Occupy Wall Street

Tablet, which seems to be where most of the work is focused these days, sent me to the Occupy Wall Street protests. Here is my dispatch, which discusses the ways in which the protests are an analogue of the Israeli...

Click here to continue reading "Occupy Wall Street" »

Spanish & Portuguese Cemeteries

Here's my first feature for Tablet on those curious three Jewish cemeteries in downtown Manhattan. Check it out here, it's been leading story on the site all day. Of Shearith Israel’s three historic cemeteries, it’s the third that is the...

Click here to continue reading "Spanish & Portuguese Cemeteries" »

4th

Enjoy this 22-second time-lapse video of the NYC fireworks, which saved me a few hours of crushing through crowds and bros and strollers and drunks. I did enjoy the view from a roof in Brooklyn where the Macy's show...

Click here to continue reading "4th" »

Neil deGrasse Tyson

The astrophysicist/Carl Sagan of our time, writes about the phenomenon of "Manhattanhenge", which we are in the midst of celebrating right now in New York. For Manhattan, a place where evening matters more than morning, that special day comes...

Click here to continue reading "Neil deGrasse Tyson" »

More non-nonfiction.

Caryn and I met in Midtown in the winter of 2007. I was working at Barclay’s and she was breaking in her heels for her nephew’s bar-mitzvah. I was walking to meet some B-school friends for happy hour and she...

Click here to continue reading "More non-nonfiction." »

Yes, well...

So this makes me an elitist, but if you've got a New Yorker subscription (and like me, you fall weeks behind and lost and drown), that small kernel of pleasure you feel when you finally sit with an old issue...

Click here to continue reading "Yes, well..." »

Philharmonic Love

I had been in New York long enough to feel suffocated by it; the city was a crowded galaxy suffused with light from dying stars and the clamor of colliding refuse. Here the streets were filled with heaven’s chattel,...

Click here to continue reading "Philharmonic Love" »

Roth

It hadn’t immediately dawned on me that I was supposed to leave the room. Moreover, I didn’t want to. And so, I edged my way over to remember myself to a former professor of mine who was standing beside...

Click here to continue reading "Roth" »

The Dakota

The co-op board of the Central Park West empyrean, which famously hosted John Lennon, is coming under suit for racial bias. This article in the Times is like a Tom Wolfe story come to life. The lawsuit’s explosive allegations include...

Click here to continue reading "The Dakota" »

The Most E-mailed New York Times Article Ever

This is pretty funny. It’s a week before the biggest day of her life, and Anna Williams is multitasking. While waiting to hear back from the Ivy League colleges she’s hoping to attend, the seventeen-year-old senior at one of Manhattan’s...

Click here to continue reading "The Most E-mailed New York Times Article Ever" »

Jay-Z

I dedicate this post to TFR reader Albert who recently confessed to reading my blog despite it being "gay." If Jay-Z can find meaning in Annie, I think anything is possible. The rapper Jay-Z on convincing composer Charles Strouse to...

Click here to continue reading "Jay-Z" »

Tony Judt | NYC Onanism

Tony Judt (RIP), whose work I never agreed with, wrote this fantastic piece about New York for the NY Times. And yet, New York remains a world city. It is not the great American city — that will always be...

Click here to continue reading "Tony Judt | NYC Onanism" »

On Wingmanship (excerpt)

This is from something larger I'm hard at work on: The art of playing wingman (and it is an art) is as much self-sacrifice as any charitable act can be. The best wingman is a martyr who facilitates conversation between...

Click here to continue reading "On Wingmanship (excerpt)" »

Woot (with confessional)

Here is my piece for The Jewish Week. It would just so happen that the second-most read article on the NY Times right now is on the same topic, albeit with greater depth and word count. During my follow-up interview,...

Click here to continue reading "Woot (with confessional)" »

Gene Bernard

I suppose I've reached that time in my life where my peers, the people around me start their deriding of the generation behind us. Perhaps it's the new decade, but they use adult words and idioms to do it...

Click here to continue reading "Gene Bernard" »