My new book, Feral City , hits the shelves October 4, 2022. You can pre-order it today from your local bookshop and wherever books are sold. Thank you! What happens when an entire social class abandons a metropolis? This genre-bending journey through lockdown New York offers an exhilarating, intimate look at a city returned to its rebellious spirit. The pandemic lockdown of 2020 launched an unprecedented urban experiment. Traffic disappeared from the streets. Times Square fell silent. And half a million residents fled the most crowded city in America. In this innovative and thrilling book, author and social critic Jeremiah Moss, hailed as “New York City’s career elegist” (New York Times), explores a city emptied of the dominant class—and their controlling influence. “Plagues have a disinhibiting effect,” Moss writes. “As the normal order is suspended, the repressive force of civilization lifts and our rules fall away, shifting the boundaries of society and psyche."...
In the aftermath of yesterday's incident of police brutality against New Yorkers participating in the Queer Liberation March for Black Lives and Against Police Brutality, someone has made a bold statement in Washington Square Park. Early this morning, I went by the park to find the statues of George Washington on the Arch vividly splattered in blood-red paint. (Below his feet on one side, graffiti from weeks ago still shows "fuck12 since 1492.") On the other side of the arch, more blood splatter. (Above more faded graffiti: "Stolen Lands FTP.") Crime scene body outlines ring the fountain, one after another, their torsos and heads blasted with red as if shot dead. While some of the paint was still wet, bits of rubber balloon left behind, detectives surveyed the incendiary work of graffiti art. A cooler full of watery, blood-red paint stands open before the spectacle. This will be temporary, paint washes off, but the lives lost to po...
VANISHING UPDATE: False alarm! Now they say they're just renovating . Back in 2013, the old Odessa closed . This Odessa was also known as the "dark" Odessa. It was the first Odessa and the one I loved best. Now the new Odessa, also known as a the "light" Odessa, is closing. Odessa in miniature by Nicholas Buffon When the old Odessa still existed, I didn't go much to the new Odessa because it felt redundant and too new when it opened back in 1990-whenever. Then, when the old Odessa closed, I went to the new Odessa (which was no longer new) because it was no longer redundant and, in fact, was one of the only places left in the East Village where you could get a simple diner meal and not be surrounded by the worst people. Now it's closing. Their last day will be July 19. You can't go inside to sit and eat because we're in a pandemic, remember? But you can order something to go and while you wait you can imagine that you're sitting i...
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