“I’ve kept it a little incognito,” said Rubin, a middle-aged jazz guitarist with gray hair and a scruffy beard. “People know about it mostly by word of mouth. I’m not looking to be flooded with tourists. I’m more interested in people that are really interested in the music.”

On most days, Rubin, also a music engineer and producer, uses the space as a recording studio for his production company, Zebulon Light and Sound. But Zeb’s is known among local jazz fans for its weekly Jazz Vocalists Series, which features one or two singers followed by a professional open mic night—with an emphasis on the “professional.” “[It’s] not just for people who sing in the shower,” Rubin said.

The gig has become quite popular, with anywhere from 25 to 60 people, mostly musicians, filling the narrow, high-ceilinged loft every Wednesday night. It is a casual affair, an intimate scene where those with similar interests can mingle with one another and share their appreciation of live jazz.
“I was really interested in the community aspect of it,” said Rubin. “People can get together and it’s not all about just one person. It takes the onus off of everybody’s egos, and then it becomes more of a community.”

Often, said Rubin, jazz musicians don’t socialize with other jazz musicians—they’re too competitive and focused on their own careers. With Zeb’s, he is trying to create an open, welcoming space where artists can perform and listen to one another without being judged. So far, it seems to be working.
“It’s a cool thing, to have all of the musicians here,” said Angela Roberts, a jazz singer who was one of the featured vocalists at the Jan. 18 show. “It’s got a nice little family vibe.”

As people filed in before the show that night, they greeted one another warmly, chatting and playing with Honey, a small, excited dog that belongs to a friend of Rubin’s. Sipping red wine from a plastic cup, Roberts floated between the crowd and the stage area, where Rubin and the other musicians were setting up. On one of the couches, a young man in a tweed jacket, who later joined Roberts for a song, played his trumpet to a few listeners—including Lezlie Harrison, the second featured vocalist of the night, who was wearing large gold earrings in the shape of G-clefs.

The entrance fee for the  is $10 a person, which seems a steep price compared to other jazz spots in the city. But with just a few events per week and such a small crowd of regulars, Zeb’s is hardly a cash cow. Rubin uses the money from the entrance fees to pay the musicians, and if he doesn’t have enough, he pays out of his own pocket.

“We don’t make any money off of this place. It’d be nice, but that’s not the point,” said Rubin’s daughter, Jennifer Arrigo, who helps run the Wednesday shows. “It’s about worshipping music. That’s his life.”

A jazz vocalist herself, Arrigo has been a featured artist at the Wednesday night gigs and often participates in the open mic portion. On Jan. 18, she sat at the door, knitting a fuchsia scarf and taking patrons’ entrance fees. Her father doesn’t like to deal with the money, she said, so she charges patrons and pays the musicians. Instead, Rubin is focused on the music and the atmosphere.

“The caliber of musicians that are playing here—they wouldn’t work other places for the money I’m paying them,” said Rubin. “But they’re my friends, and they like the scene.”

About 25 people had arrived at Zeb’s when Roberts took to the stage, and they quickly hushed and sat down as the show began. With shiny, dark hair, bright, blue-green cat’s eyes and a seductive, melodious voice, Roberts wooed the room with six songs, including covers of Doris Day’s “Secret Love” and The Beatles’ “I Will,” accompanied by a bassist, a drummer and Rubin on guitar. Other than applause and some playful banter between songs, the room was silent.

“I like to call it a performance space, not a club,” said Rubin. “There’s no margarita machine making noise or martini shakers in the background.”

This, too, differentiates Zeb’s from other jazz spots in the city. Other than a few bottles of wine and the sculptures that hang from the walls—all made by Rubin himself—there is little to distract visitors from the music. Rubin said that this is a nice change from places like Fat Cat, the West Village pool hall where he plays at least once a week.

“A lot of great musicians work there,” said Rubin, “but the music is secondary. When I started playing [here] on a regular basis, I was like, ‘Wow, I can hear myself!’”

