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Sal: "You want it short?" I needed a barber not a stylist, in a barbershop not a salon, owned and operated by one man, not a local franchise of a national chain, who would cut my hair, not tag my head like some graffiti artist. I wanted a barber. "I know what you need," my friend Nick said as he [...]
"I LOVE THAT MAN A BITCH!" SHOUTS LIAM GALLAGHER. HE JUMPS OUT OF HIS CHAIR and paces around the room in a small tight circle. "If anyone stepped on his toes, I'd cut them off!" Liam sits down, and his voice becomes grave and somber. "I'd do time for 'im. I luv 'im. Me and 'im are cool. But..." and [...]
Illustrations by Elisha Cooper They're huddled in the far corner of the office, all of them peering out of the enormous window. They vibe is jittery. "Jumper?" I ask, throwing down my bag. "Yup!" All five exclaim in unison. Sure enough, here we are again. Our generous view has coughed up ringside seats for another round of human tragedy. Standing [...]
Photographs by Josh Gilbert The New Face of CBS News? Ed, in winter. Electronic Ed called out to me and I pulled my bicycle over and heard his news: CBS is interested in his story. He was lounging on a stoop on West eleventh street, in the dappled shade. "This Girl, this woman," he corrected himself, "from CBS. She saw [...]
In The City. Manhattan. 41st Street and 8th Avenue, seven-thirty Friday morning. I'm waiting on the M10 bus uptown. I have a new job on 57th street. I'm reading my Daily News when I hear a strident voice say, "I'll give you DOUBLE anything you give me. DOUBLE! You give me a dollar, I'll give you TWO. You give me [...]
One night the owner of Sweet and Vicious, Hakan, hurled a block of ice the size of a softball and hit me in the temple. I was in the middle of pouring another drunk girl a Cosmopolitan. It was a Saturday night, and the bar was absolutely packed. Her mouth flew open, revealing a piece of well-chewed gum. I froze, [...]
Proposals of marriage are becoming the most public moment of people's private lives. By Meghan Daum Every Sunday the local newspaper in the midwestern town where I live prints engagement and wedding announcements that look like the pages of a high school yearbook. The faces are fair skinned and robust, some still marked with acne. Their pictures are taken at [...]
Fedora is a few steps below street level-- one steps down and pushes open the door into a red hued room that feels like another world, or at least another time: warm, unpretentious, exciting, wonderful. Photographs by Josh Gilbert, who has a story of his own Alfred H. Lane passed away on March 20th, 2002, at age 85. More here. [...]
When I first heard the rumor several months ago, it seemed absurd. Someone in my neighborhood said she’d heard that Broadway Farm, the poor man’s Fairway that had been anchoring the southwest corner of 85th street for a decade, was going to shut down to make way for a Victoria’s Secret. How could this be? I’m as big a supporter [...]
1. So my doctor said it is true: You can get AIDS just from snorting cocaine. I decided to visit my doctor’s after I was unable to donate my vital juices at the Port Authority Blood Drive in the fall of 2000. I left without getting the needle after reading a form given to all potential donors that said anyone [...]
Once a month, I take the downtown number 6 train to Astor Place for an $11 buzz cut. Near the corner of Broadway, a red and white awning urges me to Beware of Imitators as dozens of celebrity snapshots are exhibited in the storefront window — Judd Nelson, Susan Sarandon, Rosie O’Donnell, Yannick Noah . . . Inside, a man [...]
New York City and the US Navy have a relationship that goes right back to the very beginning of the Navy. This is to be expected for a city that is this country's major Atlantic port. From 1801-1966, the principle site for the Navy-New York relationship was in Brooklyn, at the Brooklyn Navy Yard. Its three big piers show up [...]
French Roast has a gleaming pane glass window looking out onto Broadway, and a gleaming copper bar inside. From where I stand behind the bar, I see the city outside the window as a collection of lights, darknesses, and people who remain anonymous to me unless they decide to venture through the door of the restaurant. My shift, from 11:30pm [...]
I said my good-byes to Oasis in the lobby of a posh hotel in San Francisco. Elevators ascended to the skies in clear glass tubes and businessmen in dark suits marched in and out while the boys lay around on the overstuffed couches, profoundly hung over, trying to rouse themselves for the sound check for that night's show, the second [...]
