Blogs & Features

Obviously after this there was no going back. Your childhood was over, years of therapy ensued, and Christmas – that most beloved of holidays – would never be the same again. Or not. [...]

And so begins the story of Danny the Car Wiper, William Burroughs’ sad but strangely uplifting story about a junky looking to score some heroin on Christmas Day. [...]

Christmas Day, 1999. Twenty years ago. Was I at home in New York, a gentle snow falling outside, while inside blazed a warm fire in the fireplace, with presents under the Christmas tree […]

Everyone remembers how when Santa was an infant he was abandoned in the woods in a snow bank till the personification of the forest found him and gave him to a lioness [...]

Christmas is the most wonderful time of the year. Sure, that’s a given. People seem to enjoy the colored lights, the slowly dying tree in the living room, and the glitter. Oh, and the gifts. People seem to really like [...]

The bridge is tall and narrow. It is made of metal constructed in a triangular pattern with rivets visible along its span. The suspension tower rises far into the sky, and the cables that keep the road suspended are thick, [...]

A long time ago, way back in college, I had an apartment two blocks off Height Street in San Francisco. It was a nondescript thing just a box on the third floor where the “rooms” were defined by how you [...]

Sixteen was a good year. Oh, to be sure it was a year of fear and social awkwardness. For a year I spent the majority of the time confused and unaware of my surroundings and my place in them. [...]

On my 16th birthday, my brother gave me a copy of Jack Kerouac’s On the Road and it changed my life forever. Not really. It would be nice if it did. If life worked that way, like a movie, all [...]

It is Independence Day. There is red, white and blue bunting hung from porches and windows. The air has the scent of smoke; it’s there in the background but always present. You almost don’t notice it...