A large, underground bar, Fat Cat offers customers both pool and ping-pong, which makes for a noisy atmosphere. On Jan. 17, Rubin played there, accompanied by a bassist and a drummer. Although some patrons stood and listened, most were preoccupied—it wasn’t until Rubin and his group played Jimi Hendrix’s “Purple Haze” that the music became the focus of the room.

The atmosphere at Zeb’s the following night was vastly different. Although friendly and lighthearted, the crowd arrived with the sole intention of listening to music. Everyone seemed to hold a feeling of mutual respect for their fellow musicians, and all expressed their appreciation to Rubin for creating this communal, open space for jazz lovers.

“It’s a really beautiful scene. We’ve all made a lot of new friends,” said Rubin. “There are so many great people in New York, and we all learn from each other.”

—Kimberly Lightbody

“You girls coming in tonight?” asked Tommy DeFrancisci, aka Mr. Charlotte (all of the men are named after the city they hail from).

“Yep, just finishing this!” I said, holding up my cigarette. “But don’t worry, I promise I’ll do a sufficient job of putting it out,” I quickly added.

“Well, you’d better! ‘Cause I’m off duty,” he joked.

Garon Patrick Mosby, or Mr. St. Louis, joined the conversation and quickly handed us his card, which had two photos of him with no shirt on and included his Facebook and Twitter information.

The scene inside was markedly different. Most of the firemen were still outside, enjoying the press attention, and the club was dead, save for one girl who quickly joined my friend and I. Her name was Carolina Pichardo, and she worked in marketing. We sipped our drinks and flipped through the calendars we’d been given until the eye candy began floating inside, lured by the open bar.

Mr. Charlotte wandered over, drink in hand, and promptly asked me if I had, indeed, put out my cigarette. He was younger than most of the other firefighters, with brown puppy-dog eyes and a goofy, eager smile. He talked nonstop.

“Everyone gets their 15 minutes of fame!” he said. “I guess this is mine. Although I’m not making any money for this, so maybe it doesn’t count.”

Mr. Charlotte, like the rest of the firemen, has selected a charity in his home city to which proceeds from the calendar will be donated.

As we continued to listen to Mr. Charlotte’s jokes, another fireman wandered over. “This is Mr. San Francisco, and he’s not gay!” shouted Mr. Charlotte.

Mr. San Francisco, or Kevin Kuhn, laughed wearily at the oft-heard joke. He had big blue eyes and a soft voice. Sipping on whiskey, he talked to us for a bit about being chosen as one of the 12 sexiest firefighters in the country.

“No one is super serious about this,” he said. “We can all make fun of each other, like, ‘Oh, I’m a model now!’” After chatting and resisting the urge to ask them if they would please remove their shirts, we all migrated outside again, where most of the firefighters were still soaking up the attention. That’s where we met Mr. Minneapolis, Justin Reid. Tall, blond, with blue eyes, an adorable smile and big dimples. He had a cute Minnesota accent and was, like everyone else, unbelievably friendly. As he signed my calendar, I asked him if he had traveled to New York alone. No, he said, his wife and two children were here as well.

We continued garnering autographs and chatting with the men—Mr. New York, Philip Sylvester, was from Flatbush, and Mr. New Orleans, Leonard Daigle Jr., had a classic Louisiana accent. But then the calendar’s publisher, Katherine Kostreva, who stood out in a beautiful, floor-length yellow dress, tried to gather the men together for a photo.

As we began heading down the block, we turned to wave goodbye to the hottest group of men we’d ever had the pleasure of hanging out with. Just before I turned my back, Mr. Minneapolis caught my eye and gave me a big smile. I was a pile of mush all the way back uptown.

