On a recent trip to California I stayed in a classic Old Hollywood haunt called the Culver City Hotel, an idiosynchratic red brick wedge of a building that towers over the diminuitive Epcot-esque Art Deco buildings around it. The hotel lobby greets visitors with august, dark-wooded, faux-Patrician charm complete with piano bar, wooden globe, and enormous [...]
Despite thunderstorms earlier that day I found myself seated in the heart of Times Square to attend the premiere of Mad Men season four, an hour ahead of the rest of the country. I was later upgraded from puddle-seat to VIP area (admittedly way comfier than the wet bleachers (thank you V!). The majority of [...]
The Washington Heights barber wraps a young Latino in a cape emblazoned with day-glo palm trees, and nods into the mirror. They’re both silent and serious, the only sound is the boxing match on the wall-mounted television set. The young man is about to get a shape-up, a term referring to the removal of any [...]
Summer is now upon us, and that means the joys of iced coffee, kids shrieking in the spray of fire hydrant fountains, and of course the pied-piper melodies of the ice cream truck. Toward the evening, when the heat comes as much from the pavement as from the sky, the humid air vibrates with reggaeton [...]
When I was a little girl growing up in Germany I remember staying up long past my bed time to join my mom to watch “the Reportage”, a weekly television program dedicated to stories from around the world. I loved the show because I never knew whom I was going to encounter next, yurt-dwelling nomads [...]