SOUND: Faerman Cash Register Company
Whenever the door of 159 Bowery opens, a digital doorbell chimes. And occasionally the ring of Brian Faerman’s cell phone echoes down the rows of
April 2, 2012
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SMELL: Hot & Crusty Bakery, 4 pm, Grand Central Terminal
My earliest memories of the iconic New York City bakery smell are of Lichtman’s, a Jewish-Hungarian bakery on Amsterdam and West Eighty-sixth Street that closed
March 5, 2012
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TASTE: McSorley’s Old Ale House cracker-and-cheese plate
This is a place where afternoon slips as easily into evening as the beer slips down the throats of its patrons. Dectets of mugs thunk
February 6, 2012
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MULTISENSORY EXPERIENCE: Sensory Deprivation Tank
For the new year, I decided to cleanse my city senses by spending an hour in a sensory deprivation tank: basically, a large, soundproof, lightproof
January 3, 2012
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SMELL: Sidewalk Christmas-tree stands
Few things make me happier at holiday time than, in the midst of my frenzied errands, passing through a sidewalk Christmas-tree stall and being enveloped
December 6, 2011
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SOUND: The wild parrots of Flatbush, Brooklyn
One recent Saturday morning, twelve people gathered outside the gates of Brooklyn College, in Flatbush. Some carried coffee cups. Some carried cameras with telephoto lenses.
November 1, 2011
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TASTE: Contraband Raw Milk
My first encounter with New York City’s raw-milk counterculture took place in a Bushwick church basement in 2003. Directed there by a series of hush-hush
October 4, 2011
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SIGHT: THE HOLE
The Hole, I had been told, is the Wild West of the Brooklyn-Queens border. It’s a no-man’s-land. There are cowboys on horseback, boarded-up houses, brand-new
September 7, 2011
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TOUCH: Water balloons
At the height of an urban summer, playgrounds and public water fountains throughout the five boroughs become freckled with snippets of colored rubber, the fallout
August 1, 2011
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