I went to clear my head on Steeplechase Pier, where fishermen gather in the summer to fill their buckets much as they did a century ago. 

Last call at the Blarney Cove.For a long time, when I came to the end of something—a walk across the bridge, an absence from the city—I would find myself inside the Blarney Cove, a hallway-sized Irish bar on Fourteenth Street between Avenues A an…

Every now and then I come across someone on the subway who defies easy categorization. I remember, for instance, a man who boarded the 3 train in Brooklyn a few years ago wearing military fatigues and a bandolier packed with little glass bottles …