The Unsolved Case of the Missing Perfume Heiress

It’s the best Agatha Christie novel that never was: the story of the disappearance of Manhattan perfume heiress, Dorothy Arnold. She was a woman about town and the belle of too many Uptown balls to count, but to this day, no one could ever figure out whether Dorothy was murdered, kidnapped, or stepped through some…

Better than Broadway: Inside NYC’s Theatre with Soul

In 1961, New York City was sizzling. Musicians, comics, artists – anyone selling a song or a run-on sentence made their way to Manhattan’s East Village to make it big, or have a hell of a lot of fun trying. There, the streets were electric, and for the the theatre crowd they led to one…

A Time Travelling Greenwich Village Studio Hides an Incredible Art Collection

Wait for no muse. Make a habit of working all the time. Let your wooden sculptures grow up, and your bronze sculptures grow out. Such was the world according to Chaim Gross, the patron saint of bohemian Greenwich Village. As an Arts educator, he was bar none in passion and gave playfully acerbic advice (this…

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The Off-Beat New York City Winter Guide

Sweater weather is officially underway in New York City, which means the holiday season is upon us! As the nights wax longer, and the subway lamps get a first dusting of snow, you’re likely to wonder where to cozy up with a fireside pint, or get in the holiday spirit? From activities with friends and…

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Behind the Curtain of New York’s Thriving Subculture of Fortune Tellers

Search “psychic” in New York City on Google Maps, and you’ll be flooded with addresses of not only psychics, but astrologers, tarot card readers, palm readers, and others invested in the business of the esoteric. This is a city where the supernatural thrives, where even in the midst of skyrocketing rent prices, a psychic –…

Manhattan’s Last Farmhouse

In the midst of towering apartments and neon-lit bodegas, you’ll find the Dyckman Farmhouse, Manhattan’s oldest abode and only farmhouse. The white clapboard cottage has been perched on a hilltop on present-day Broadway for 234 years, slipping under the radar of tourists and New Yorkers alike and looking like a bit of a mirage in its…

Meet Me at the Wigstock Festival: Remembering NYC Summers in Drag

It was the drag world’s biggest block party. From the heat of 1980s New York, equal parts glitter and grime, the “Wigstock” festival exploded onto the streets as a place for queens to hold court when no one else would have them. Today, watching jaw-dropping drag is as easy as going online or turning on…

The Asylum That Gave Lou Reed Electroshock Therapy Is Also an Unforgettable Art Museum

“Excuse me!” says a man by a snowed-in dumpster. “Excuse me,” he continues, in a teleprompted tone, “Where are you, excuse me, goodnight!” It’s 2pm at the Creedmoor Psychiatric Center in Queens. I tell him I’m lost, and pull out a map of the 300 acres where he is a patient, and where I’m late…

Brooklyn’s Revolutionary Social Club

On a quiet street in Brooklyn, lies a very peculiar treasure chest. It safeguards the boots of Mexican revolutionaries, and the sound bites of rebels; it collects buttons, posters, and anything upon which one could scrawl a grassroots manifesto. It’s New York City’s “Interference Archive,” and it’s the volunteer-based library, gallery, and archive for tools…

The Secret NYC Gallery that brought Picasso & the Avant-garde to America

Did they ever tell you about the nice Jersey boy who brought Modern Art to America’s shores? It wasn’t a Rockefeller, or a Guggenheim – just a kid from Hoboken, New Jersey with an eye for talent. Behind the doors of a little 5th floor attic-level apartment on 291 Fifth Avenue, he displayed raunchy Rodins,…