The only time someone remembered September 11, 2001 to me in the last year was when a stranger mentioned it as part of the reason he was trying to assault me. So it's clear that the events of that day have fully passed into myth, useful only as...

Listen, I'm not the one making this assertion. It's Vulture's daily 10x10 crossword puzzle for May 17th, entitled "The Sexual Tension Puzzle", in which I am, apparently, a clue. (Sorry to spoil the answer to 25 Across!) Don't believe me?...

Every year, for twenty years now, I've written an observance of this day. Sometimes it's for myself, sometimes it's for the small cohort of folks who've checked back in with me on this day every year since then, a group which has shrunk a bit over...

Here are some before-and-afters from a set of photos my parents took on a visit to Manhattan in 1985. I tried to replicate the angles as best I could in the modern photos. MacDougal Street Sixth...

It is almost impossibly difficult to explain Robin Byrd to anyone who was not an adult living in NYC toward the end of the last century, though everyone who recognizes the name immediately responds with unbridled enthusiasm. This comes up in...

Over the weekend, we had the chance to explore the newly-opened Moynihan Station, the massive new expansion to Penn Station that's been in the works for decades. Though it ostensibly serves as a welcoming and modern new facility for Amtrak and Long...

The slogan, for people who weren’t in Manhattan that day, is “Never Forget”. The people who were not here, who were never here, call it “9/11”. But the people I still check in with, the friends who trudged home covered in ash, never call it that....

There are kids now who are old enough to go fight in wars that were justified back when they still had their umbilical cords attached. For them, the attacks are only history; that's all they ever were. I can sort of understand it. I was born after...

What if we had another 9/11, and nothing happened? Living in New York City, the one fantasy sport that everybody plays is real estate; we all like to imagine what it would be like to be able to afford to buy a place. And sometime over the last year...

For the first decade after the attacks, I basically didn’t go anywhere near that part of downtown. A business meeting would take me a few blocks away, and I’d feel that tightness in my chest, that presence, and I’d just keep moving. But this morning,...

A couple of times a week, I end up walking by the World Trade Center, either the new train station at the site, or one of the new malls that’s sprung up flanking the memorial. It’s a normal part of my day now, not a tentative and fraught moment that...

Until the Citibike bikeshare program launched here in New York City, I’d ridden a bike perhaps once in the prior twenty years. Since it launched, I ride almost daily. Because of the massive improvements in quality of life in the city as walkability...

We’ve been saying “never forget” for so long that we don’t even know why we’re saying it. At JFK airport, panic over… nothing. On the other side of the country, at LAX, panic over… nothing. As it turns out, if you tell people to be afraid all the...

A technology community driven by values, not just profits. I’ve been part of the New York City tech scene for more than 15 years, from back when it was “Silicon Alley” trying to be an imitation of the West Coast, to its more recent iteration as a...

Last week I went and visited the memorial reflecting pools for the first time. I had been to the top of the new One World Trade Center, but had deliberately avoided ever visiting (or actually seeing in person) the space where the old towers had been....

In short: Tomorrow’s my birthday. I’m asking you to help me support the Lower Eastside Girls Club, and I’ll match whatever you donate through this secure form until midnight on September 5th. The Neighborhood Around the start of each new year, I...

Toward the end of every year, as people are thinking of making donations to charities either as an act of goodwill, or to help reduce their tax burden, or both, I try to work with my online networks to help out causes I believe in. And every year,...

They say the best way to see if you really understand something is to try to explain it to another person. I’ll never really understand what happened to my beloved city thirteen years ago today, of course, but I’ve had in mind that my young son is...

My wife, in addition to being wise and kind, is generally made of sterner stuff than I am. This serves us both well, but the contrast does serve to elucidate some important concepts from time to time. Living as we do in New York City, subway rides...

For a dozen years, I’ve been trying to document where I am relative to where I was, but this year I’m tired. I’m finding the weaponized grievances and the commercialized grief to be increasingly trying. I thought in 2001 that some beautiful things...

Today is New York City’s mayoral primary, where the two major parties select which candidate will represent the party. Due to my being on the board of the NY Tech Meetup, I got to be part of a small group that interviewed almost all of the major...

One of the things I love most is meeting new people who are outside of the usual circles that I travel in, who can teach me about things that I’d never learn about otherwise. To that end, I devote as much time as is possible in a busy schedule to...

