shield your eyes

capitalnewyork: Dear friends, We are excited to announce the...

Tue, 18 Jun 2013 11:48:00 -0400

Dear friends,

We are excited to announce the release of our first e-book, Making the City: Selected stories from Capital New York. We chose 16 stories, published during the past three years, that we feel reflect on our mission to investigate, explore, question, and explain the messy city of New York to a knowing community of readers and participants.

»>You can buy it here on Amazon or on iTunes for $4.99.

You do not need a Kindle or tablet to read our e-book. You can read it on your desktop, or send it to your iPhone with the Kindle app.

Let us know what you think!

Also, join us for a release party, Reading the City, on July 2 at 7 p.m. at Housing Works Bookstore Cafe, featuring readings of New York stories by Capital co-founder Tom McGeveran and writers Starlee Kine, Azi Paybarah, Sheila O’Malley, Steven Boone, Steve Kornacki, Glynnis MacNicol, and more, hosted by Gillian Reagan. (Stay tuned for more details!)

Here’s the introduction to the book, written by editors Tom McGeveran and Josh Benson:

A Palestinian food-cart vendor with a secret recipe and a Chinese family struggling to earn its living with a takeout restaurant in the South Bronx; an ambitious young politician with a knack for working the press and a police chief who’s better at politics than his boss; a character actor trying to break into opera and a hip-hop group from Philadelphia that has made its way to the top of the late-night television pyramid; a famous woman who would challenge the supremacy of The New York Times and a self-deprecating man who would be its shining knight; the street hustles of the perennially homeless and the street photography of a fashion icon.

These are some of the characters we’ve covered at Capital New York over the last three years, since we began publishing from a cluster of white melamine Ikea desks in a windowless room in Soho in June 2010. The story subjects are a diverse group, but they have in common a desire to fix their fates against the roiling reality of life here. They’re famous, infamous, unknown, or invisible, but they’re all part of the same messy project of New York City.

This place is both hard to describe and endlessly describable. It’s a city of disparate instances, and it’s in the disparities that the engine of the city becomes, barely, visible.

E.B. White, that inescapable and comforting shadow under which anyone who wants to think or write about New York City must work, knew only some of these varieties of the New York experience, in fact. But he in turn knew what he didn’t know, as he wrote in his 1949 book, Here Is New York:

A block or two west of the new City of Man in Turtle Bay there is an old willow tree that presides over an interior garden. It is a battered tree, long suffering and much climbed, held together by strands of wire but beloved of those who know it. In a way it symbolizes the city: life under difficulties, growth against odds, sap-rise in the midst of concrete, and the steady reaching for the sun. Whenever I look at it nowadays, and feel the cold shadow of the planes, I think: “This must be saved, this particular thing, this very tree.” If it were to go, all would go — this city, this mischievous and marvelous monument which not to look upon would be like death.”

It’s a city of stories. Telling them in their specificity, and smashing them all together without an overweening concern for their comfort or compatibility, is the only real way to tell the story of New York. It’s an endless project that’s so rewarding because it’s a project that can never go away. It’s what we’ve tried to do with this website: To tell some of these stories, in their utter specificity, as a way of getting at the big stories that defy the keystroke.

This is a selection of articles we’ve published over the last three years, and not a collection, because with writers like ours, as passionate about their subjects and as determined to get the story right in its utter specificity, there can’t be a final anthology. Which is why we are so thankful for the last three years of Capital, and for the time to come. And which is why we hope, if you find these stories as compelling and immersive as we do, there will be ample occasion for more selections like these ones.

Buy Making the City: Selected stories from Capital New York on Amazon or on iTunes.

This and things.

TOYIN ODUTOLAAll these garlands prove nothing XII, 2013 pen ink...

Thu, 06 Jun 2013 12:54:21 -0400

TOYIN ODUTOLA
All these garlands prove nothing XII, 2013
pen ink and marker on paper
14 x 17 inches 23 1/2 x 26 1/2 x 1 1/2 inches framed
TO13.006
Jack Shainman Gallery, NY

My mom’s cheatsheet of names for my niece and...

Thu, 06 Jun 2013 12:04:17 -0400

My mom’s cheatsheet of names for my niece and nephew’s stuffed animal friends. #latergram

"Lying is done with words, and also with silence."