There’s a word in Danish
that doesn’t translate to English. Google Translate will tell you that “hygge”
means “cozy” or “coziness,” but it really means much more than that. Hygge,
pronounced “hue-gah,” is the happy, satisfied laziness you feel when it’s
raining outside and you’re curled up on the couch. It’s the feeling of being at
home—of being comfortable—that all humans crave.

Hygge is exactly the
feeling you get in tiny bookshops that smell like paper and dust and feature
leaning towers of good reads. And it’s the feeling on which the owners of those
bookstores count to stay in business.

“There’s a synergy that
goes on in a brick and mortar bookstore,” says Bonnie Slotnick, owner of Bonnie
Slotnick Cookbooks on West 10th Street. “You’re in a place that means a lot to
you. And you make connections with other people who share your passion.”

Slotnick is one of the few
independent booksellers left in the West Village, where big names like Marc
Jacobs and Tommy Hilfiger have swooped in and swallowed up privately owned
storefronts. Her tiny shop off Seventh Avenue, where she sells old and used
cookbooks alongside vintage kitchen knickknacks, has managed to survive in the
face of Barnes and Noble, websites like Amazon and the increasingly popular electronic
readers. This, said Slotnick, is because of the homey atmosphere of her store.

“People have other ways to
get old cookbooks,” says Slotnick. “But they come to my store because they
enjoy the experience.”

Three Lives & Company,
a 33-year-old bookstore down the block from Slotnick’s shop, has survived for
much the same reason. Owner Toby Cox says the store has continued to do well in
recent years despite the pressures of corporate competition.

“There are still people
like me who want to come in and look at a book and have that sense of
discovery,” said Cox, who bought Three Lives from its original owners in 2001.
“And there’s something about a locally owned business, where the workers know
the name of your dog or that your mom is in the hospital.”

Instead of trying to catch
up with big booksellers like Barnes and Noble or the now-defunct Borders, both
Slotnick and Cox have actively tried to keep their businesses as old-fashioned
as possible. Both of their websites are bare and appear as if they haven’t been
updated since the early 2000s. Neither sells books online or even lists their
inventory.

“I feel that the Three
Lives experience begins when you walk through the front door,” says Cox. “I’m a
brick and mortar store. That’s our strength.”

Anyone who walks into
Three Lives and asks for assistance will be helped by someone who knows, reads
and loves books. The customer might spend hours with a bookseller there,
scouring shelves and discussing favorite authors or new works of fiction. The
same holds true for Slotnick’s store, where she engages customers in long
conversations that often venture away from the subject of cookbooks. She
imparts wisdom to her visitors, helps them with problems, gives them advice.
When I spoke to her, she told me how to make a cure-all ginger tea that would
help my sore throat.

“Sometimes it’s like
therapy,” she jokes. “I feel very close to my customers. So take that, Amazon!”

But as comforting as Three
Lives and Bonnie Slotnick Cookbooks are, both stores have their share of troubles.
The biggest problem for small store owners in New York is rent, and in the West
Village, leases have been steadily increasing for years. In 2009, Biography
Bookstore on Bleecker Street was forced to move because it could no longer
afford the space. Book lovers were appalled when, shortly thereafter, Marc
Jacobs moved his own designer “bookstore” into Biography’s old spot; Slotnick
described the experience as akin to the sinking of the Titanic.

Left Bank Books, a rare
and used bookstore, was also forced to move because of inflating rent. Until
2010, the store was located on West Fourth Street. But when its lease ran out,
the landlords raised the rent to “unbelievable amounts,” says owner Kim
Herzinger.

“They didn’t even ask me
if I could pay it—they knew I couldn’t,” he says.

Now Herzinger is in the
middle of a five-year-lease at a storefront on Eighth Avenue, and truthfully
admits that he’s just barely hanging in there. Slotnick worries that the same
will happen to her.

“I’m always living in fear
that my landlord will say, ‘OK, that’s it!’” says Slotnick. “Ralph Lauren could
buy my space and move in and start a Ralph Lauren bookstore, and people would
flock to it.”