I read my friend Brendan Koerner’s The Skies Belong To Us straight through; On its surface, this is a book that tells a riveting true (not inspired-by-true, but true) story of two young lovers and the fantastic, farcical way in which they pulled off...

In today’s Wall Street Journal there’s a detailed look at how New York City’s tech industry is looking to influence politics in the city. I’m happy to be quoted in the story, but wanted to offer more context about some of my comments. When I ran for...

Yesterday, my son and I were coming back home to New York City, driving past the familiar skyline and its newest additions. Like a lot of toddlers, my boy’s obsessed with all kinds of vehicles, so I wasn’t surprised when he pointed at a flight that...

The other night, we had a wonderful dinner made by chef Tien Ho, who’s best known as the founding chef of Má Pêche (I got to join Ed Levine when he had the meal that inspired him to write on Serious Eats that Tien was then “the best chef in New York...

My brilliant friend Caterina Fake wrote about the Fear of Missing Out last year, and the FOMO meme took instant hold amongst those of us who love the digital life. We’re keenly aware that our constant connection to those who are doing things that are...

The idea of “public space” used to be pretty simple; There were places that we all agreed would be maintained by, and for, the public good. But the past few decades have offered up a valuable, if troubling, experiment with the nature of public space...

For a few months, those of us who care passionately about the New York City tech community have been debating the City’s Applied Sciences NYC plan, which will drive the creation of a world-class research university here in NYC. Since a significant...

I took this photo on a cool spring day twenty years ago, on the day I fell in love for the first time that would last. I’d been to New York City a number of times before then, but at fifteen years old I took this photo on my first trip to the city...

This morning, I was extraordinarily excited to get to witness Mayor Bloomberg and our city’s new Chief Digital Office Rachel Sterne unveil New York City’s “Road Map for the Digital City”. It’s an extraordinary document, and as someone who loves the...

This weekend here in NYC is Transportation Camp. While I can’t make it out to what’s already sounding like it’s been an amazing event, I thought the moment marked a nice time to look back at one of the successes we’ve seen around open transportation...

Please meet Malcolm Browne Dash. He’s my son, born February 9th weighing in at 7 pounds, 2 ounces. The days (and yes, the nights) over this last week or so have been a blur, but one thing that’s crystal clear, beside his abiding cuteness, is that...

Thank you to those of you who supported my bid for a board seat in the New York Tech Meetup election. Being considered amongst such talented and accomplished peers is an honor, and being elected from among them is even more so, especially alongside...

Update: Voting is now open. I’d appreciate your support. Update #2: There’s video of my platform speech at this month’s tech meetup, if you want to see and hear me articulate the ideas below. This is a bit outside of my usual realm, but I decided...

This year, as every year, I pause for a personal ritual of observing where I am today compared to where I was, and where we all were, on this day in 2001. I’m a New Yorker, who lived in the city for years before the attacks, but never quite...

One year ago, I wrote a remembrance, as I do every year, of where I’m at compared to where I was on this day in 2001. As a New Yorker, it’s a personal ritual, one that I share publicly but do more for myself than for anyone else. It was startling to...

Yesterday and early this morning, while talking about our impending move to a new apartment a few blocks away in a much bigger building (and no longer on the ground floor), my wife and I talked about how being in a larger complex essentially acts as...

A few weeks ago, as a surprise gift for our anniversary, my wife got us a night’s stay at the Revolving Hotel Room, part of theanyspacewhatever exhibition (see video) at the Guggenheim. Created by Carsten Höller, the room is a remarkable art...

I think one of the biggest reasons many great writers go into journalism is for the chance to sneak little wisecracks in, with the hope their editors will indulge. I took the opportunity to read a printed copy of the New York Times the other day, and...

As always, I am trying to be everywhere at once. Here’s where I’ve succeeded: Dan Costa at PC Magazine offers a look at the rise of micro social networks. I get a nod there, but it’s more satisfying to see the idea itself take off. That’s an idea...

Each year, I try to write a memorial post on the anniversary, to remind myself, and as a record of where I am compared to where I was that day. As I read back over them, what I see nearly ever year is that I wanted to cling to the sadness of the day,...

