About two days after I’d moved to the Meat Packing District in fall 1981, from my first NYC apartment in Greenwich Village, the urge to write about music resurfaced. Though I’d maintained a sporadic journal since leaving Ohio that spring, I longed for the motivation of an official assignment, not…
Working in an office next door to my second apartment in New York City — thirty years later
Comprehending the pre-COVID makeover of Manhattan from grunge to gleam requires a deep dive into the recent past. Nothing captures the transformation of New York City in the 21st Century better than…
Does a first job set the template for your career? Perhaps it does, in ways we can’t see until we approach the other end. The start date of my initial post-college job fell on the same day as the attempted assassination of President Ronald Reagan.
Simmons-Boardman Publishing occupied the 17th…
Music around town featuring PiL, The Clash and Noise Fest
Once I started my first job in Manhattan, weekend evenings were exhilarating and daunting. I didn’t know anybody in town save for my middle-aged work colleagues and Jeff, the ageless and eccentric building super. No need to ask: none of…
Scenic views of urban decay, glimpsed en route to NYC in 1981
My point of departure for New York City turned out to be less than romantic: a forlorn platform in the freight yards outside the grand old Union Terminal. One of Cincinnati’s architectural treasures, with murals by German artist…
Rick Perlstein’s epic Reaganland examines American life and politics during the late 1970s, bookended by two Presidential election upsets
“The Presidential election is just too stupid to watch…you see Ronald Reagan in these neighborhoods with poor people and you can just hear him saying ‘Oh my God what am I…
Not so long ago it was arguably the most obscure neighborhood in Manhattan
Opened in 2009, the main promenade of the High Line park is a former railroad spur for the New York Central Line. The area below the walkway around West 14th Street is known as the Meat Packing…
Dangerous Reality and Dystopian Fantasy in 1980s New York City
An acute sense of fear and panic pervaded New York at the dawn of the Eighties, due to the elevated crime rate. …
My stack of library books depleted, I recently combed our overflowing shelves for something to read during these long housebound days. A dusty paperback from 1972 caught my eye: The Dick Gibson Show by Stanley Elkin. The author was a well-regarded dispenser of serious literary fiction in the era of…
For housebound New Yorkers (and everybody else), there’s no better moment than now to dive into the city’s deep legacy on film. And as you watch, you’ll be continuing a hallowed local tradition. …
