New York
LUCKING ONTO `LUCKING OUT’
I have long admired the critic James Wolcott–his slashing wit, his erudition, his vocabulary, his taste and perception–but although we know many people in common, we have never met. Until I read his new book Lucking Out: My Life Getting Down and Semi-Dirty in Seventies New York, his lively memoir of a youth spent in …
HIGH ON THE HIGH LINE
Yesterday I finally took myself out of the running to become the last person in the greater metropolitan area to visit the High Line, the terrific elevated urban park built on the elevated rail bed that runs through Chelsea on Manhattan’s far west side. I will now add my puny voice to the great chorus …
RYAN ADAMS “NEW YORK, NEW YORK”
Ryan Adams shot the video for this gem of a song on September 7, 2001. The World Trade Center looms in all its dopey, stolid earnestness throughout the film, oblivious to its imminent destruction. It always chokes me to see this.
“DIRECTORY TO THE SERAGLIOS”
In the Times yesterday, Alison Leigh Cowan has a piece aboutThe Gentleman’s Directory, an 1870 Guide to Manhattan brothels that is currently among the holdings of The New York Historical Society. Listing 150 establishments, and delivering “insight into the character and doings of people whose deeds are carefully screened from public view,” the palm-sized book …
END-TO-END ACTION
As Clive Owen put it in the brilliant last line of Children of Men, “What a day!” It started (late) with a very fine lunch at Bar American (the old Judson Grill at Seventh and 52nd) with my old and dear friend from Spy days, John Connolly, now a contributor to Vanity Fair, and his …