You are currently browsing the stories about the “Chelsea” neighborhood.
The pictures on this page are 360 panoramic images. If you do not have Quicktime (and you'll know if there are no pictures visible even after a minute), Download it here. These are not static pictures. You can move them left and right, up and down. To move the image: Hold down mouse button and drag mouse in desired direction. [...]
Quality of life during my ten-year stay in London Terrace Gardens (the ten-building brick behemoth spanning an entire square block at Ninth avenue and 23rd Street) was greatly enhanced by the presence of elevator men. These were resourceful men, mostly of Hispanic descent who grew up in Chelsea, who kept watch over the building, picked up your UPS packages, and [...]
A glass came flying through the air and smashed against the wall behind me. It appeared to be aimed at the DJ. He was standing next to me at the end of the bar. The guy who threw it was part of a group of men, slightly foreign, drunk, eccentric, who I had imagined, because of their accents, to be [...]
"Hello! If you would like a free internet website, plus a chance to make a lot of money, press one now."--Automated telephone sales pitch delivered on Easter Sunday My God, those heady months of January through April 13th, 2000, when every internet IPO went through the roof and Black Friday was a reference to a bad day in the market [...]
Charles McAlexander is a big man, maybe 220 pounds and 6 foot 1. He wears an old work shirt that used to be bright red but now is more of a calm royal maroon with the inscription of Brass Lab in gold cursive on the chest pocket of the left-hand side. The button up shirt is having trouble deciding which [...]
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 Thirtieth 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 neighborhood is barren of niceties, wide cobbled streets separate low buildings of a century past, warehouses of animal flesh with racks for hooks hanging out over the freight doors where trucks deliver their carcass-cargoes. In the pale dead winter afternoon I stumble over ice and snow blocked gutters to a set of heavy glass double doors into a narrow [...]
Manhattan just doesn’t make for good redneck living. You can't bag a 12-point buck, park a Ford F250, get a gun permit, or buy a tin of Skol in this city. If you like Nascar racing, the N.R.A., Rush Limbaugh, and personalized bug-deflectors, finding like-minded friends won’t be any easier. Worst of all, as far as redneck bars go, the [...]
The Great London Terrace Rent Strike began in the Fall of 1992 over the swimming pool. Once billed as "the largest apartment complex in the world," London Terrace occupies an entire square city block on the north side of 23rd street between Ninth and 10th avenues. The "Great Briton in Manhattan" opened in 1929 with elegant dining rooms, stores, London [...]
It begins with a button marked Brass Lab. I press it and there is no answer and behind me groups of men in tank-tops work in automotive repair shops and listen to to Spanish music on mini-stereos set up next to the cars. Finally, a voice from above bellows, "It's open!" and I look up to a bald man who [...]
I’ve been out of work for a month. My life is my own. No longer must I force myself through the routine of setting my alarm, waking up, dragging my tired body out of bed, taking a too-short shower, brewing coffee, forgetting to drink half of it, deciding what to wear, taking the subway, taking the elevator, saying "Hi, how [...]
I’m standing on the corner of Ninth Avenue and 14th Street staring up at an enormous billboard advertisement, which in behemoth white letters is instructing me to "ProCreate." Gaslight, the venue for this evenings HurryDate party, is on the bottom floor of the building directly below that billboard. HurryDate takes fifty eligible singles and pairs them up for three-minute long [...]
I ran away to Manhattan with a rich girl. Well, it was more of her sweeping me away than running away with her. I was actually running away from a different rich girl, who had introduced me to this new rich girl. I was 19 years old, halfway through my studies at a prestigious university in Boston. I had grown [...]
Mario is a white African of Portuguese descent. In New York some people tell him, "I didn’t know white people could be from Africa." When they say this, he shakes his head. "Americans are so ignorant!" he says. "They don’t know about anything outside their own country." Mario has come to New York from Mozambique, where I live now. We [...]
Entering the Rootstein Mannequin Showroom on W.19th Street is just like entering a typical gallery opening, only there's no art on the walls. Very slender people wearing fabulous clothes stand in groups of twos, threes, and fours engaging in hushed, exclusive discussions. You're offered a drink and the stereo system plays some kind of sophisticated world music. No one turns [...]
Lenny “The Rage” LaPaglia sat down at the post-fight conference looking like a man who was missing an important limb, though he didn’t know which one. It had been six rounds and countless number of punches to the head since he had stepped into he ring at the Felt Forum. At the time, the expression on his battered and pock-marked [...]
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 [...]
M. Gordon Novelty, Inc., at 933 Broadway, just south of 23rd Street, is a very tight operation. When things get really busy -- like during the last days before Halloween -- customers enter the showroom by twos or threes as other shoppers leave. The subsequent waiting period encourages customers to determine costume possibilities before they enter, transforming the shopping experience [...]
Approximately 350 dogs reside in London Terrace. For the most part, these hounds aren’t mutts but creatures of high pedigree. Madonna’s stylist owns one. Deborah Harry keeps a critter here. I knew pugs, basset hounds, basenjis, scotties, weimaraners, and schipperkees. The twelve-building complex is in, in fact, a kennel. In September of 1995, I organized a dog show during the [...]
Newer Entries »
