Setting: 3AM, 6 train from Spring Street to 86th Street.  Probably the fourth time I’ve run into Alden a.k.a. Karim Fonda from Team Facelift on the subway in the middle of a weeknight.
Me: What are you working on now?
Alden: Right now we got an album coming out on Duck Down Records.  (((At this point a [...]

Yesterday, Monday morning, around 3:30am, a small homemade bomb went off outside a Starbucks on 92nd Street and 3rd Avenue.  The blast destroyed an outdoor bench, shattered some of the store’s windows, and was heard and felt by nearby residents.  So far, surveillance footage and one witness implicate two teens in the crime.
I strolled by [...]

You know what’s kind of crazy? When you’re drunk, walking home from the subway at 4:55am, it’s still dark out and you’re surrounded by a deafening choir of chirping coming from the cherry blossoms, which you didn’t remember were even there earlier. (87th St. between Park and Lex)

Last year I acted for the first time- in a movie, a musical actually, called Fashion Party, written and directed by Alec Coiro.  I play Topsy Van Aston, a 20-something year old Upper East Side WASP.  While shooting one of my first scenes I interrupted saying I think there’s a typo in my script…
So I’m [...]

Martin Monnickendam (Dutch, 1874-1943), Portrait of Jacques Goudstikker, image via The Jewish Museum
(Reclaimed begins with this portrait of Jacques Goudstikker, a handsome young man at age 19.)

Reclaimed: Paintings From the Collection of Jacques Goudstikker at The Jewish Museum is partly an exhibition of Dutch, Northern Baroque, and Southern Renaissance paintings, and more interestingly, the story [...]

Someone in Manhattan House (200 E 66) has put a picket fence on their deck:

I’ve been watching the John Adams HBO series starring Paul Giamatti and feeling a little patriotic so today my friend Mike and I walked around looking for a plaque commemorating the execution site of an American Revolutionary War Hero, Nathan Hale, and eventually we found it on the side of a Banana Republic.

According to a [...]

Carnegie Hill is changing fast.  I go to the West Coast for one week and Petak’s closes! Katie texted me while I was in Las Vegas and I was shocked.  I walked by the empty store the other night and passed a man carrying a Petak’s bag- I looked at the sign on the [...]

I saw this antique, supposedly German mannequin head for sale on eBay several months ago (the listing is long gone.)  It doesn’t look like any other antique mannequin head I’ve seen. Not that I was looking for one- they just pop up now and then in the categories I like to search.

Images: Top row via [...]

A LOT of Hermès boxes.

A LOT of Manolo Blahnik boxes.

Several Chanel boxes.

Bergdorf Goodman box.

And I ended up with a nice set of Hermès boxes for storage.

These boxes were found in the garbage on 1/21/2009 on East 88th Street.