You are currently viewing the stories for “December 2001.”
We were on our way to a downtown loft party in Emily's Volkswagen, Emily, Kay and I, when we stopped off to see the ruins of a fire in the waterfront district, on Thritieth Street and Twelfth Avenue. This whole neighborhood, along the western spine of Manhatan, has always been mysterious to me, with its deserted steamship offices that look [...]
The city issued the “gridlock alert” days as far back as November and Mayor Giuliani encouraged all of us to utilize mass transit. At the same time, he gave cryptic warnings of "zero tolerance" for all motor vehicle violations... So it’s December 21, the last full weekday before Christmas Eve, as well as one of the aforementioned gridlock alert days. [...]
"If I should die tonight, oh baby, though it be far before my time. I won't die, no. Sugar, yeah, cause I've known you. How many eyes have seen their dream? Oh, how many arms have felt their dream? How many hearts, baby, have felt their world stand still? Millions never, they never, never…and millions never will, they never will." [...]
1. Here in New York I have been put in charge of a small tropical fish. Its owner has gone to Los Angeles to organize Vanity Fair's annual Oscars party and won't be back until the end of the month. Her parting instructions were minimal. I was just asked to sprinkle a little fish food on it from time to [...]
“It is the city of mirrors, the city of mirages, at once solid and liquid, at once air and stone.” --Erica Jong I’ve started to go running at 6 am. I am not a competitive runner: I don’t run daily, I don’t clock mileage and I don’t sport special athletic duds. I am a runner for time. Well slept, [...]
A little before 2 a.m. on Saturday, December 1, 2001, I decided to check out the George Harrison memorial that fans were spontaneously holding at Strawberry Fields in Central Park. On my way I stopped by a deli on the southwest corner of 72nd and Broadway first for a coffee. Chun Kim, 43, a friendly balding man who'd emigrated from [...]
My buzzer rang. It was 4:30 in the afternoon on one of those eerie perfect blue sky 60 degree days--eerie partly because it was late January, and partly because in my neighborhood, Tribeca, those kind of days, for obvious reasons, never fail to trigger a deep foreboding. "Who is it?" I yelled into the intercom. I wasn't expecting anyone. "The [...]
I went straight for the headliners, Sylvester and Bellamy: two huge pieces of weatherproofed steel, each 16 feet high and a few inches thick curved into two distinct gigantic spirals about 50 feet in diameter. You can walk into both, in the spaces between the huge curves of steel, and you keep going until you the material runs out, at [...]