Luckily for Slotnick, the
West Village is a supportive community that is keen on keeping its local
businesses.

“People here understand
that what makes their community dynamic and vibrant and interesting is these
small shops,” says Cox. “They feel like, ‘I really like this store, I want it
to be there, I’m going to participate in it.’”

And
participation really is what keeps these stores alive, because people yearn to
communicate with others, to spend time in a small bookshop surrounded by books
and other people who share their interests. Barnes and Noble may have lattes
and cappuccinos, but it certainly doesn’t serve up that hygge feeling like the
bookstores on West 10th Street.

Being 17, though, I had no knowledge of New York nightlife, and neither did any of the other freshmen.Which is how, on our first night together, we got duped into going to a nightclub in the Meatpacking District by a fast-talking club promoter who promised us a "bumpin’ scene" and an endless supply of booze.

It was a scam. No one else was in the club, and the bottles of Grey Goose on the table had obviously been emptied and filled with cheap, watered-down vodka. We downed as much as we could, trying to drown out the lameness of our first night of college-level partying, and left with the feeling that we still had lots to learn about going out in New York.

We had no idea where we were, so we took a taxi. And that’s when it happened: My new roommate puked. In the cab.

Luckily, she had both a window seat and good aim—almost none of it got into the car. But the cabbie still threw a fit, pulled over and tried to kick us out.We squawked at him until he begrudgingly agreed to drive us back to our dorm.

I thought of it as a rookie mistake.

My roommate was from Atlanta, and just needed some training in city-style going out—that is, the practice of taking sometimes-shaky cabs home after consuming copious amounts of alcohol. We assured her that it was OK, that "everyone has bad nights" and that we didn’t think any less of her. Privately, I deemed her an amateur.

Three years later, I no longer live in a dorm. And I’ve learned quite a bit about going out in the city—I have my own favorite bars, I know where the best happy hours are in my neighborhood and I know where I can get my preferred beer on tap. Suffice it to say, I don’t listen to sketchy club promoters and I don’t pay top dollar for watereddown vodka.

So I was pretty disappointed in myself when, not so long ago, I puked in a cab.

I was on my way home from a night of heavy drinking.The location and the drink of choice had improved substantially since freshman year:We went to a busy, not-too-trendy bar on the West Side and were drinking gin and tonics. Maybe it was the gin, or maybe it was the multiple shots of god-knows-what-else, but by about three in the morning I realized that I was egregiously drunk and needed to go home. So I grabbed my stuff and stumbled out to hail a cab.

That was my fatal mistake. I puked all over myself and the backseat—my aim wasn’t quite as good as that roommate’s.

The cabbie tried to kick me out, but I begged him to take me home—it was the middle of the night, I was alone and I had vomit running down the front of my jacket. I really needed a ride. So after I promised to pay him extra to get the car cleaned, he took me home. I awoke the next morning with a splitting headache and a pile of clothes in the corner of my room, from which a most unpleasant smell was emanating.

I spent the day feeling sorry for myself in bed.Three years of living in New York, and I was just as much of an amateur as my freshman-year roommate from Atlanta. Shameful.

But as word got out about my faux pas—thanks to my friend, who thought it was too hilarious a story to keep to herself—I realized that I wasn’t alone. Everyone, it seemed, had either puked in a cab or knew someone else who had done so. It was as common and as New York as eating from a halal cart at 3 a.m. or falling asleep on the subway and waking up in Coney Island at the crack of dawn. If you go out drinking in New York enough times, you’re bound to have some sort of experience involving cabs and vomit.

My friends from Denmark thought I was an idiot. Because puking in a cab in Copenhagen automatically lands you a $100 fine, my friend Jacob claimed that he had trained himself not to do so, and scoffed at my drunken blunder.

But what’s taboo in other cities is a rite of passage here in New York. I’ve never been to the Statue of Liberty or the Empire State Building, but I’ve puked in a yellow taxi cab.

