Posts By: City of Strangers

Jerry Rio's Urban Eye: Times Square

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vf8YvRU1yTU[/youtube] Over the holidays, reader Jerry Rio sent me this charming doc about changing mid-90′s New York: The Urban Eye. This ‘video time-capsule’ was made in 1995, when market forces, and Rudy Guiliani, were shifting the city into its present phase. Jerry Rio interviews people on the street and a mock-serious narrator charts the ‘unofficial… Read more »

Looking back: New York in the '70s

  What always interested me about NY when I first came here in the late 80′s was how, like London, it was essentially a working class city. The working classes lived in the heart of the city, and constituted a great deal of its personality. Sure, the economic, media, and fashion elites, the beautiful people… Read more »

Gil Scott Heron RIP

Reflections on Gil Scott Heron, from first discovering his music in Montreal, to his addiction and death. Includes many videos of his performances and interviews.

Looking Back at the South Bronx
City Of Strangers

Looking back at going to the South Bronx in 1991 with videos from its most desolate period in the 70′s and the birth of the Bronx style in the 80′s.

A Walk Through the East Village on May Day, 2011
City of Strangers

Went to the East Village Sunday, MayDay, to see if they still have the May Day events in Tompkins Square Park. The events/protests were a big fixture in the early 90′s and though I hadn’t thought of them in years, I wanted to see if they were still around, long after the neighborhood had kicked out its radicals.

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Letter From Santee
City Of Strangers

If we ever colonize Mars, our settlements will look a lot like Santee Town Center.