All photos taken at Michael Musto’s 25th anniversary party and licensed by David Shankbone as Creative Commons 3.0 attribution.

Joan Rivers on stage, with Musto to her left and FifiBear on her right.

Michael Musto on stage with Joan Rivers looking on.

Rivers up close.

Joan Rivers enjoying the revelry.

Not just Obama – this woman was also selling John McCain and Sarah Palin condoms in Union Square today.  Yes it was her: the Obamacondoms.com lady.  All images licensed Creative Commons 3.0 attribution.

Below are three shots that I think remind the viewer of two things:  the immensity of New York City; and that it exists on a series of islands.  It’s such a large city that it’s easy to forget those.

All shots taken by David Shankbone and licensed Creative Commons 3.0 attribution.  All photos taken with the Samsung Memoir cameraphone.

The famous financial district in lower downtown with the Hudson River.  Taken from Jersey City’s Exchange Place train station.

Downtown Brooklyn with the East River seen from Pier 11 in Downtown Manhattan.

The Brooklyn Bridge with the Manhattan Bridge behind it, and the South Street Seaport in the foreground, taken from Pier 11 in Downtown Manhattan.  That’s one of the historic boats docked at the seaport’s museum.

Last night was a star-studded salute to one of the main reasons people pick up the Village Voice:  Michael Musto, who has written for the newspaper for 25 years.  Pick up his new book, Fork on the Left, Knife in the Back, and you’ll be as enchanted by his acerbic wit as is the rest of New York City.

Below are photos from the celebration, all taken by David Shankbone and licensed Creative Commons 3.0 attribution.

Joan Rivers hosted the party.

Countess LuAnn de Lesseps of the Real Housewives of New York

Irina Movmyga and artist Andres Serrano

Miss Dirty Martini, Michael Urie and Michael Musto

Ronnie Spector serenading Michael Musto

Ronnie Spector of The Ronettes

Joan Rivers enjoying Murray Hill’s performance.

Michelangelo Signorile and Linda Simpson.

Michael Urie of Ugly Betty.

Robert Verdi (center) and artist Robert Richards (right)

Burlesque sensation (and Karl Lagerfeld muse) Miss Dirty Martini.

Lisa Levy and David Shankbone (both of whom fought this People’s Court case for a dog rescue)

Epiphany, Brooke Crescenti and friend.

Party-goers

Robin Byrd

Musto and Judy Garland (Tommy Femia)

More party-goers

Unlike Snowmageddon 2010, Snowicane produced a good bit of snow.  The only thing keeping this from a complete blowout was that the snow was super wet.  It froze and accumulated during the night, but by late morning it mostly turned to slush.  The sky even cracked with sun for twenty minutes (last photo), and things started melting rapidly before the storm started up again, halfhearted.

I still tell you: we New Yorkers have become wimps with the snow.  So many people stayed home, yet the city was navigable.

Photos taken with my Samsung Memoir cameraphone.  All photos are licensed Creative Commons 3.0.

Snowicane-covered cars in Alphabet City, New York, 9 a.m.

Famous Katz’s Deli, 9 a.m. Snowicane.  You’re standing on the edge of the East Village,  staring across Houston Street at perhaps the most famous edge of the Lower East Side.

Snowblower outside of Red Square apartments on Houston; across the street begins the Lower East Side.

1st Avenue and Houston (the East Village) – man (I think) walking his dog in the Snowicane.

Wall Street, 9:30 a.m.  You can see it’s getting slushy.  It was quiet, many people stayed home and almost everyone else came to work in jeans and boots, which worked well in the conditions.

Looking north out a window in a stairwell toward the city from the financial district.  Click on the photo to see the slight outlines of the buildings in the distance obscured by the downfall.

A break in the storm over Wall Street.

Scott Lamb did a pretty cool post comparing the blizzards of New York’s past with the most recent.  Evidence that all three of these blizzards have been over-hyped for my city.  Take this shot from the 1899 storm:

Scott used this photo of Little Man from my blizzard post to represent 2010; click on it below to see more blizzard shots through time:

Below are 2010 photos of the Lincoln Memorial licensed Creative Commons 3.0:

Lincoln Memorial stock photograph

Wide angle Abe Lincoln

Winter Lincoln Memorial with sun spots.

Alex Turco’s Madonna/Louis Vuitton with a piece of “Green Marilyn” (cool exhibition):

My winter study of the Washington Monument, with the remnants of the 2010 blizzards, licensed Creative Commons 3.0:

Vietnam Veterans’ Memorial with the Monument.

Washington Monument with snow.

Washington Monument from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial with the frozen reflecting pool in the foreground.

Me with my sisters with the Monument burned into the sky.

This website receives an average of 800 to 1,000 article reads a day.  On days when I have a particularly interesting story, such as the Stefan de Rothschild Huffington Post hoax, it jumps to near 10,000 hits; whereas during periods of inactivity and neglect, it plummets to around 250.

Where does the traffic come from?  The answer is: not Wikipedia.

From the lead photo on Madonna’s article to that on the Dead Sea, my photography illustrates over 4,000 subjects on the English Wikipedia alone (far higher if you count all global Wikimedia projects).  On each of those photos are links back to this website.

And while Wikipedia is one of the 10 most-visited websites in the world, the reality is that it provides very little traffic to here.

I’ve run this blog since 2008 and I’ve long known that Wikipedia’s ability to drive traffic is relatively limited, at least when it comes to the author links on imagery.  In fact, the Google Analytics for my website tell me that Wikipedia is responsible for only 7% of all my traffic, despite having some very high profile photographs on the site.

As an illustration, yesterday, February 14, my photograph of Salman Rushdie was featured on the main page of the English Wikipedia for their “On this day…” factoid box:

1989 – A fatwa was issued for the execution of Salman Rushdie (pictured) for authoring The Satanic Verses, a novel Islamic fundamentalists considered blasphemous.

Wikipedia’s home page is one of the most viewed Internet pages in the history of the Internet; yesterday it received 4.4M hits.  Placement on this page immediately brings a wealth of visitors to the subject articles presented. Whereas Salman Rushdie’s Wikipedia biography typically receives 2.5K hits on an average day, Rushdie’s biography yesterday skyrocketed six times that number to 16.3K hits.

What about my portrait of Rushdie that also made its way on to this highly visible piece of web property? The photo on the article is hit–as in a person clicks on the image itself to make it larger–an average of 25 times a day on English Wikipedia. On February 14, the cropped version on Wikipedia’s home page caused that number to jump to 7,000.

How many of those 7,000 hits then went to explore the author of the photograph’s website?  Two (2).

The lesson is that if, like me, you are an artist who cares more about having his work seen, there are few better public places than Wikipedia as long as you are willing to be loose with the copyright.  But if you are reading Chris Silver Smith’s blog post about the “powerful” effect of traffic to your website via Wikipedia photography, I can attest that I have seen very little of such an effect.

In contrast, Andrew Sullivan at The Atlantic writing two short blog posts–Stefan de Rothschild and Susan Sarandon doesn’t know what Wikipedia is–brought tens of thousands of hits.  Sullivan drives more traffic than Wikipedia.