Keeping a place that serves drinks open is a difficult task no matter where you do it. As the bartender at my current favorite local bar, Sharlene’s on Flatbush in Brooklyn, told me, “You need to get at least half a million to open a bar in New York anymore. You need investors and shit,” […]
Search results
Posted inNonfiction, Story
Revisiting the Ghosts of Attica
A wrenching new book recounts the bloodiest prison battle in our history.
Posted inEditor's Pick
Desperate Characters
An excerpt from Paula Fox’s 1970 novel: Status-conscious Sophie and Otto Bentwood attend a dinner party in Brooklyn Heights in the late sixties, shortly after Sophie sustains a bite on her hand from a stray cat.
Posted inNonfiction, Story
The House Where You Live Forever
The reversible destiny of Madeline Gins.
Posted inBooks, Nonfiction
A Stranger in the World: The Memoir of a Musician on Tour
The Hold Steady’s Franz Nicolay on DIY touring in the punk underground of the former Soviet Union.
Posted inNonfiction, Story
Red, White, and Bruised
When Donald Trump and the GOP Convention arrive in Cleveland, they will find a city with a long history of violent outbursts, racial tension—and brushes with fascism. In short, the perfect stage for the 2016 presidential campaign. Kyle Swenson explores the history of his hometown.
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
New York City’s Menu Wars
In the early 1990s, food delivery services on Manhattan’s Upper West Side sparked what New York Times writer Emily M. Bernstein called “the menu wars.” Everyone from dry cleaners to nail salons followed Chinese restaurants’ lucrative lead, placing paper take-out menus inside apartment buildings’ lobbies and mail rooms and under residents’ doors. Angry tenants demanded […]
Posted inBooks, Nonfiction
Postwar New York: The Supreme Metropolis of the Present
Forty labor strikes on one day, French existentialists on the loose, and a 50-foot G.I. blowing enormous puffs of REAL smoke.
Posted inEssays & Criticism, Feature, Nonfiction
The Mask of Deception: The Ultimate Test to My Recovery From Porn Addiction
Novelist Benjamin Obler was feeling secure in his recovery from porn addiction. Then along came Franny, to test it.
Posted inBooks, Fiction, Quotes
A Book in the Mail is the Cure For Ferrante Fever
As a regular book browser, or shelf stalker, and former employee of Community Bookstore in Brooklyn, I’ve recently watched several customers come in asking for recommendations of what to read next after finishing Italian novelist Elena Ferrante’s four-volume saga, The Neapolitan Quartet — a masterwork concerning issues of class, status, and the remarkable complexity of […]
