Skip to Content

Eric Hanson’s Sketchbook

All Roads Lead to Paolo Di Paolo

Ahead of a new movie by Bruce Weber on the forgotten photographer and chronicler of postwar Italy, we collect some of his most memorable pictures

In Colder Blood

Otello in Athens

Robert Wilson tackles Verdi in the birthplace of tragedy

Barry Blitt’s Sketchbook

Street Scenes

A collection of Saul Leiter’s newly discovered color photographs offers a rare look at his pioneering, painterly vision

Songs with Atmosphere

A selection of 14 songs that defy description

Metaphysical Graffiti

For the last decade, Blake Kunin has photographed members of the city’s prolific tag crews at work. His pictures memorialize their conquests—and a city whose street-art scene lives on

Grant Shaffer’s Sketchbook

Isaiah Barr

The saxophonist and co-founder of Onyx Collective, an experimental group of artists, is taking on fashion and filmmaking

Singing the Lady Electric

In the five decades since Jimi Hendrix founded Electric Lady, on West Eighth Street, the music studio has kept its look—and caliber—intact

Small Talk / Owen Kline

Ludlow, Lady Gaga, and Me

In 2006, Pianos, on Ludlow Street, was a divey service-industry spot attracting the likes of Sweetbitter author Stephanie Danler—and a pre-fame Lady Gaga

Neighborhood Watch

Michael Kimmelman, the New York Times architecture critic and lifelong New Yorker, discusses the old Village and new downtowns

The Downtown Set

A list of the 50 young New Yorkers who are remaking Lower Manhattan in their own image

Sunglasses After Dark

A guided tour of CBGB, the Mudd Club, Tunnel, and downtown’s other lost nightlife haunts

Take a Walk and Talk on the Wild Side

This week’s podcast celebrates what makes downtown New York great

Yoko Before John

To understand the most misunderstood woman of the last half-century, you have to go back to the beginning

“Why Can’t You Write Normal?”

Kathy Acker’s journey from daughter of Sutton Place to genre- and gender-bending cult novelist

How Hip-Hop Was Made

After photographing London’s nascent punk scene, Janette Beckman moved to New York to chronicle hip-hop’s early days and founding artists—A Tribe Called Quest, Run-DMC, and LL Cool J among them

Go Big or Go Home

A new generation is discovering the pleasures of classic movies at Alexander Olch’s Lower East Side revival house, Metrograph

Bohemian Rhapsody

The artist Duncan Hannah’s unpublished 1980s diaries chronicle his run-ins with everyone from Bowie and Basquiat to Warren Beatty and a precocious call girl

A Night at the Odeon

Jay McInerney, Emma Cline, and Iké Udé gathered at the Tribeca restaurant in celebration of AIR MAIL’s Downtown Set

What Makes a Neighborhood?

Debbie Harry, Woody Allen, Cat Marnell, Ian Schrager, Diane von Furstenberg, and others weigh in