Last Friday was my birthday. Hooray! I have a fantastic wife, so she treated me to a pig-butchering class at The Brooklyn Kitchen. I like meat, and I like being educated about what I eat and respecting the animals I consume. So Tom Mylan was a...

The other day, I’d been reminded about some of the most striking statistics I’d seen last year, which were from the NYPD crime stats for 9th Precinct, where I live. (That link is to a PDF with stats for last week.) Each precinct in the city files...

Today’s Blog of the Year Pick: Serious Eats. I love food, but I could never quite put my finger on what was wrong with the food blogs I’d tried to read until Serious Eats came along. As it turns out, I like cooking and I like learning about...

Today’s Blog of the Year Pick: Ill Doctrine. Put simply, Jay Smooth’s Ill Doctrine is the best video blog on the web. (At least the best one that’s in English.) As you’d expect from the founder of hiphopmusic.com, Ill Doc starts from a base of...

What It Is: ZipCar is a car sharing service, which lets you rent (or share, if you prefer) a variety of cars by the hour for a low fee that includes everything — even gas. ZipCar recently acquired Flexcar, so they’ve got cars in a good number of...

What It Is: LimoLiner is an executive-class bus service from New York to Boston (or vice versa) that gets you from the center of one city to the other in about 4 and a half hours, for less than a hundred bucks. If you count getting to the airport...

It looks like I wasn’t the only one having a Gawker reckoning; A remarkable post revealed that both Emily Gould and Choire Sicha are leaving the site. (Thanks to Rex for the link.) That post impressively uses Carla Blumenkranz’s words about Gawker to...

I like to drink tea, either from my neighborhood tea shop or from what I brew at home, a nice cup of Darjeeling. “Darjeeling Tea” means more than you might think. According to the Tea Board Of India – “Darjeeling Tea” means: tea which has been...

I’ve had the chance to follow Gawker Media since before it launched, really, and so it’s been interesting to see a couple of items pop up recently about the direction of some of its titles and practices. The big story, of course, is New York...

It’s the first year that the anniversary didn’t hang over everything I do. I’m still aware of it, I’ll always be aware of it, but time and distance and some amount of willful disbelief have dimmed the sharpness of the remembrance. On the afternoon of...

From Getting It: Now one of cell-phonedom’s most annoying novelty rings has been sampled for an anti-cell phone CD released last week by dance act Solid Gold Chartbusters. “I Wanna 1-2-1 With You” is a steal from the catchphrase of one of the UK’s...

On a much lighter note, anyone who’s lived in, or spent appreciable time in, New York City, is familiar with the vagaries of alternate side of the street parking rules. However, it’s damned near impossible to find out about these regulations...

Just another reason to like Brill’s Content is this excellent package on the Mega-Media companies. It’s terrifying to read, but an excellent example of what journalism should be. Bonus: Just another example of why David Duchovny is cool was the...

Well, for me the moving process begins today, as I return to my most favorite city, New York, New York. I’m sure you don’t care too much, but it will affect this page in that the tumultuous state of phone/Internet connections will force updates to be...

So the big innovation for today is the DHTML pull-down menus at the top of the page. They only work in Explorer, and while I hate browser-specific enhancements, I did them for two reasons. The first reason, of course, was to see if I could. I’m no...

An almost surreal New York Moment: we were at a pizzeria at the corner of York and 79th, and there was a fellow watering his garden outside the shop. Not amazing that there was a gardener, but that the "garden" was the small square of dirt...

Looks like the apartment hunt is finally bearing some fruit… not just one, but two good candidates today, with the second one being the oh-so-wired Chesapeake Building which is only two blocks from my old place on 92nd. The big news on this new...

Well, if one can’t create content, one can always appropriate it. Also by way of atonement for my cheekiness on 27 July, I present to you a speech by JFK Sr. in which he does a fantastic job of refuting those who would vilify the word liberal, a term...

From the silly to the sublime… it seems the Internet brings out people’s interest in Meta-Content whether it’s Slate or Brill’s Content in my bookmarks, or any of the other media analyses on the web, everyone wants to explain everything to everyone...

So the apartment hunt continues. It’s actually kind of fun, figuring out Ad-Speak. I’m pretty good with acronyms and abbreviations, (and you’d be hard-pressed to find a vowel in any of the words in a typical real estate ad in the Times…) but I must...