I’m stopped at a traffic light at 210th Street and the Grand Concourse in the Bronx, the northernmost borough of New York City. The young woman in the driver’s seat of the car next to me is holding up a…
What do you do when reality is too much to handle? Geddes woke up in a strange room. It was clearly a motel room. There were two beds, a TV, a bathroom done up in tile and fixtures from the…
I’m writing this while drinking coffee. It’s in a big, old fashioned mug – brown glazed with a tiny chip on the handle – from the Hull Company. I found it second-hand in old Greenwich Village at a place that…
If you follow the Zephyr regularly, you probably already know that we’ve begun a new project this year. We’ve been slowly wading through the massive Zephyr archives of historic photos and digitizing them to share with our readers. To keep…
My favorite kind of road trip usually devolves into a series of decisions about what direction I’m going to take that day. I wake up and check the weather to see if there is anything I need to avoid. I…
Herb Ringer discovered his love for the West in 1939. He had traveled from his home in Ringoes, New Jersey to Reno, Nevada to procure a quick divorce, and spent that winter working in a local market, occupying a cramped…
I’m going to bribe myself to finish this now, so that I can stop beating myself up for NOT finishing it. I don’t know if most people have to work that way, but sometimes that’s what it takes. If I…
This past Fall, Jim and I took a trip out to Herb Ringer country. We wanted to return to a few of the spots in Nevada and California that held particular importance for Herb, and see how those places had…
Those who know me, along with those who read my pieces in the Zephyr, are familiar with my hatred of what my neighborhood has become. It is not the same place it was when I moved here as a young…
Paul Vlachos is a New Yorker who understands The West. And he is a New Yorker who understands New York. Wherever Paul goes, he finds signs of life… I don’t have many words this month. I have burned them all…