City Life

A nameless section of Manhattan resembles the nineteen-seventies city that’s been romanticized in the movies. But do we really want to live in “Taxi Driver”?

I walk through my neighborhood dealing with personal stuff, including learning how to physically and mentally defend myself against those who do not feel that my “I” should exist at all.

They thought that they’d found the perfect apartment. They weren’t alone.

To move into the Apthorp was to enter a state of giddy, rent-stabilized delirium.

Scenes from an endless apartment hunt.

The city in summer floated in a daze that moved otherwise sensible people to repeat endlessly the brainless greeting “Hot enough for ya? Ha-ha!”

What’s an engineer’s worst nightmare? To realize that the supports he designed for an office tower are flawed—and hurricane season is approaching.

The story of a refuge.

The neighbors you’d rather not know about.