Features

Utopia on a plate: Community Kitchen’s exquisite experiment, by Phyllis Eckhaus

Eating’s a basic biological act, but like sex, it’s so much more. What we eat and how we eat it are social signifiers—markers of our place in a stratified world, reflective of our status, our privilege or our oppression. I’m the child of Depression-era parents who ate canned vegetables and rewashed and reused plastic wrap. […]

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The Art Deco buildings in Chelsea, by Raanan Geberer

When people talk about Art Deco architecture in New York, some think of the Chrysler Building and the Empire State Building. Others think of the luxurious apartment buildings on the Bronx’s Grand Concourse. However, there’s another center of Art Deco — Manhattan’s Chelsea district. Among Chelsea’s Art Deco structures— built during the late 1920s and

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“A Sustainable Village” figures out zero waste, by Michele Herman

Let’s talk shampoo, a conversation that I think is long overdue. For years I bought mine from Arrojo, a local salon, in jumbo plastic containers. The products had none of the bad stuff—parabens, phthalates, synthetic fragrances—and I figured one big container uses less plastic than several smaller ones. Then the algorithm started to feed me

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Sasaki Garden, a Place of One’s Own, by Barbara Kerstetter

As these late golden autumnal afternoons turn into evening, I’m likely to walk through the NYU-owned and maintained garden near our building in Washington Square Village, where other habitues often gravitate. Even though most of the neighbors who live in the surrounding buildings (which, collectively, are known as a “super block”) are connected to NYU

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People of The Village, where we talk to everyone, by Lisa Gitlin

New York Jews have strong feelings about what’s happening in Israel and Gaza. They don’t always agree. This subject is so potentially divisive that they often avoid talking about it at all. For Jews, discussing post-October 7th events can be like stepping on the proverbial third rail, similar to our Thanksgiving table flareups after the

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