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 [...]
"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 [...]
On September 11th, I stood at Washington and North Moore for six or seven hours, near a triage center, waiting for all the lined-up ambulances and fire engines to be given the all-clear to go in. We waited for the injured to come for care and comfort. All the ripped-open bandages, makeshift guerneys, stacks of IV's and sterile dressings, every [...]
On Friday September 28th, just after the sun had gone down, the remaining glow of the day was fighting the oncoming storm clouds moving in from the southwest over Jersey. The day had been gloomy and the light had been pearly gray throughout the afternoon. The air was cool and summer was clearly over. Coming over the Williamsburg Bridge from [...]
"The Burning Wall" is playing at Film Forum This documentary film is worth seeing on the grounds that: a) It's an intense, enthralling movie and I think you'll enjoy it. b) The story of a state becoming obsessed with the enemy within has some resonance in our current political climate. c) The film maker is my mother. "In much the [...]
I often walk down the asphalt path that runs the length of Manhattan, on the shore of the Hudson River, hoping to see Diana. When I was with her things were not so pleasant. She smelled awful, and she sapped my energy, working me all night long and half the day. For the fourteen weeks we were together, I had [...]
Some South Jersey friends and I have a Christmas evening tradition of ditching our families and meeting for drinks in a dive near Atlantic City. There was a time when most of us lived in New York, but we’ve since scattered, some further afield and others, like my friend Paul, back to NJ. This year talk turned inevitably to September [...]
Lately when I go for a walk I make a vow not to walk under any scaffolding, in protest of there being so much of it these days. Two minutes later I realize I'm walking under scaffolding. One day I stopped and looked at the scaffolding around the NYU tower at East 8th Street and Mercer and realized it had [...]
Part V. After I made a sandwich at my desk, Richie Boy grabbed a slice of salami. Our sharing more than food throughout our twenty-year friendship didn’t deter my protests against his poaching. "I see you have no shame in being a schnorrer!” "Only cause I learn from the best.” Richie Boy popped the peppery slice in his mouth and [...]
Paul Williams considers it is a blessing that he was once a squeegee man. Not because he enjoyed the work -- he didn't -- but because it was only through being a squeegee man that he became a cardboard man, and on that he has built a life. Ten years ago, Paul was that familiar, slightly menacing fixture of the [...]
First dates are about inventing a new language, minute by minute. Smoking is the first level of communication. The realm of intergender semaphore is entirely bottlenecked through nicotine. If there's no smoking then the glances, brushed hair, knuckle touching can reach comedy. Push the date even further and meet in a restaraunt in Nolita, the effective dmz for the new [...]
On September 12, I went back to work at Men’s Journal because the issue was gutted and redone for a tribute to the FDNY. The streets were empty, not only of people, but also of noise. There were no street peddlers, few taxis, no music, no screaming, and no horns honking, only the non-stop blare of sirens. The standard intrusion [...]
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 [...]
I saw summer turn to fall on the median of the West Side Highway where I stood waving my American flag, holding up hand made thank you signs, saluting the rescue and recovery workers. The crews, coming from long shifts, appreciate the support. When they pass in their various vehicles, (fire engines, police cars, ambulances, motorcycles, army trucks, heavy rigs, [...]
Two weeks after the shock of September 11th, I was sent to "ground zero" by the Parks Department Commissioner to make a quick evaluation of the damage to the plant life in the area. The Commissioner wanted to know what had survived, what plants would need to be replaced, how much it would all cost. He was eager to help [...]
Interviews and introduction by EDWARD HELMORE Fire Department of New York Firehouse 16-7. 234 East 29th Street, Manhattan. September 11, 2001. On the riding list of Engine 16 were Lieutenant Mickey Kross and firefighters Tim Marmion, Paul Lee, Pete Fallucca, and trainee firefighter Sean Brown. On the riding list of Tower Ladder 7: Lt. Vernon Richard, firefighters George Cain, Vincent [...]
Paul Lee I came in about 8:30 that morning, changed into my uniform, and then a few minutes later they announced plane had crashed into the World Trade Center. I was thinking to myself, is this real or is it just a fake or is it an accident, whatever it was. Just a few minutes later it was on the [...]
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