A Veblenesque Gorge

May 17

Petition to Keep Rockaway Ferry

The Rockaway Ferry began service in the weeks after Hurricane Sandy, providing Rockaway residents with a means of getting to the city after the A train was wiped out. It’s awesome — forty or so minutes to downtown Manhattan, and you can buy coffee in the morning and beer later on.

The ferry is currently scheduled to cease service when the A train comes back at the end of the month (if all goes as planned). But let’s convince them to keep it! It is the absolute best way to get to Rockaway, and summer is ready to pounce on us, and you’ll want to get out there.

Please sign the petition to keep the Rockaway Ferry!

Apr 29

So pleased to learn that Stand Clear of the Closing Doors and its director, Sam Fleischner, who I profiled for Storyboard (RIP) last month, won the Special Jury Mention for Narrative Feature at the Tribeca FIlm Festival. There’s nothing better than good things happening to talented people who are also nice people.

Go see this movie!

Apr 26

Beachfront luxury.

Apr 13

Abandoned bus stop in Rockaway.

Mar 30

Patti Smith at the Rockaway Moma Dome.

Mar 24

The new MoMa Dome in Rockaway

Mar 11

storyboard:

Hurricane Sandy Empowers a Film It Almost Destroyed

On October 28 of last year, Sam Fleischner was riding the A train out to Rockaway. With him were an autistic child actor, a lighting guy, sound guy — an entire film crew in fact, all under his direction. To hear the name of the film, Stand Clear of the Closing Doors, is to understand that the location was an appropriate one; it’s the story of a 13-year-old autistic boy played by Jesus Sanchez who gets lost on the subway for 10 days. When it’s not taking place on the A train, Stand Clear unfolds in the Rockaways, where the boy’s mother is on a frantic mission to find him. The real-life story on which the movie is based (documented in a New York Times article in 2009) takes place in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn. But Fleischner saw parallels between the subway and the ocean, and he wanted the family in his film to live nearby. It was four days before Fleischner’s film was scheduled to wrap, and he needed all the time in the subway he could get. But Hurricane Sandy had other plans.

Read More

My piece for the fantastic new Tumblr publication about creativity, Storyboard.

Mar 10

The temperatures, the light, and the Hawaii-like waves had Rockaway buzzing yesterday afternoon.

Feb 12

“In a World Where Oceans Rule….” DUN DUN DUN.

Rockaway Taco Summer 2013, y’all!

Feb 10

Yacha sees the horizon and thinks of a high rise in a crowded city she once knew well.The wind is whipping so that it stings. Her third paw burns from the salt on the road they left behind just moments ago. To the whole of humanity, she casts a wayward thought, and contemplates a lamppost.