Posted in Bay Ridge, Bed-Stuy, Carroll Gardens, Coney Island, Crime, Downtown, Flicks, Irish, Jazz, Latino, Literature, Manhattan, Midwood, Music, Ocean Hill, Park Slope, Poetry, Queens, Red Hook, Religion, Rockaways, Sex, Transportation, West Indian, Williamsburg, hip-hop, labor, politics on Jun 29th, 2010
Ignorant of the ways of publicity and chance alike, I’m unsure how these things happen but HiLoBrow.com has just been named by Time magazine’s Best Blogs of the Year . I could make up some things but not that! We’ve been meaning to catch up with WWIB’s recently elusive publisher, Brian Berger, who doesn’t answer the phone, [...]
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Posted in All-City, Carroll Gardens, Cobble Hill, Crime, Downtown, Gowanus, Industrial, Literature, Manhattan, Poetry, Red Hook, Sex, Subways, Transportation, labor on Apr 9th, 2010
Yugoslav Steward knocks on my door, says “You stay on the ship? Okay?” and goes off into Brooklyn to get drunk with the crew— Alyce and I are waking up, at one A.M., arm in arm in a dreadsome ship, agh— Only one watchman alone on the walk— Everybody drinking in bars of New York.
“Alyce” [...]
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Posted in All-City, Carroll Gardens, Chinatown, Coffee, Coney Island, Crime, Dial J For Jewish, Literature, Sex, South Brooklyn, hip-hop, politics on Feb 11th, 2010
Ya’ll know the four great classic Chinese novels, right? Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Water Margin, Journey To The West and Dream of the Red Chamber. We’ll discuss translations and swap drunken monk stories another post but one translator of Water Margin— also known as Outlaws of the Marsh— is one Sidney Shapiro (b. [...]
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Posted in All-City, Boerum Hill, Brighton Beach, Bronx, Brooklyn Heights, Brownsville, Carroll Gardens, Cobble Hill, Coney Island, Crime, Crown Heights, Downtown, Drugs, East Flatbush, Gowanus, Literature, Manhattan, Park Slope, Red Hook, Sex, South Brooklyn, Subways, Transportation, labor on Nov 16th, 2009
“What Richard Abneg had carried forward, always, anyhow, was a certain sense of his own crucial place in the island’s life. He’d never copped out. And the beard, that too was uncompromised, continuous. He grew it when he was fifteen and reading Howard Zinn and Charles Bukowski and Emmett Grogan. I soaked up Harriet’s description [...]
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Posted in All-City, Brooklyn Heights, Canarsie, Carroll Gardens, Coffee, Crime, Downtown, Drugs, Dumbo, Flicks, Gowanus, Kensington, Literature, Manhattan, Music, Park Slope, Poetry, Red Hook, labor, politics on Nov 10th, 2009
In honor of the great contributions Brooklyn’s mostly proud blind people have made to our Armed Forces over the years, I’m delighted to reintroduce this interview between a monocle-wearing historian, Brian Berger, and the nearly sightless novelist Jim Knipfel. As for Woodrow Wilson, the Staunton, Virginia native who presided over the first Armistice Day, he [...]
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Posted in All-City, Bed-Stuy, Brownsville, Carroll Gardens, Coffee, Crime, Downtown, Drugs, Flicks, Fort Greene, Gowanus, Latino, Literature, Manhattan, Music, Ocean Hill, Queens, Red Hook, Religion, Sex, Subways, graffiti, hip-hop, politics on Oct 26th, 2009
Emptying. Airmail: the garbage parts flutter and glide and plummet, thrown out in a sweet, athletic arc. They drop through morning sunlight into shade. The bag pulls its ripcord: disintegrates. Cans’ flat bottoms wink sun back, flash-flash, end over end: C and C Cola, Cerveza Rheingold, Raid (do not incinerate), Café Bustelo and Spam. One [...]
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Posted in All-City, Bed-Stuy, Carroll Gardens, Clinton Hill, Crime, Downtown, Gowanus, Literature, Music, Navy Yard, Park Slope, Prospect Heights, Sex, Sports, Vinegar Hill, labor, politics on Oct 12th, 2009
If I could be you and you could be me for just one hour; if we could find a way to get inside each other’s mind; if you could see me through your eyes instead of your ego; I believe you’d be surprised to see that you’d been blind.
Walk a mile in my shoes, walk [...]
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Posted in Africa Talks, All-City, Bed-Stuy, Bronx, Carroll Gardens, Crime, Crown Heights, Drugs, Manhattan, Music, Park Slope, Red Hook, South Brooklyn, Transportation, Weeksville, hip-hop, labor on Sep 28th, 2009
How’re you gonna figure it? Me, Sammy Hines, once the sharpest, smartest cabbie in New York put out of commission by two young Broadway punks. Taken for a ride in my own hack.
I just can’t get over it! A guy like me who’s lived all his life by trying to outsmart the world. For twenty-five [...]
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Posted in Bay Ridge, Carroll Gardens, Cobble Hill, Crime, Jazz, Latino, Literature, Music, Poetry, Red Hook, Religion, Sex, South Brooklyn, Subways, The Dodgers, labor on Sep 20th, 2009
As soon as they got in the door the guy grabbed her ass. Goddamnit, cant youwait, pushing him away. She staggered and leaned against the wall, the guy leaning over her kissing her neck as she yanked open a closet door looking for a bottle, then slammed it shut when no bottle could be found. [...]
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Caz Dolowicz is back! And wherever he was— be it Otto, North Carolina or Hull, Georgia; in the forest alone singing Goethe or in the back of the WWIB promo van with your mom listening to Willie Nelson— at least Caz was there, more (or, on occasion, like when the goddamn van wouldn’t start at [...]
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