Sound the Alarm!

Photo by myself of the fire station in Chinatown, around Lafayette and Canal Street.


The New Yorker Festival is coming!!

Over the last few years, my favorite magazine has hosted a remarkable event called the the New Yorker Festival. Over the span of a weekend, well-known authors, artists and thinkers hold conversations and interviews.

I've seen Steve Martin, Chuck Close, David Byrne, the late Richard Avedon, Malcolm Gladwell, and the creators of South Park (Trey Parker and Matt Stone), among others. It is a fantastic treat, and you have to pick and choose what you can see.

The schedule is out in today's magazine, and tickets go on sale September 15. Better get that speed dial! I tried getting tickets to a talk last year and it was sold out within a couple minutes.

A quick look at the schedule shows Annie Proulx, Zadie Smith, Jhumpa Lahiri, Paul Theroux, Salman Rushdie, Norman Mailer, Martin Amis, Steve Martin, Neil LaBute, David Byrne....how does one choose?!


Above, a photo of a lovely old firehouse on Lafayette, sandwiched between two banal glass buildings. Now a community house, you can just imagine how the old firetrucks roared out the red doors.