A Year In New York

Since I got to New York I have been spotting this big blow-up rat standing on the curb. It moves from place to place and clearly is bidding for attention – but whose? Sanitation workers? The Goth people? Clubhoppers who take the word “underground” a little too literally?
This morning the rat appeared right across from [...]

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Of all the genres on television, the one I dislike most might be the early-morning news show. It goes beyond the shallow banter and the insipid theme music and down to an issue of trust: How can I believe anybody who is that chipper and talkative at seven in the morning?
Nevertheless, there I was, rolling [...]

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Today is the one-year anniversary of the most popular blog post I’ve ever written. I take little credit for this fact. If this post were a pop song, I’d be the bassist holding up the wall while another guy wagged his tail at the audience. That guy, of course, was an Illinois senator named Barack [...]

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Last night I made my first visit to DUMBO (Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass) in Brooklyn to see a documentary about building construction for the 21st Century. To get there, I walked from the York Street subway through a landscape that was unapologetically early 20th Century: narrow streets, industrial blocks now converted to lofts, [...]

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I spied this among the garbage cans on 47th Street today and took it as a sign that the recession has hit home for New Yorkers. Or perhaps it’s meant as inspirational art. For goldfish.
Or maybe it means something entirely different. What do you think?

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It took four months in New York to finally encounter this man, my first elevator attendant. Pardon the blurry, Sasquatch-like photo. I visited a friend on the Upper West Side and pushed the button for the elevator, and when the door slid open this man was standing there. I waited for him to leave but [...]

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As the presidential election results came in, Joo and I stood on the corner of 43rd Street and 7th Avenue, the edge of Times Square, surrounded by an exultant crowd of people who hadn’t had reason to celebrate in a long time.
Most were young and they were of every race, many of them mixed couples. [...]

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As the sun rose on this November 4, 2008, the most significant Election Day of my life, I pulled my bedroom shade up to see that a long line had formed across the street. This was the queue for my voting station. It stretched almost the length of two city blocks and remained that way [...]

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I went out of town with a few friends this weekend to visit the Pocono Mountains and see the leaves turning. Much like my visit this summer to the Hamptons, a pilgrimage to the Poconos has a mystique that is attached to books I’ve read but whose titles I’ve forgotten. The Poconos are fixed in [...]

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