BY MICHELE HERMAN  |  When I first started running, my route was a length of old riverfront asphalt marked off by splintered piers, and the World Trade Center — that bland beacon — was always up ahead. My kids were 6 and 3 and I was a full-time mom, and it felt delicious to be [...]

BY KATE WALTER  |  “Do the test so you can stop obsessing,” said my shrink, Dr. R. I’d told Dr. R. I was afraid that my convertible couch, which doubled as my bed in my West Village studio, might be infested. My panic started last fall when I woke up one morning scratching my ankles. Never mind [...]

BY ALEC PRUCHNICKI  |  Before too long, the Feast of San Gennaro in Little Italy will be applying for a street permit to allow it to be held in September 2012. This was a routine application until last year, when representatives of Nolita merchants and residents requested that the feast be decreased in size and [...]

BY ALINE REYNOLDS  |  While in London two weeks ago, I couldn’t help but check out Occupy London Stock Exchange, a.k.a. O.L.S.X., whose encampment is thriving in spite of eviction attempts by the city. On Wed., Nov. 30, tens of thousands of British citizens around the country demonstrated in the streets to dispute recent governmental [...]

BY ALPHIE MCCOURT  |  In the mid-1970s I lived in San Francisco and worked in a restaurant in Marin County, across the Golden Gate Bridge, 14 miles from the city. I rode the bus. Sometimes, when I worked late and the buses had stopped running, I caught a ride to the freeway and hitchhiked from [...]

BY K WEBSTER | You can tell that it’s time for a society to rethink itself when it justifies trashing books. The destruction of the Occupy Wall Street encampment and its 5,000-book library raises many questions. Like how exactly do you get free speech in a country where the ownership of the means to communicate [...]

[media-credit name="Photo by Q. Sakamaki" align="aligncenter" width="600"][/media-credit] SCENE: A protester during last Thursday’s day of action wore a headband with a button of the Guy Fawkes mask from the movie “V for Vendetta,” a popular symbol of Occupy Wall Street. By ED KOCH  |  My impression from reading the newspapers last Friday reporting on the [...]