Features

I was a Person of the Village many years ago, when graffiti slathered the subways, fires devoured the Bronx, doggy doo marbled the streets, and a weirdo named Son of Sam ran around killing people, and the city was “broke as a fish,” as my grandfather used to say. But people were connected, they talked […]

At six in the morning, long after last call, Daniel Root is most at home. The dive bars and restaurants are closed and empty and no one is there to notice he’s taking photographs. Even if someone did, they wouldn’t care. Root drifts around the Village, and when something reveals itself, he photographs it. This

On Sunday, May. 17, Hellenic food, dancing, and music held sway at Congregation Kehila Kedosha Janina’s 11th annual Greek Jewish Festival, which took up the length of Broome Street between Allen and Eldridge Streets on the Lower East Side. The festival lasted six hours, and several thousand people braved the 85-degree heat to attend. Familiar

It’s 3:30 pm, April 7, 2026, less than five hours before an entire civilization may be eliminated, according to the peeling Orange in Charge. It’s also Taco Tuesday, so we shall see. Last night, Monday night, I had dinner with my brother Paul at Via Carota. 9:30 pm. The place was eerily empty. I think

I can’t get anything done. I can’t write. I can’t take a Zoom meeting. I can’t even make a phone call. I can’t stretch out on the couch and take a nap. I can’t step out of my bathroom naked. I can’t relax. All I can do is escape from my apartment while they drill

High Times a documentary short about the magazine and its founder Tom Forçade is now on Hulu as part of 4X20: Quick Hits, an anthology of 20-minute documentaries about weed culture produced by Jimmy Kimmel. As I walk from the licensed cannabis dispensary along New York sidewalks scented with the ubiquitous smell of weed, it’s

Barbara Kopple’s 1976 film Harlan County, USA, chronicling the literal life-or-death effort to establish a coal miners’ union in rural Kentucky, is a masterpiece of documentary cinema. It’s human and humane and, despite its age, crackles with the urgency of collectivism and class consciousness. So monumental is the film that her follow-up feature—American Dream from

Robert Leslie’s audience is typically transient. They’ll pause to take in a song or two, maybe shoot a quick video, or take a moment to dance. But eventually they move on, quickly replaced by a new set of curious faces. As the sun sank in the sky over Tompkins Square Park on April 11, however,

I love being a sidewalk gardener on Bethune Street. When I moved into Westbeth Artists Housing, I spotted the nine planter boxes lining the block from Washington to West Streets, each tended by a different gardener. This looked like fun, so I put my name on a waiting list. (Everything at Westbeth involves a waiting

For fifteen years we had a dog, which meant that for fifteen years my days were meted out in companionable, purpose-driven walks. Then, in early 2020, the dog—bless his wiry coat and big dachshund heart—began an excruciating decline. He grew so thin he became almost luminous. We had to put him down that August. I