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Tenements and Tribulations

by 05/14/2023
Neighborhood: Greenwich Village

We moved to Greenwich Village in the mid-1980s, and at every landing of our fifth-floor tenement walk up there was a nose-full of tantalizing smells. This was in the very Italian section of the West Village, full of tenements that we called “V.I.V’s” or “Vertical Italian Villages.” The older folks, who sat out in front, chatting […]

Do You Have My Socks?

by 04/15/2023
Neighborhood: Upper East Side

I almost exclusively wear black no-show socks — mostly because I wear booties all winter or sneakers, neither of which warrant the obtrusive show of a sock. As such, I have ten pairs of basic black ones from Walmart, another four pairs of slightly different black ones from Duane Reade and one pair – my […]

Do You Have My Pants?

by 04/08/2023
Neighborhood: Upper West Side

Every now and then, someone in my apartment building posts a sign on the bulletin board next to the lobby elevators—often about something that was lost, or possibly taken by mistake, from either the laundry room or the lobby. Usually these notes are simple, straight-forward requests. A typical sign might read: “Lost in laundry room—pair […]

Chester to the Rescue

by 04/01/2023
Neighborhood: Upper West Side

Back then, I lived alone in a terrible apartment on the Upper West Side. I was twenty-six. After five years of shitty roommates, I’d decided to suck up the cost and make a go of it. The rent was $467 a month. This was actual money in 1985, which might be why I still remember […]

Harlem Superstar: DJ Hollywood

by 03/25/2023
Neighborhood: Harlem

Harlem Superstar: DJ Hollywood & the Birth of Hip-Hop This year the world is celebrating the 50th anniversary of hip-hop culture. While it includes elements of break dancing and graffiti, most people’s first thoughts about the genre go to the rappers and DJs behind the music. It has been written that the soundtrack to the […]

New Beginnings

by 02/18/2023
Neighborhood: Meatpacking District

“Careful with that!” I exclaimed to my new husband, Harry, as he carried my Art Deco stained glass window up the stairs to our new apartment. I had gotten the window, a gift from my parents, when I married Harry in 1967. We were both so excited to move into an apartment over a diner […]

From New York to Dallas and Back Again

by 02/11/2023
Neighborhood: Yorkville

When my mother and I returned to New York City in 1993 — following a short, confused stint in Dallas, Texas — we moved into an apartment on 83rd Street between York and East End avenues, in Yorkville. A few years earlier, at age seven, I had migrated to the city from Westchester County with […]

1982: Approaching the New Year

by 01/07/2023
Neighborhood: Harlem, Tribeca

The Times Square ball has dropped, giving birth to 1982, unnoticed by me and my friends who have been prowling the city streets for hours. We ricochet from one dimly lit bar to another, drawn to brain-damaging music and access to drugs. In the Mudd Club, where we’ve landed, the entrance to both bathrooms is […]

Washington Square, A Place Apart

by 12/03/2022
Neighborhood: Greenwich Village, West Village

On January 23, 1917, artists Marcel Duchamp and John Sloan, poet Gertrude Dick, and three actors from the Provincetown Playhouse broke into a hidden spiral staircase in the Washington Square Arch and ascended to the summit. They dangled Chinese lanterns and red balloons, fired off toy cap pistols, and galivanted until dawn, whereupon, with Bohemian […]

The Church of the Heavenly Vegetables

by 11/05/2022
Neighborhood: Upper East Side

I could never get over the thrill of walking into the Church of the Heavenly Rest through the side door on East 90th Street. The limestone turrets and stained-glass windows, reminiscent of Notre Dame, inspired a sense of awe It always took a few seconds for my eyes to adjust to the dim light and […]

Dead Weight

by 10/14/2022
Neighborhood: East Village, Greenwich Village

When I was a teenager, during the second half of the 1970s, I pretty much lived in Washington Square Park during the summer. I sometimes joke that in some ways I was raised there. In some ways that is not so funny. Yippies, Jesus Freaks, drug addicts, tourists, and street performers were my friends and […]

Marsha Hunt Visits The New York Times

by 10/09/2022
Neighborhood: Times Square

The black and white world has enchanted me since I was little. Those films are like fever dreams, so divorced from reality. And film noir is the most fevered dream of all – doomed men and women, gangsters, con-men and dupes, all trapped, all lost, all hopeless. It is hard to imagine these desperate characters […]