I’m very sorry to learn from today’s New York Times that the white-haired gentleman with the elegant beard and wonderful lulling, trilling voice who sold vegetable peelers in Union Square and elsewhere has passed away. I am glad, though, to have learned his name.
From Howard Kaplan’s excellent 2006 profile in Vanity Fair:
Joe pushes his gear [...]
Justin Bond has a blog. A taste:
Actually my make-up was wind-swept and tear-stained already after being WHIPPED FROM PILLAR TO POST (OMG -What do you think that aphorism is referencing?) by that asshole Jack Frost when I was walking home from my shrink appointment, but DON’T EXPECT COMPLETE TRUTH in this blog and if you’ve [...]
My girlfriend, Liza, saw this yesterday on Nevins Street near the Gowanus Canal in Brooklyn.
Reporting from Slaughter Beach, Delaware, Ian Urbina has an article in today’s New York Times about the offshoring of the MTA’s Redbird trains to create artificial reefs, a combination of the subway and the natural world that I find fascinating.
In the last several years, the reefs have drawn swift open-ocean fish, like tuna and mackerel, [...]
My friend Luis Jaramillo is starting a new reading series at the Montauk Club, a Venetian Gothic palazzo in Brooklyn, complete with stained glass and mahogany—not to mention grandeur and decay. The first reading, with Alex Prud’homme and Kim Sunée, will be Wednesday, April 23.
Can’t say I shared Muschamp’s adoration of Frank Gehry, but I certainly marveled at his bravura essay on 2 Columbus Circle. Some excerpts:
Early on in the AIDS crisis, the city registered the cultural impact caused by the loss of gay artists. The effect produced by the loss of the gay audience is more insidious, however. [...]
I suppose it was bound to happen.
Last night, in Evergreen Video on Carmine St., I eavesdropped on another customer’s conversation, and then asked the clerk to confirm what I’d just heard, which was that my favorite video store was closing on June 30.
“Is it Netflix?” I asked, feeling remorse for having joined.
He shook his [...]
This week’s Time Out New York features my interview with Michael Lerner, author of Dry Manhattan: Prohibition in New York City. For more on the book, here’s a link to Pete Hamill’s review in The New York Times Book Review.
This fall I’m coordinating a reading series at the Educational Alliance of New York. (Usually Robert Marshall manages the events, but right now he’s busy with the obligations of his new novel, A Separate Reality.)
Mark your calendars:
Caleb Crain, Melissa Plaut, Brandon Stosuy
Tuesday, October 17, 7pm
Clifford Chase, Christopher Sorrentino, Dana Spiotta
Tuesday, November 28, 7pm
197 East [...]
Could’ve been the train delays or the general late-night stupor, but it wasn’t long before I swore I could see the screaming pope in the water stains above the Brooklyn-bound F platform at the Broadway-Lafayette station.
Study after Velázquez’s Portrait of Pope Innocent X, Francis Bacon