When Bob Flanagan performed in New York in 1991, potential spectators were warned: "Not for the faint of heart." And that was back in the golden age of transgression, when artists routinely presented the unspeakable to audiences of the imperturbable....
Susan Lucci, I feel your pain. In what the Netly News has dubbed the "Oscars for the taped-glasses set," my Web site (alone representing Silicon Alley) got its ass kicked last month by Silicon Valley. In a San Francisco music hall stocked with Web ...
The start-up businesses in New York's Silicon Alley have never been comfortable about getting down to numbers--revenue, site traffic, profits, even the coordinates of the ''Alley'' itself (south of 41st? 14th and up? Any address with a decent view of...
"God created black people, and black people created style,'' says Miss Roj, the philosopher drag queen from George C. Wolfe's The Colored Museum. And so it is told, in the lost archives of Negro achievement, that on the seventh day, God sat back and ...
It is the question that continues to perplex the would-be cyberbusinessman: just how do you make money off the Internet? For Lawrence Amoruso, the answer has been simple: sell cigars, and lots of them. The Little Italy businessman, who last year ...
The string of apartment buildings on West 166th Street was supposed to become an emblem of Rudy Giuliani's commitment to affordable housing. Instead, it is a brick-and-mortar personification of the mayor's capacity for thin-skinned political retaliat...
In a move apparently aimed at wresting control of the black Muslim movement from Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, a bitter rival of the minister has announced that the NOI's late founder, Elijah Muhammad, has returned and will dethrone Farrakh...
Does group therapy mean sitting in a room with other people? Not necessarily, not anymore. Across the country, among the geographically isolated or the merely overscheduled, online groups are gaining in popularity. One threat to conventional psychoth...
One of our readers writes: I'm what's known in the trade as a heavy user. It's an all-American sin I'm not fond of discussing in polite liberal company. I am addicted to greeting cards. The mushier the better. I have stacks at home, waiting for holi...
I'd go out and scream the praises of the new ordinance that will make it a hugely expensive quality-of-life offense to make noise in New York City, but I can't afford the fine. The City Council, in an attempt to be even stricter than Mayor G. (not to...
Usually, tenants don't fight for the right to live in a building tainted with hazardous chemicals. Usually, environmentalists don't get tickets for illegal dumping, developers don't offer reporters $100,000 to take a building off their hands, and dau...
Through the years, the Stanford Daily at Stanford University has been an open newspaper giving space to all kinds of views, however offensive to many students and faculty. When I was doing a lot of reporting on college speech codes, I subscribed to t...
One might expect that a class of sixtysomethings, after a lifetime of appointments, would arrive on time. Not so. It's past the 10 a.m. starting time for the Friday computer class at the New York Public Library's East 58th Street branch, and senior c...
Let's get one thing straight: I hate Calvin Klein ads more than I could ever express in mere words. Especially heinous is the one with the crazy-looking fat guy in the horrible jeans standing near the heroin addict in the terrifying perm. Why I--or a...
Putting away my tape recorder in his lawyer's conference room, I thanked Kurt Vonnegut for his time. A courteous man, he claimed to have enjoyed himself: "It's nice to talk to someone who's pleasant." When you're face-to-face with your last lite...
The Marv Albert case has given the media one more chance to equate kinky with criminal, and they've seized it with their hands lubed. Taking their lead from the prosecution, the press have put the sportscaster on trial as much for wearing panties ("p...
Don't mess with Lo Wang, a/k/a Shadow Warrior. He digests fortune cookies for health, speaks with an accent that Jackie Chan would find hard to understand, and chases after "coolies," bomb-crazy Japanese zombies whose "whole mission in life," the Web...
Mari Matsuda, a law professor at Georgetown University in Washington, is an influential advocate of affirmative action, and she is also known for her inventive doctrine, first propounded some years ago, that certain people deserve more free speech th...
WASHINGTON--The trial of Terry Nichols, which begins to unfold in Judge Richard Matsch's small Denver courtroom this week, is supposed to be a simple replay of Tim McVeigh's six-week trial. But the Nichols trial promises to open a window onto a weird...
A cat's eye will follow a tossed sock as quickly as a hummingbird's flight, and any fool can catch this culture's fancy. But only a handful of those who attract attention go on to become fixtures in a landscape that's given up on wondering why they'r...
Five months ago, Chris resolved that it was finally time to get clean. Sort of. The 34-year-old Brooklyn real estate broker (who declined to be identified by his real name; "Chris" is… More >>
At this time last year, Lily Jones and Sonika Mehta were both weighing their college options: private or public? East Coast or West? Big city or small? Today, as first-year students… More >>
Linguist Daniel Kaufman traces the beginning of his life's work to an uncharacteristic moment of social boldness. Back in the city after receiving his Ph.D. in linguistics from Cornell, he… More >>
Essays More Bucks, Same Bang by Neil deMause Most students won't earn more with a pricier diploma. Is high tuition worth it? Too Unschooled for School by Elizabeth Walters Why are so many incoming… More >>
When Priscila De Los Santos graduated from high school in January, she took less than a week off before starting classes at City University of New York's Borough of Manhattan… More >>
Soda bans, smoking bans, fast-food shaming—having a guilt-free good time in New York City has been as difficult as finding a french fry cooked in trans fat. But with Mayor… More >>
Carnegie Hall's opening gala—its biggest fundraising night of the year—was supposed to take place on October 2. The black tie event benefiting the nonprofit's artistic and education programs would have… More >>