'knew' what they were doing by walking by this corner, sort of knowing they'd be 'giving the fellas a little peek'! LOL! I guess that would have 1903's version of "Girls Gone Wild"? LOLLOL!

[NYC1927]

Very cool! Love seeing old footage like this. Really interesting re the "23 Skiddoo" origins. I never knew that.  What else I like to think of is 'who' were these people, 'what' were they like (personality wise), 'where' were they going and 'what' the camera man may have told them if they asked what he was filming this for. None of these people could have ever imagined that 106 years later, we'd be watching them on our laptop computers on a service called youtube. Amazing!!

[xandervaliya]

That same spot in the Flatiron now houses a Sprint store. Luckily the glass and cast iron is the same. You might notice it at the end of the latest Sprint commercials.

[mgenigma5]

I'm so fascinated by people from this era. The dress is so cool, the pace is slower... the thoughts are different. The human is the same being though.

Interesting that men wanted to see a clothed, booted ankle and that was a huge turn on.

[perplexiglass]

Neat! I was looking into the origin of '23 skidoo' . I'd say the Flatiron skirt-blowing theory is about right.  You can see some of the gentlemen in the video getting an eyeful. What a fun piece of history. :) Thanks for posting the video!

[battlestarnebula]

particularly two dudes at 1:55 following a lady with their eyes

[rudeboyjohn]

At :28 the black guy looses his hat...LMFAO!!!

[battlestarnebula]

LOL was about to comment the same thing :P

[jknjit5]

you can see their panties a couple of times when their dresses blow up

[nigieworld73]

Going by the description of the video this is the first up-skirting video

[nicktucci1]

simply amazing... I love it!

[uzebdrumz]

That's artspeak for: "people walking on the street."

[MarioOhlert]

This reminds me of the video evidence for the demolishing of the Wobbly Bridge in London, England; circa 2000.

.

The bridge was closed for modifications correcting the uncomfortable affects, then re-opened.

Cheers.

from,

del-boy.

[PoetReid]

The Flatiron Building, upright, presses

recalls of past windblown dresses.

1902 youths whistle, lie,

in wait to sight some naked lisle

stockings not seen often while

long skirtings are sad iron affairs.

[PoetReid]

(cont)

Up till roughly '23, the coppers

flushed the males: "Skidoo!"

To be sure by then those Irishmen

had modernized their oath to "Scram!"

To loiter was a pastime, wholly

mastered by old New York's men,

in grunts and gusts

against crinolines,

at, and with, Burnham's erection.

[dino47]

this is where men would view a peek of an upblown skirt and cops would perform the ole 23 skiddo / being it's 23rd street

[uzebdrumz]

The juxtaposition of anthropological forms within the steady frame against a backdrop of pre-modern urban sub-cultural materials is reminiscent of Voyager's journey through the cosmos...

[daburke9]

Yeah, I was just thinking that!

[uzebdrumz]

nice...lol

[MarioOhlert]

Great minds think alike.

Cheers.

from,

del-boy.

[haynespeterson]

truly amazing footage.

[MarioOhlert]

Is it amazing or is the fact of it being still in existence the amazing thing?

.

Or is it just YouTube that is amazing?

.

Cheers.

from,

del-boy.

[haynespeterson]

Having such early "everyday" footage is what's amazing to me. So yeah, the fact that it's still in existance.

[uzebdrumz]

Within this cityscape there are intersecting moments of movements; people shuttling about via foot. This motion, or impending motion, is one of the many elements factoring into this composition creating a reflexion of the daily commute with a variety of class distinctions, cultures, and demographics; the resulting experience ranging from voluntary isolation to forced interaction and ultimately defining the subjective metaphorical mythology of our society.