Celebrating Community
After an hour or more of picketing and soapboxing outside, a raucous, emotional crowd filled the auditorium of Sunset Park High School to capacity on September 16. Following a six-month delay for a comprehensive evaluation, Councilmember Carlos Menchaca had, apparently, reached a verdict on the Industry City rezoning and had invited the community to hear it. By the end of […]
I’ve never had soba that I didn’t enjoy, but it’s nice to know that the chefs at Sobaya (sometimes rendered soba-ya) at 229 E 9th Street take it more seriously than most. They handmake the noodles every day from organic buckwheat flour imported from Nagano, and then “simmer high-quality bonito and kelp in charcoal-filtered water to make a dashi broth,” […]
Until recently, I’d never been to Flushing, but my friend Rachel often spends significant portions of her weekends up there, despite the three-train journey from Bushwick. When I asked her to take me on a day trip, she gladly obliged. I think all New Yorkers, even the natives, are tourists in this town, and sometimes it helps to have a […]
In Jackson Heights, Lhasa Fast Food is famous, but for the unfamiliar, the most useful restaurant review is probably still a set of directions. It’s not hard to get to, situated about a block from the Roosevelt Avenue subway station (which fields the 7, E, F, M, and R trains) in a section of Queens that only looks distant on […]
It’s not the sexiest subject, but Red Hook’s ongoing reinvention as an e-commerce shipping hub has for me piqued an interest in logistics. For all their expected negative environmental externalities, the forthcoming last-mile distribution centers on Columbia Street, along with the planned UPS complex near Valentino Pier, at least offer a measure of historical continuity in a neighborhood that once […]
Faro, a Michelin-starred dinner-only date spot with a hybrid menu of Italian and New American dishes, serves homemade pasta and precise, mindfully sourced, modern cuisine from a wood-burning oven in a former warehouse near the Jefferson Avenue L stop. MoMA previously used the building for art storage, but it doesn’t feel as cavernous or austere as it sounds, though it […]
The Bronx’s Little Italy is – as the name suggests – not huge. From the intersection of East 187th Street and Arthur Avenue that marks the center of the neighborhood, its commercial district extends another two blocks south before bottoming out at St Barnabas Hospital. But those two blocks on Arthur Avenue contain everything you’d imagine a Little Italy should […]
Good urban planners know that, in order to create cohesive neighborhoods and healthy local culture (and, even more importantly, in order to preserve the environment), cities must value density and use their land efficiently – particularly if they want to create enough housing to meet demand. That’s why most planners find golf courses so repugnant. Sure, they’re nice for the […]
For many newspaper readers in the United States, Brexit feels like the story that simply – almost perversely, given our short attention spans and massive self-absorption – refuses to end: a baffling saga of tortuous parliamentary procedure, protracted negotiations, political flameouts, and missed deadlines, requiring minute-by-minute updates from the international press. In a concise book focused on the crisis’s origins, […]
Two million Americans live in public housing. Because conditions at housing authorities across the country have deteriorated for decades, most of them live in substandard homes – amid rats, lead paint, leaky pipes, mold, broken elevators, and heating outages. Since the government owns public housing and could, using only a small fraction of the federal budget, allocate enough money for […]