Archive | City Matters
NYC bicyclists complain all the time about drivers. I keep my mouth shut. I understand that having a car in the city is socially irresponsible and that to date there still are not enough bike lanes. But I also understand that a lot of bikers in this city ride like complete ding-a-lings. They don’t follow traffic or pedestrian laws; they veer into the road; they don’t look where they’re going; they ride shoulder to shoulder rather than in a row. I’m sympathetic to their plight–keeping it green, keeping it real–but also have to work bloody hard not to kill them. These Truths, This Self-Evidence
Our country is in the throes of an undeclared civil war, and in the wake of the Orlando murders I find myself with little to say except in urgent letters to political representatives. I look to the elders–to James Baldwin and especially to Audre Lorde–for a path with heart because all around me is broken, bleeding. Lost.
On the subway home last night, surrounded by the beautiful purple and green and pink and black and brown and yellow and blue and red misses and misters and mizzers of my city–variously tired, wired, sober, drunk, happy, sad; variously queer, too–I felt this powerful tenderness for every person in their precious, precarious trajectory. I wanted to strap on an arrow and bow like an Amazon, like Artemis, like Eros himself, and protect them all. We each have a right to be cranky, undefended, soft around each other–to sit shoulder to shoulder without fear or judgment. We are getting closer to that state. We are moving further away. Continue Reading →
Richard Price, Underbelly Auteur
Gimlet-eyed and grim, Richard Price writes about America’s underbelly with a panache that makes even the bitterest of truths easier to swallow. As fluent in the medium of cinema and television as he is in literature, the sixty-six-year-old native New Yorker seemingly has had his hands in all the best fictional explorations of class, race, urban life, and, yep, crime for five decades now. His influence is so vast that its scope is sometimes overlooked. To amend that, I’ve worked out a few handy honorariums should there ever be a Price-only awards ceremony. (There should be.) Continue Reading →