Tue, 28 May 2013 16:12:18 -0400

“Lying is done with words, and also with silence.”

- Adrienne Rich, Women and Honor: Some Notes on Lying (via monoire)

thirdbeatred: titsmcgrits: notvanishing: jaraconnell: White...

Tue, 28 May 2013 16:06:53 -0400

thirdbeatred:

titsmcgrits:

notvanishing:

jaraconnell:

White Feminist Twitter appreciation post. #kony2013

never gets old.

LOL

so good!

A 'strong female character'

Tue, 21 May 2013 11:58:19 -0400

drshebloggo:

DOES NOT NECESSARILY MEAN

a character who is physically strong

a character who is mentally strong

a character who is emotionally strong

ABSOLUTELY MEANS

a character who makes her own choices, even if they’re mistakes

a character whose point of view is explored at least briefly

a character who is the hero of her own story whether she knows it or not

And that’s just a strong character, really.

There is a graphic of a dog riding a skateboard on PJ’s...

Sun, 19 May 2013 23:03:48 -0400

There is a graphic of a dog riding a skateboard on PJ’s shirt.

(⊙ヮ⊙): I decided to make this post because the things that I see on tumblr...

Fri, 17 May 2013 11:56:00 -0400

(⊙ヮ⊙): I decided to make this post because the things that I see on tumblr...:

rotting:

I decided to make this post because the things that I see on tumblr that deal with ableism don’t mention the things that I want to be talked about, and I wanted to give an insight into what its like for me personally. I get a lot of asks, mainly anonymous ones, about my disability and how it…

daughtersofdilla: period

Sun, 12 May 2013 20:01:25 -0400

daughtersofdilla:

period

Office mail.

Thu, 02 May 2013 15:32:53 -0400

Office mail.

"If we actually started calling bullying what it is and address it as racism, sexism, homophobia,..."

Fri, 12 Apr 2013 16:26:16 -0400

“If we actually started calling bullying what it is and address it as racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, ableism, fat phobia and classism it would actually give children a better way to deal with the very same power dynamics they will face as adults, while also giving adults more responsibility to challenge the intolerance that is rooted within our society overall.”

- Amanda Levitt at Fat Body Politics (October 5th, 2012)

amomaly: Me EVERY day.

Fri, 12 Apr 2013 13:31:12 -0400

amomaly:

Me EVERY day.

katiecookies: goddesssyndrome: <3 <3 <3 This is why we’re friends.

Thu, 11 Apr 2013 12:37:00 -0400

katiecookies:

goddesssyndrome:

<3 <3 <3

This is why we’re friends.

kolkhara: Scars #1 and #3 - Tunisian Artist Meriem Bouderbala

Tue, 09 Apr 2013 19:23:45 -0400

kolkhara:

Scars #1 and #3 - Tunisian Artist Meriem Bouderbala

Photo

Wed, 27 Mar 2013 12:06:46 -0400

Memories, and one last trace, of Manhattan's Little Syria

Tue, 19 Mar 2013 16:44:46 -0400

Memories, and one last trace, of Manhattan's Little Syria:

Great short documentary by Minty Grover.

so-treu: rootsnbluesfestival: Big Mama Thornton, Muddy Waters,...

Wed, 13 Mar 2013 19:03:11 -0400

so-treu:

rootsnbluesfestival:

Big Mama Thornton, Muddy Waters, James Cotton, Otis Span and others (1965) by Jim Marshall

PRAISES AND ACCOLADES. ALL PRAISES AND ACCOLADES DUE.

Interview with Penny Rimbaud (Crass) 09'

Wed, 13 Mar 2013 19:02:00 -0400

Interview with Penny Rimbaud (Crass) 09':

tuttifanni:

(via blarghhh)

There is a new Penny Rimbaud exhibit opening at Boo-Hooray gallery tonight. Everyone come!

terrysdiary: Jeanius Like the rapper.

Tue, 12 Mar 2013 11:34:19 -0400

terrysdiary:

Jeanius

Like the rapper.

Adrienne Rich reading "On Edges"

Tue, 12 Mar 2013 08:09:59 -0400

Adrienne Rich reading "On Edges"