September 29, 2024
Sweet Transvestite
August 30, 2024
Dancing at the YMCA
August 4, 2024
Chelsea Popsicle
September 29, 2024
Sweet Transvestite
August 30, 2024
Dancing at the YMCA
August 4, 2024
Chelsea Popsicle
I was a girl during the first golden age of feminist television, from 1976 to 1978, when we had an intoxicating fistful of superwomen role models: Wonder Woman with Lynda Carter, the Bionic Woman starring Lindsay Wagner, and Charlie’s Angels with Farah Fawcett, Jaclyn Smith, and Kate Jackson. Like Wonder Woman herself, who grew up […]
Read More
Ascend the stoop to the Merchant House Museum at 29 East Fourth Street, between Lafayette and the Bowery, and you might be surprised at what you find. No staid merchants in striped pants and tailcoats are in evidence. But there’s a circa-1860s casket and viewing in the front parlor, and a death scene in the […]
Read More
“Girls don’t play rock’n’roll,” 13-year-old Joan Jett’s guitar teacher told her. Two years later, she founded The Runaways, together with drummer Sandy West. Don’t tell a girl no! My Uncle Dwayne gave my sister and me The Runaways’ second album, Queens of Noise, for Christmas 1977, along with nine other best-selling albums from that year, […]
Read More
Stop this day and night with me and you shall possess the origin of all poems… Do you recognize this geometric structure? I am sure every West Villager does—it is instantly recognizable! It is of course the New York City AIDS Memorial at Seventh Avenue and West 12th Street. Unveiled for World AIDS Day on December 1, […]
Read More
Electric Lady Studios is a mystical Village lodestone with a platinum rock’n’roll pedigree. Founded by Jimi Hendrix in August 1970, the studio opened a mere three weeks before his tragic accidental death due to an overdose of sleeping pills in London. He was 27. If you’ve read Patti’s Smith’s memoir Just Kids, perhaps you remember […]
Read More
Dear readers, you know that I’m proud to be a New Yorker and I love this city passionately. Last Saturday, when we did this photo shoot, was the first time I felt ashamed of my city, and of myself by association. I had arranged to meet photographer Phil and lighting assistant Amy in Father Demo […]
Read More
West Village model Karen Rempel gazes across Sixth Avenue, waiting for the Jefferson Market Library to open. Photo by Philip Maier. I stayed at the iconic Washington Square Hotel on my first trip to New York, in 2014, because of its literary history and proximity to the Blue Note. I soon encountered the marvelous Jefferson […]
Read More
Fifteen years after the final iteration of the infamous Chelsea nightclub in the deconsecrated Gothic Revival church at the corner of Sixth Avenue and West 20th Street closed, the wild energy of Limelight is still as infectious as the latest Covid variant. The iconic NYC dance club Limelight opened in 1983, and in its heyday […]
Read More
West Village model Karen Rempel waits for Mick Jagger on St. Mark’s Place. He’s late. Photos by Philip Maier. This corner is obviously the coolest spot in New York City! I’m sitting by a graffiti’d doorway at the corner of St. Mark’s Place and Avenue A. It looks like the bar might be deserted, but […]
Read More
I don’t watch the Oscars every year, but this year I was working late and I had the show running on another screen to keep me company. I thought overall it was a funny, uplifiting, and moving spectacle. I loved the tributes to movies with signifant anniversaries (Cabaret, The Godfather, Pulp Fiction, as well as […]
Read More
This issue marks the third anniversay of this Karen’s Quirky Style column, which celebrates a love affair with playing dress-up in New York! This column would be nothing without you, dear readers, and I want to give you a big hug and kiss for reading and commenting and just generally adding to the fun and […]
Read More
My friend, the fantastic New York photographer Philip Maier, has just released a fascinating book about Union Square. Phil’s photos capture the past 20 years of New York history in this focal point of Greenwich Village. His artistic vision will touch you with humor, joy, grief, sadness, and his tremendous love of the city and […]
Read More
Storefront fortune tellers are almost as ubiquitous as nail salons in New York. Who among us hasn’t succumbed to the lure of peering into the mists of the future, seeking a hint of reassurance that things are going to be okay? Or guidance to make a choice? Only $10 to gain a moment’s comfort from […]
Read More
Happy New Year! The days have been cool, gray, and rainy in New York City this winter. Not at all the white Christmas that we dreamt about. But as the hip hop duo Atmosphere so eloquently said, “When life gives you lemons, you paint that sh*t gold.” Life has dealt a sh*tload of lemons lately, […]
Read More