If you ask me, that blurry night was the night that I officially became a real New Yorker. 

About 10 of us were packed into a neon green elevator with fluorescent lighting, heading up to the seventh floor of the New Museum where Wu Tsang, a young performer and filmmaker, was presenting his latest project: The Table. Four DJs were going to face each other at one table and spin music for five straight hours. A rising talent in the art world, Wu is currently in residency at the museum, showcasing different parts of his latest film, Full Body Quotation. The Table was one of his first projects as part of his new gig—and I had no idea what to expect from the elusive, experimental artist.

Even though it was at a museum, and The Table was meant to be a performance, I couldn’t help feeling like I was about to enter a club. As we rose from the ground floor, the music grew louder—a throbbing techno beat that, combined with the blindingly bright walls, created a surreal effect. Anticipation filled the elevator until the doors finally opened and the music swarmed all around us.

It wasn’t a club. It was an exhibition of music: a crowd of people stood inside an all-white room, facing a center table where the four DJs stood. Some listeners danced subtly by themselves, but there was no grinding, no spinning, no ass-shaking.

Hoping to find out what brought partygoers to the space, I ventured out onto the crowded balcony to smoke. A girl wearing knee-high socks and a wooden xylophone as a necklace asked to bum a cigarette. I asked her what she thought of the whole thing.

"More dancing would be nice," she said. "But I guess it’s OK because people are just appreciating the music."

She introduced herself as Rachel. She and her friend, Ellen, had come to see Kingdom, aka Ezra Rubin, one of the DJs at the table.

Like the rest of the crowd, they looked like ravers who were waiting for the party to start, who wanted to dance but just weren’t sure if they were supposed to.

"I wish there was more of a dance scene in New York," sighed Rachel. She was from L.A.

Back inside, I spotted Wu. I knew it was him because of his shoes, a pair of multi-colored striped booty heels that he had posted a picture of on his blog just 10 days earlier. He was wearing an orange top and black leggings and was bouncing around from the DJ table to the crowd, hugging people he recognized, dancing by himself. When I tried to talk to him, he got distracted by one person, then another and then another.

Wu may be one of the most important young artists in New York right now, so it’s no surprise that he was hard to pin down. Since 2010, his projects have been presented all over the world—from L.A. to Germany to Mexico City—and his newest film, combined with his residency at the New Museum, is likely to launch him even higher up on that art world ladder that mere mortals may never understand. He walked around the pulsating room like a perfect host, glowing in the eyes of friends, fans and total strangers.

At around 9, when the performance was scheduled to end, the room got tense. Everyone stood up or came in from the balcony and watched the DJs with intensity. Wu stood in a close embrace with a young boy, staring at the DJs as if in a trance. The music got more and more dissonant, the beat disappeared, a girl singing R&B took over, the beat came back. Finally, after 10 minutes of drawnout musical anxiety, it ended. Everyone clapped, and then it was quiet. Some tried to talk to Wu and the DJs, but they didn’t seem especially talkative—they had, after all, been standing for more than five hours. Most people began heading out, pushed by the unhappy silence that follows a night of great music.

Just as the music had pursued us on the elevator ride up, the silence pursued us on the ride down.

One kid, who had been dancing by himself for the past hour or so, broke the silence.

"This is awkward," he said. 

Hundreds of bare asses were visible walking down
West 28th Street this past Sunday. Mesh shirts, studded harnesses, riding boots
and backs covered in elaborate tattoos were de
rigueur. Despite the heat and humidity, one man wore a gas mask. Another
walked around on stilts.

It was the 15th Annual Folsom Street East festival, a day of
raucous revelry for New York’s leather, fetish and kink community, and,
typically, it was a somewhat clandestine affair. Although an estimated 10,000
sexual “deviants” gather on West 28th Street between 10th and 11th avenues to celebrate
sexual diversity with nipples out and heads held high as the kickoff to the
city’s annual Gay Pride celebrations, this year there was a new addition to the
festival: the hundreds of people who stood on the newly opened second phase of
the elevated High Line park, gawking down.

