Against the Giuliani Legacy

Local

Obscenity is a moral concept in the verbal arsenal of the Establishment, which abuses the term by applying it not to expressions of its own morality, but to those of another.

Sunset Park: The Next Times Square?

Local

All is quiet on 2nd Avenue in Sunset Park except for the sounds of drifting traffic. Barely a sign of humanity exists amidst the industrial sprawl, and the rare pedestrian is quick-footed in passing.

Opinions: On Gay Marriage

Express

For the past two years I have been in love with a terrific guy named John. I’m pretty much the social butterfly, while John prefers quiet dinner parties or an evening of movies and take-out. Occasionally we go out together and invariably meet new people.

Leon Golub in Conversation with the Painter Chris Martin

Art

It’s all over the place, struggles for survival, struggles for dominance. It’s a power game, not just evil itself, it’s about control, irrationality, anxiety, and so on. In a hierarchy, or some form of governing body, it’s about how to maintain control over their far-flung interests, the prevailing power and who would have the most at stake in what’s going on.

One Man’s Universe

Books

If there is one line that captures the spirit of The Talking Cure, WBAI radio personality Mike Feder’s new autobiography, this is the one. Here is encapsulated the author’s unique combination of plodding depression, mordant humor, and degree of self-obsession verging on the absurd. Spring came at last (sigh!), no thanks to me (ha ha!).

The Meaning of Express

This issue launches the Rail’s new editorial section. Longtime readers may of course say, “but I thought the entire Rail was an extended set of opinion pages.”

Hail, Baryshnikov: White Oaks’s Judson Dances at BAM

Dance

Only the force and persistence of the greatest living dancer, Mikhail Baryshnikov could have gathered the resources necessary for restaging a retrospective of the seminal Judson Dances.

Lionel Abel Remembered

Theater

Years ago, while reading Irving Howe’s autobiography, The Margin of Hope, I came across a humorous but insightful observation made by Lionel Abel about New York during the 1930s: “It became the most interesting part of the Soviet Union…that one part of the country in which the struggle between Stalin and Trotsky could be openly expressed.”

Umbrian Odes

Poetry

Stacked stone holds its cutout against the blue. Old window arches are bricked, having been first covered with concrete and that slagged off. Swallows loop from cracks to air and back, and pigeons perched like gargoyles gently into sleepy, perishable sentries.