Ian Frazier walked a thousand miles in the borough and found that, from the time of the Revolutionary War to the fires of the nineteen-seventies, the history of the borough has always been shaped by its in-between-ness.
Best New Yorker Our Local Correspondents
Correspondence features dispatches from writers reporting from locations around the world and across America, bringing distant stories to New Yorker readers.
17 picks · 1972–2024
Top authors: Ian Frazier (5), Jennifer Gonnerman (3), William Finnegan (2)
William Finnegan writes about how the effort to renovate midtown Manhattan’s transit hub has been stalled by money, politics, and disputes about the public good.
For years, employees of the Pierre enjoyed some of the most enviable union jobs in New York City, Jennifer Gonnerman writes. How much of that will survive the pandemic?
Jennifer Gonnerman writes about Terence Layne’s driving a New York City bus during a pandemic and an uprising.
The new president of the New York City Transit Authority wants to make the trains (and buses) run on time. It won’t be easy, William Finnegan writes.
Growing crops in the city, without soil or natural light.
Reflecting on the irreproducible color of the monument’s patina.
Jennifer Gonnerman on Kalief Browder, a Bronx teen-ager who was accused of stealing a backpack. He spent more than a thousand days awaiting trial.
Calvin Trillin on the closure of the family-owned mozzarella shop Joe’s Dairy, in the South Village, and the treasure of ten-stop shopping—“not just for the quality of the goods but for the companionship and the ritual.”
Keeping hip-hop safe from crime.
Nick Paumgarten’s 2008 story about a Nicholas White, who got stuck on an elevator, and the history of elevators and city life.
Israel, Palestine, and a tenure battle at Barnard.
Ian Frazier on the thrill of snagging plastic bags in trees.
At ninety-five, Brooke Astor is kicking up her heels—and moving on.
Susan Orlean on the people from all over the world who worked and shopped at Sunshine Market, a grocery store in Jackson Heights, in Queens.
George W. S. Trow profiles the former Vogue editor Diana Vreeland, as she prepares a fashion exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum’s Costume Institute, titled “Romantic and Glamorous Hollywood Design.”
James Stevenson on the 1972 campaign of George McGovern.