The Puerto Rican Lockhorns Reunion

I moved to New York City on Friday, August 19, 1994. After twenty-one years in South Jersey and four more in Philadelphia, a move to New York seemed to be the most momentous event of my life. As I hooked my gypsy rental van around the Turnpike to face the skyline, even the cars’ lights [...]

Jeremy the Liar

“No, it should be to your left,” I whispered into my cell, trying not to disrupt the hushed conversations of the infatuated couples around me. Jeremy couldn’t find the bar, it was tucked away upstairs from a bakery, so I guided him to it over the phone. With each direction I spouted out, I grew [...]

My Technicolor Dreamcoat

When you buy a secondhand coat, you never really know what you’re getting into. The lining was a little ripped but something about this vintage coat spoke to me, though I couldn’t tell you what. This coat, with its uncelebrated designer, I found at Legacy on Thompson Street in SoHo. It is fitted on top, [...]

Mr. Beller’s Neighborhood’s Greatest Hits: A Truncated Retrospective

Hello. The 6th Anniversary of Mr. Beller’s Neighborhood is here, and the time has come to pay tribute to the site’s past. So many pieces are coming in all the time, piling up on the surface of the site, that it’s easy to forget how much terrific work has accumulated in the deeper layers of [...]

Mole Person

On my way down the steps I was stuck behind a man with a cane, so I missed the D train. In my head I said, “Curses,” then clarified out loud, “Not you,” to the guy with the cane. He had enough problems. I didn’t think the next train would be long, though, because it [...]

Sullivan Street News

I sent a valentine to Richie but the mailman brought it back. I have sent valentines to Richie every year since 1985, but I knew this day eventually would come: the valentine would be there, but Richie would be gone. Richie ran the news and candy shop on Sullivan Street in SoHo, just a few [...]

Art Star Wars

A ten-foot painted head bobs down Grand Street, feet furiously shuffling from below the neck. Close on his heels are three metallic-haired 20-year-olds dressed in flimsy black sheets, cinched in a manner that make them look like punk Roman centurions. I can tell I’m getting close. Destination: Deitch Projects gallery in SoHo. A few days [...]

A Bar Called Denial

It was my last few hours in New York City, enough time to swig several drinks with a friend before catching a shuttle to La Guardia. I was booked on a red-eye flight back to San Francisco, so with soliciting a few gin and tonics foremost in mind, I headed straight to the bar. Denial [...]

Outsiders at the Outsider Art Fair

At the Outsider Art Fair – held in the Puck Building from January 23rd-25th – there were as many men with ponytails as there were terms to describe the art they had come to buy: grassroots, vernacular, folk, visionary, Nueve Invention. Yet there was little question as to who were the most important artists in [...]

LE GAMIN

As most everyone by now knows, a little family of French bistros lies scattered over the lower half of Manhattan, as if arranged by the single pass of a great pepper mill. Named Le Gamin (save one Le Deux Gamin), each is a neighborhood place, a paradox of quiet and noisy, sunny and dark, boring [...]

Adrian Dannatt is not a man easily persuaded to perform manual labor, or labor of any kind. Anything that requires physical effort usually elicits from him an expression of mild horror and incredulity, as though you’d asked if he’d like to stroke a pet cockroach. Therefor it was a memorable occasion when I came upon [...]

Shelivedinpublic.Com

“I want to crawl head first into a small cave and curl up into a fetal position.” -From Tanya Corrin’s journal, February 7, 2001 Tanya Corrin and I are having brunch in Little Italy and discussing reality TV shows like ‘Survivor’ and ‘The Real World.’ She’s saying that she doesn’t think that they’re real at [...]