Last February, Middle Church gathered at their 128-year-old sanctuary in the East Village to observe Ash Wednesday. Like churches around the world, Middle Church administered ashes on their congregants’ foreheads. But quite unlike other churches, the community considered the finitude of human life by commemorating the full import of the date, February 26—the anniversary of Trayvon Martin’s death. More →
The Lunar New Year usually draws thousands to Manhattan’s Chinatown to watch the annual parade and partake in cultural festivities. Participants and spectators questioned whether they’d be able to celebrate this year, but a muted version popped off in Chinatown this afternoon — with confetti in lieu of fireworks. More →
Indoor dining is back in New York City just in time for Valentine’s Day, and restaurant patrons are feeling the love. An informal survey of several popular date spots found that dinner reservations for Sunday are largely gone. More →
Red Gate Bakery opened in December of 2019, two months before Valentine’s Day and three months before the pandemic hit. This year, during the East Village bakery’s second Valentine’s Day rush, they’ll offer a Red Velvet bread, heart-shaped Linzer cookies, and the strawberry Oreos that landed them on a Forbes list of best Valentine’s desserts in New York City. More →
“So what I did is I made a salad with the greens,” said Ana Moritz, NYU senior and home chef. “This super fancy thing of greens that was all these different kinds of kale I’d never heard of. And I made a creamy dressing with mustard, egg yolk, olive oil, and red wine vinegar, some honey. And then I had those greens with chickpeas, I got a can of chickpeas. And I also got an apple, so I put apple in the salad.” More →
In September and October, nearly one-third of adult New Yorkers reported that they had used a food pantry in the last year, according to a report published by Robin Hood in partnership with Columbia University. The staggering numbers represented a 250 percent increase relative to January and February, before the Covid-19 pandemic began in earnest. More →
Early in the evening of June 3, 2020, Mattie Barber-Bockelman marched from Barclays Center in Downtown Brooklyn towards Cadman Plaza, near the Brooklyn Bridge. This was Barber-Bockelman’s first protest after months of lockdown, but she knew what to do from posts on Instagram and Twitter. Barber-Bockelman is white, and positioned herself at the edge of the crowd, between Black protesters and the police. More →
In the middle of the night in early November 2012, Karen Santry dressed in a wetsuit and skulked down the stairs of her West Village apartment building, hoping not to wake anyone. Hurricane Sandy had just struck the East Coast, battering much of New York City. Santry’s home had been without power, heat, and water for days. In the week following the storm, she and her fellow residents of Westbeth Artists Housing used flashlights to navigate darkened corridors. The more intrepid shuttled water in buckets up the stairs of her 13-story building. More →
On the eve of his 30th birthday, Benny Benack III, a Pittsburgh-born, New York City-based trumpet player, jazz singer, pianist and charismatic bon vivant played a late November show at The Craftsman, a plucky bar in Morningside Heights. More →
The average New Yorker might see mostly weeds and shrubs when they walk through a greenspace like Forest Park. For Violet Brill, a 16-year-old forager, they’re a source of nutrition and healing. She’s been plucking wild edible and medicinal plants growing on city grounds since she was a child. Now, with the pandemic bringing a renewed interest in foraging, more and more New Yorkers want to pick her brain. More →