You are currently viewing the stories for “July 2026.”
Over the years I’d read about Kenny’s Castaways on Bleecker Street and how Patti Smith and other music luminaries played there. I didn’t realize, until recently, that I’d been there. I’d seen Big Joe Williams, the blues great, play there in 1982. This was when I was working as a building super at 258 Broadway. It was a live-in job, and [...]
Friends who don’t live in New York City often ask me what’s the toughest thing about living here. My go to answer is always: Finding a place to live. I want enough space for all my ridiculous possessions and fabulous frocks. I want my bed to not be part of the kitchen. Though the thought of grabbing a beer out [...]
When I was five, I learned poker. At seven, blackjack. But one of the most useful skills that I learned in my youth, which happened during school trips into the city, was how to tell the fake watches from the stolen real ones in a suitcase on the sidewalk. Maybe it’s a New York thing. You look. You lift. You [...]
On a sunny day in 1975, I went to Travis, Staten Island to photograph its annual Fourth of July Parade. The parade ended in a large schoolyard directly across the street from the home of my friend and fellow photographer John Rossi. As I review my 1975 Parade photographs, I see a more peaceful time in a NYC borough that [...]
