St. Petersburg
Saint Petersburg is an aggressively ornate city, as if they wanted to show the French a thing or two when it came to excessive beauty. Wedding cake structures the color of Paas-colored Easter eggs line the wide boulevards, artists and musicians dotting them where they can find space. This time of year, the sun bears […]
Sri Lanka
Guyster birthday
Every time he protests, “It¹s not the same as it used to be,” I know exactly what he means. When we lived here before, there were the great churches of dance–Twilo, The Tunnel, Roxy–shirtless nights spent in sweat and lights and the relentless thump of Junior Vasquez. And nothing else mattered. When we moved back […]
Mexico City
The Centro Historico exemplifies the fact that Mexico City was built on top of a lake and it’s sinking at a rate of three centimeters per year. The Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe isn’t helping; the giant cathedral dominates the Zolcalo, the city’s main square, and the thing looks heavy. This is a noisy […]
My doormen, my family
The movers are here, swarming my apartment with paper and tape, packing up every tangible memory I have. I’m heading back to LA and I’m kinda freaking out about it. NYC is home, moved here five years and two months ago. I love my neighborhood and my building. The doormen have had my back this […]
Bill Ledbetter pics
Mumbai
I met Sameer last night, a driver with an air-conditioned box cab who’s curried enough favor with the hotel’s front staff to get the better fares. I was determined to go on a club crawl and after the hotel-suggested bar turned out to be a wedding banquet, Sareem told me that The Ghetto was the […]
Malta
I got out of the flip flops area of San Giljan and toured Valletta, the current capital that was built in the 16th century, then onto Mdina, a walled city that served as the location for King’s Landing in Game Of Thrones in season one. Though a European country, it’s Elian Gonzalez close to Libya, […]
Dharavi
My tour guide, Shailesh, grew up in Dharavi, the second largest slum in the world, made famous by “Slumdog Millionaire.” He led me through impossibly small alleys lined with tiny huts, each one holding three generations, all soap-makers, leather workers, and plastic recyclers. Electrical wires jumbled along the exteriors and my guide told me they […]
Selling Kenwood
I always called it Kenwood, my own post-war Tara in a “transitional” neighborhood. Not a terribly clever name, really, given it was simply the name of the street. And to me, Kenwood was that older stout woman with too much jewelry alone at a diner for the early bird special. It was the first house […]