At this time of year, the Bowery seems colder and brighter than other streets nearby, maybe because it’s several lanes wide and flanked by buildings no more than four or five stories tall. To me, it’s also a resonant place, and has been since I m…

It’s late August in Brooklyn, and two men are trying to figure out how to hoist a piano up to a third-floor window and then release it so that it smashes onto the sidewalk below. “I think the major issue is just balancing out its weight,” says …

Published in 2001, Michael Azerrad’s Our Band Could Be Your Life featured the story of thirteen seminal indie bands from 1981–1991. Since then, his accounts of the decade’s underground do-it-yourself punk ethos has inspired a generation of music …

“You are such a good drink, for a four o’clock drink,” Nadia Sirota tells her Campari and soda. Then, with a sort of resigned discipline, she also orders pizza so as not to turn up sloshed at her next gig in two hours. Sirota, a violist and rad…

The startling success story of pianist Simone Dinnerstein.Earlier this month, pianist Simone Dinnerstein celebrated her latest album, Bach, A Strange Beauty, with a six-hour-long release party in her parents’ Park Slope brownstone. She set her iPod…

Co-authored by Gabriel Greenberg. Think of the last time you looked for an apartment: Most likely, a good number of the listings that you encountered came with floor plans. And by looking at these diagrams, you probably had no trouble finding…

By day, Van Cortlandt Manor is a historical estate where interpreters in colonial attire give tours, comb wool, and bake kickshaws (from the French quelque chose) at the hearth. The Hudson River borders the property. There’s a gift shop that’s qu…