New York is aglow in holiday glory. Within walking distance of my home are houses and apartment buildings adorned in beautiful lights and holiday displays. Midtown Manhattan is deluged with the stunning accoutrements of the holiday season, and parts of the outer boroughs and the suburbs have homes that take yuletide cheer to new heights…. Read more »
This week begins the Year of the Pig according to the Chinese zodiac calendar. All New York City public schools are closed for the celebration. There will be a big parade in downtown Flushing this weekend and there is no shortage of family-friendly events in the city to celebrate. We commonly called this Chinese New… Read more »
New York is beautiful during the holidays. Despite the cold and the crowds our city’s holiday spirit is impressive to behold. It’s easy to get caught up in the zeitgeist of the yuletide season and commit to things that will bear more misery than joy, though. Here are some things you may want to avoid…. Read more »
The holidays, as we collectively call them, start in earnest while we are still recovering from Halloween and preparing for Thanksgiving. Once Thanksgiving is over, all bets are off and we are surrounded by the Christmas season until we crawl back to work on January 2nd to the grim realities of our winter lives. Holiday… Read more »
New York both captivates and repels its citizens with its constant hustle, and New Yorkers have to be reminded to stop and enjoy being a tourist in their own city. The holidays are a time of year when it’s easy to be such a local tourist. While the holidays brings hordes of maddening crowds that… Read more »
Among the many holiday traditions that we go through are finding the fine balance between indulging in all the requisite holiday traditions with children while not creating a burning hatred of the holidays within yourself. Considering that I live in one of the largest urban centers of the known universe, I am very much averse… Read more »
Last year I was waiting for a bus on Main Street in Flushing when the guy on line next to me began complaining. “You see that snowflake, right there,” he said to the woman he was with, referencing a large snowflake make of lights suspended over the heavily-trafficked street. “That represents everything wrong with society… Read more »
New York City is largely spared the horrors of Black Friday shopping brawls. A security guard was trampled to death a few years ago in Valley Stream, Long Island, right outside of Queens, but within the five boroughs we have a better history of crowd control. And few of our poor people have cars. There’s… Read more »
The holidays are a time when many of us are reluctantly pushed into public places to go through the motions about being happy about the holidays. Sometimes the very happiness of the holidays are mocking and angering. Sometimes the very image of others’ happiness is a slap in the face, and the holidays give other… Read more »
As we head into the holidays, New York is a city divided. It has always been a place of vigorous debate and contested policies, but the latest controversy over race and policing has dialed up the vitriol and indicates a further departure from civilized debate. The past summer Eric Garner, a black man on Staten… Read more »
