“The reader, the booklover, must meet his own needs without paying too much attention to what his neighbors say those needs should be.” —Theodore Roosevelt “We need to make books cool again. If you go home with somebody and they don’t have books, don’t fuck them.” ― John Waters When I first moved back… Read more »
In 2012, when Hurricane Sandy created shipping delays in the New York area, gasoline shortages arose quickly. Within the span of a week, 1970s-era gas lines formed on city streets. A cab driver I spoke with in the weeks after the hurricane told me he had woken up early that day and driven to Stamford,… Read more »
The stars were aligned the right way and we got the band back together. This past Saturday, the 2008 version of my band Blackout Shoppers played five songs at Hank’s Saloon. It was somewhat of a miracle that we managed to play a halfway-decent half set, given that we hadn’t played together in years and… Read more »
News came out this past week that the company I work for will be moving all of its New York offices to Times Square, where we already have a flashy facility. It will be a big to-do with renovation and creating an office of the future and I’m sure the office will live up to… Read more »
I came to know my friend Eric aka “Sleazy E” through his performances with a man known as Dirty Diamond, who sings raunchy parodies of Neil Diamond songs. Eric has since moved to Portland, Oregon after living in New Orleans and Philadelphia. Eric was coming back East for the holidays and I agreed to pick… Read more »
When the weather is bad, our family goes to the zoo. Our logic is this: Many of the indoor spaces will be overcrowded and the zoo will be sparsely populated. When you’ve lived in the city long enough, avoiding crowds is more important than avoiding pneumonia. So this past weekend’s snowfall made our planned trip… 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 »
I am now a jerk with two phones. My general disposition has not changed and I don’t behave differently towards people now that this has happened. I remain polite and respectful to everyone unless they prove themselves unworthy of respect. But by definition if you have two phones you are a jerk. I never wanted… Read more »
Changing jobs means figuring out new benefits and pay scales, learning new things and figuring out how to get your email to work correctly at your new job. In New York we have the additional calculus of our daily commute. My old job was in the Flatiron District, which from Flushing meant a bus to… Read more »
I drove to the New York Hall of Science with my children and found the usual driveway to the parking lot barricaded. A woman wearing the uniform of a U.S. Open worker stood there. There was no reason for her to be there. The Hall of Science has no tennis courts. She quickly waved through… Read more »
