Karen's Quirky New York

July 15, 2026 Panda Play at Philippe Chow

June 27, 2026 More Magnificent Deco

May 25, 2026 The New Yorker

Village Preservation

Manhattan model Karen Rempel on the steps of Blossom Dearie's Home in the West Village

All That Jazz

April 30, 2026

All the jazzcats in New York City love when April rolls around. The Smithsonian declared April to be Jazz Appreciation Month in 2001, and we always amp things up a notch here in the undisputed jazz capital of the world. This April, to celebrate, Village Preservation released one of their wonderful, interactive maps of the […]

Karen Rempel visits the former home of influential street photographer Helen Levitt

Leave It to Levitt

March 15, 2025

Who was the most influential street photographer you never heard of? In honor of Women’s History month, I set out to answer this question and discovered the wondrous, reverent world of Helen Levitt (1913-2009). Since she was still active into the 2000s, you may have seen Helen out and about on the streets of New […]

KQS - West Village Model Karen Rempel in award-winning photo Playing Statues on Bleecker by Dusty Berke - square

Award-Winning Style

October 22, 2019

My friend Dusty Berke received an award for her arresting photograph Playing Statues on Bleecker on October 16 at the prestigious Salmagundi Club. The photograph of West Village model and photojournalist Karen Rempel (moi) originally appeared in the “Karen’s Quirky Style” column in the May 2019 issue of WestView News. You might recall my blog […]