As you can probably smell, New York State recently legalized recreational marijuana use. The legislation was signed by Governor Andrew Cuomo on March 31, mere weeks before the annual stoner holiday on April 20. Yesterday, throughout the five boroughs, New Yorkers celebrated their new freedoms by bringing their biggest and most outrageous smoking devices to public spaces. Unsurprisingly, by midday, Washington Square Park looked like someone had plugged in a fog machine. More →
Between 2012 and 2018, the Major League Baseball World Series trophy visited New York’s Second Avenue four times: twice for Boston Red Sox wins and twice for the San Francisco Giants. For about a decade, Bay Area bar Finnerty’s and Boston bar Professor Thom’s (“Behind enemy lines since 2005”) stood next to each other on Second Avenue and East 14th. More →
During a recent visit to Amy’s Bread in downtown Brooklyn, the blue metal chairs out front sat empty. Inside, a lone customer ordered coffee. But don’t let the emptiness fool you; behind the counter there was a line of orders from Shop IN. More →
Thomas Manco, an artist from the East Village, commercial painter, and muralist with work at The New York Aquarium and elsewhere, didn’t expect his latest public sculpture to strike a nerve. The piece, a shoulder-high, foil-covered cardboard structure spelling out “FOOL,” asked passersby to attach a Post-It note, copping to a private blunder. Within days, hundreds of replies were stuck to the artwork. They ranged from silly (“‘Sure, I’ll help you move!’”) to sincere (“Moving into an apartment without seeing it in person”) to sorrowful (“Loved someone who never loved me back”). More →
Last summer, when the city was sweltering, New Yorkers sought refuge from their apartments, and each other, in COVID-safe public spaces. Many lugged themselves to Tompkins Square Park, in the East Village, where, every Saturday, the self-proclaimed “imaginary band,” Pinc Louds, would play a rollicking, effervescent set. Reflecting on their impact, one commentator summarized the public consensus: “Pinc Louds saved the summer.” More →
Just a little over a week after the return of live performances to New York City, many venues still have blank calendars and empty stages. More →
Thousands of New York City high schoolers returned to in-person classes on March 22, nearly a month after middle schoolers did the same. As classrooms reopen, high school sports are finally resuming this month, and after-school programs that transitioned to online learning last year — or that went dark entirely — are also reevaluating their services. One of those programs, the Lower Eastside Girls Club, began a new session of online classes last month. Now, it plans to resume limited in-person classes in May and full in-person activities by the summer. It will be a return to semi-normality after a year of constant adaptation. More →
Behind every great Asian restaurant are the owner’s children doing their homework nearby, or so the joke goes. Whenever Tony Chung sees those memes in the Facebook group “subtle asian traits,” he can’t help but laugh. He was one of those restaurant children. “There was this corner table, number one, at the restaurant where we would always sit and just do our homework while people were eating,” recalls Chung, now a 23-year-old Biomedical Science Master’s student at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. More →
Dive bars, vintage boutiques, and locally owned restaurants have long occupied the East Village’s streets, but one feature of the neighborhood stands out – the art up on its walls. A highland cow for the Year of the Ox and two purple faces fashioned into the likeness of Kobe and Gianna are only some of the images painted on a variety of buildings, with new murals replacing them every few months. More →
Recently, I was banned from a COVID survivor Facebook group. You may be wondering, how is that possible? And I thought the same thing. I am in fact a COVID survivor. So what was the problem? More →