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Georg Simmel on Sociologically Positive Conflict and Urban Life
A quiet span of days with a national holiday mid-week, rare access to expansive living spaces, no subway riding. So, by virtue of having occupied a ‘retreat-like’ space and by taking a step back from...
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Readin’ and Ridin’: The Subway Car as Reading Room
Like many New Yorkers, I do a lot of reading on the subway, standing or sitting. (It is a depressing fact, of course, that too many of us now seem fixated by smartphones, playing video games, or...
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The Oft-Missed Pleasures of Running
Late into the night of my 28th birthday, I was doing a passable impression of a dancing fool. It was almost four in the morning, I had consumed enough alcohol to administer local anesthetic to a small...
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The Sidewalk Book Disposal Scheme
New York has lots of books: in stores, libraries, shelves in private collections, sidewalk sales, and sometimes, in boxes on sidewalks, being given away, with or without a sign that says ‘help...
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Walking, Head Down, on a Damp and Grey Day: How Virtuous It Is
On days like this, many residents of the US eastern seaboard are apt to question their decision to ever inhabit these spaces. The temperature is in the thirties (that’s just a couple of degrees above...
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Walking the City: Random Walks Through Manhattan Streets
In Street Life: Becoming Part of the City, Joseph Mitchell wrote: What I really like to do is wander aimlessly in the city. I like the walk the streets by day and by night. It is more than a liking, a...
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The Subway: Let the Love-Hate Clichés Roll
When I first moved to New York City, I lived on 95th Street in Manhattan and rode down to 42nd Street for my graduate seminars. My first commute on the subways was blindingly quick: I took the 2 or 3...
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I’ve Got Your Brooklynite Hayseed Right Here
George Plunkitt, of Tammany Hall fame, once said: [A] Brooklynite is a natural-born hayseed, and can never become a real New Yorker. He can’t be trained into it. Consolidation didn’t make him a New...
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Memories of Hot Summers Elsewhere
Talking about the weather is supposedly a concession, an admission that a conversation has run aground, spun off into irrelevancies; nothing, it seems, quite shows the lack of an agenda for an exchange...
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Hudson Crossings
Yesterday, at the World Trade Center transit station, as I took the escalator down to the PATH train, heading for an afternoon spent with a cousin living in Exchange Place, New Jersey, I made note of a...
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The 9/11 Attacks: A Terrifying Spectacle, Viewed from Afar
On September 11th, 2001, I was in Sydney, Australia, working as a post-doctoral fellow at the University of New South Wales. I spent most of the day in my office, composing a long email to my...
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The Smells of the Homeless: Unpleasant Reminders of Our Good Fortune
I receive, on a daily basis, many reminders of my singular good fortune, of my having scored big in life’s sweepstakes: I have a good job–one that gives me a sabbatical every seven years, a lovely...
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The Stygian Staircase
When I first encountered the word ‘pitch-black’, a long time ago, in a children’s adventure book, I was puzzled; I asked my mother what it meant and she said, (roughly), “That means it was really,...
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The Empire State Building: From Picture to Window View
I’m writing this post on the second floor of the CUNY Graduate Center (to be more precise, in the library). My desk is by a window, and looking out from it, I can see the intersection of Fifth Avenue...
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The Hidden Death Around Us
Approximately 150 people die every day in New York City; the three most common causes are heart disease, cancer, and influenza/pneumonia. I’ve lived in New York City for almost twenty years now, so a...
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Twenty-One Car-Free Years
Over the weekend, thanks to traveling up to Albany to meet an old friend, I was unable to make note of an especially important anniversary: March 30th marked twenty-one years of blessed freedom from...
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Readin’ and Ridin’: Transportation within Transportation
Forty degrees and rain, soggy train platforms, and an unhappy toddler–my daughter, not happy at being dropped off at daycare–can make for a miserable start to a day. It was only partially redeemed by...
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Camping As Urban Escape
On Thursday and Friday I went for a short hiking and camping trip with a pair of old friends. We drove up to the Catskills–two hours north of New York City, parked at a trailhead, hoisted our backpacks...
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The Central Park Five: Justice Gone Wrong
One night, late in April 1989, I sat in an apartment in Jersey City, discussing the Central Park jogger rape case with two friends. One of them, a black Haitian-American, expressed unease over the...
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Why Do Yankees Fans Venerate Derek Jeter?
In an interview with The Allrounder, my friend Amy Bass (a Red Sox fan!) takes on the following question: The Yankees’ longtime captain, Derek Jeter, is retiring this season and has been the object of...
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