Very Old Stones at the Mercury Lounge

The Mercury Lounge is a well-known venue for live music. All sorts of distinguished and screwed up and talented and untalented musicians have played there since the place was founded in 1993. It’s been home to a great deal of rock music. Previously it was home to a different kind of rock. Before it was […]

Throw The Drummer A Bone

For the last five years I’ve played drums in a rock band named Honus Wagner, but now it seems that we’re breaking up, and I’m trying to reconcile myself to life without the drums. Of course I can still play the drums by myself, which is a joy in much the same way shooting a […]

Pageant: Where the Kissings Never Stops

My friend Jake is no head turner. He’s too skinny and short for most girls, including me, nonetheless he pulls chicks all the time. He’s a continuously evolving enigma. Whenever I see him he has a new girl. His luck began changing immediately after high school once he got into promoting clubs. He never stepped […]

Bad Public Art

The Smell of Shark

About a month ago, a terrible new smell turned up on North Moore Street in Tribeca. It did not coexist peacefully with the other smells on the street: the coffee and cooking smells from Bubby’s, a local hangout; the sweet, strong smell of olive oil stored in Hillside Imperial Foods; pepper and nutmeg smells from […]

Photographs of the World Trade Center, Before and After

These pictures were taken from Spring Street and Lafayette Street. And some from "before…"

The Undisturbed

First Cemetery–Chatham Square, on St. James Place, also very close to Confucious Square Second Cemetery–11th Street & 6th Avenue. Third Cemetery–21st Street & 6th Avenue. During the nineteenth century, the accelerating sprawl of New York City forced the relocation of almost all of Manhattan’s dead. From 1846 to 1851, nearly 20,000 bodies were moved off […]

Back Room Clown

It is the dulled, flat end of the summer; a warm Saturday night in the West Village, September, 1982. It is 4 a.m. We who had fawned and flounced and guzzled and still received no takers in the gay bars this evening have resigned ourselves to last-minute comfort in the bowels of the Christopher Street […]

Christina Ricci’s Primal Scream

“He tried to soundproof the basement, but he forgot about the air vents,” she says. “And I had an air vent that went from the basement right into my bedroom.” Christina describes Terry Richardson’s strategy for getting this picture: “He kept saying ‘Flirt with the teacher! Flirt with the teacher!'” She said. “It was really […]

Earth First (And Last)

Bill Dilworth may have one of New York’s most relaxing jobs. He is keeper of the New York Earth Room, a permanent installation by the artist Walter DeMaria, sponsored by the Dia Foundation. The work has been on display at the same location at 141 Wooster Street for over ten years, and Mr. Dilworth has […]

Thirteen Moments From Kate’s Paperie

Elisha Cooper, our staff illustrator, spent two weeks, though December 22, 2000, sitting at a small table amidst the bustle of Kate’s Paperie in Soho; he sat there all day in front of a stack of his book, A Year In New York, signing and drawing (everyone who bought one got a small portrait of […]

A Story About Identical Twins

In high school I was friends with two identical twins named Dan and Guy. They had long hair and beards and Dan played the Harmonica. They both did many drugs and sold drugs and got sent away to rehab a bunch of times. I was a little in love with both of them, Guy especially. […]