Celebrating Community
Born in 1955, Donna Florio lives in the same “barbell”-shaped West Village apartment she grew up in. Her new book, Growing Up Bank Street, recounts her bohemian childhood and coming of age, as well as the history of the neighborhood, stories from some of its longtime residents, and notable celebrity encounters, including John Lennon (whom she sprinkled while watering her […]
Two movies about important Black individuals in American history came out this past winter, one looked at the political persecution of a prominent public figure, the other was a movie about, in an important way, the presence of jazz in American life. I’m talking, of course, about The United States vs. Billie Holiday and Judas And The Black Messiah, and […]
The New York Margaret Munzer Loeb and Eden Wurmfeld grew up in was very different from the one their kids know: more crime and less technology, greater danger and fewer options for parental surveillance. Yet they had a freedom — to move around the city, to hang out with friends, to play — that their children, like so many in […]
Baseball seems determined to drive away as many people as possible. After seeing the mantle of the national pastime snatched away by football, the MBAs and lawyers who run the game decided the best way to get back into fans’ good graces was through interminable games built around clown-car bullpens (one pitcher on the roster to face one batter before […]
Not interested in science fiction? A longtime argument holds: Look beyond the setting (say, outer space) and the characters (maybe little green men) to find what’s human at its core—and therefore relatable. On their surface, the 21 short stories in “Falling from Trees” by Michael Fiorito are very much concerned with things like aliens and space travel. The characters are […]
It’s nervy to call something the last of anything, especially when it comes to neighborhoods. But as residents of The Hill in St. Louis see it, their community isn’t just the city’s Little Italy—it’s the last one in all of America. Scusi? What was that? You can almost hear the recriminations and curses coming from North Beach in San Francisco […]
In 2014, a friend turned fifty. To celebrate, he organized a trip with friends to Paris—myself among them. At the celebratory dinner, a guest arrived late, walking into the restaurant on tottering heels. As she approached the table, men threw themselves out of their seats to help her with her coat. They quickly cleared a place for her. The party […]
Review of Invisible Ink by Patrick Modiano, translated from the French by Mark Polizzotti Review by Michael Quinn What constitutes a life is not only our experiences, but our feelings about them. Especially as we grow older, our memories play a role here, too. We lean into some, and are unexpectedly overcome by others, triggered by a smell, the name […]
35mm black and white film photographs by Piotr Pillardy 35mm color photographs by Joan Ronstadt (developed & scanned at Exposure Therapy in Brooklyn) For the first time since February, during a year that has felt somehow infinite and compressed, I was able to visit a museum in person (a sentence that exists only in 2020). Going to the Met […]
Artists, when they reach a certain age, can feel the tug of legacy and revisit and tinker with their work. That’s as true for painters and sculptors as it is for filmmakers. George Lucas fiddling with his original Star Wars trilogy is the most notorious example, but Lucas’ old friend and patron Francis Ford Coppola has been in a contemplative […]