“Who wants to freak people out on the High Line?”
the stage announcer, wearing leather chaps (with nothing underneath) and an
officer’s cap, said. It was just one of the many moments during Folsom’s
three-hour show of stunts, drag queens and music performances that attempted to
taunt the onlookers. “Say hi to the High Line, everybody!”

For the most part, the Folsom Street East (FSE)
attendees didn’t mind the tourists who were gaping, pointing and taking
pictures from up above. This reporter spoke to many out for a stroll along the
newly opened second section, which stretches to West 30th Street, and most
found it humorous. But some of the participants and organizers of the annual
event recognized that their new audience wasn’t simply a laughing matter: It
was a dire warning, a sign of changes to come.

Ever since the first section of the High Line Park
opened in 2009 in the Meatpacking District, snaking its way into Chelsea, the
area has become a developers’ playground. Once an industrial neighborhood full
of warehouses and garages, the area is now attracting a number of new
residential high-rise buildings and posh restaurants.

“New York seems to be pulling back and becoming a
bit more gentrified and mainstream,” Devin MacLachlan, the president of FSE’s
board of directors, said. “You take a Saturday morning walk through the West
Village, and you’re bombarded with strollers. The environment of the whole city
is changing.”

Gentrification has become increasingly evident in
Chelsea—and threatens to endanger the leather community’s biggest outdoor
celebration. While The Friends of The High Line, the non-profit organization
that operates and maintains the public park, was accommodating of the
festivities—making its West 28th Street staircase exit-only and placing staff
around to guide visitors—MacLachlan said that the rest of the neighborhood was
a bit more difficult, especially the aRt luxury condominiums located at 540 W.
28th St.

“The manager has been less than cooperative,”
MacLachlan said. “We obviously want to partner with people that live there, but
I can only do so much, considering the demographic.”

According to MacLachlan, the building manager
didn’t want anything in front of the aRt building, even though FSE’s permit
meant that it controlled the entire street and sidewalks. When asked about the
situation, the aRt building management declined to comment.

“They don’t want to endorse us; they don’t want to
condemn us,” explained Susan Wright, the media coordinator for FSE.

The city showed a similar attitude. MacLachlan said
that Folsom had a more difficult time than usual obtaining a permit this year,
and had to deal with a number of bureaucratic roadblocks. Although FSE
organizers feel safe for 2012, MacLachlan, Wright and others involved with the
festival worry that they’ll have to move their location for the following year.

It wouldn’t be the first time. The festival, which
is named after the original Folsom Street Fair in San Francisco, used to be
held in the Meatpacking District but was forced to move when that area became
more and more developed and the area’s famed leather bars closed down. The
festival then went to West 28th Street where the
Eagle, a popular leather bar, is located. That made the move easier, Wright
said, because so many Folsom attendees also frequent the Eagle. But now the
festival might be forced to find a new home once again.

“Personally, instead of moving all the time, I
think they should just say, ‘We were here. We have a great following and if you
can’t deal with it, tough,’” said Derek Danton, owner of the Eagle. “Because
this will happen again. Every inch of New York City is going to be gentrified.”

But latex and leather dog masks don’t quite fit the
image that city planners have envisioned for West Chelsea. It’s not just the
High Line and the new residential high rises; Mayor Bloomberg’s massive
redevelopment plan for Hudson Yards a few blocks north would convert the entire
area into an upscale business district. And with the rich moving in, the
“personable pervs,” as the organizers of FSE lovingly call their cohort, will
probably have to move out.

The situation is strikingly similar to the shutdown
of Chelsea nightclubs in the West 20s—particularly along West 27th Street—that
were closed after a series of raids in 2007 and the support of Community Board
4. The riotous nightlife that once thrived on Club Row has been replaced with
new condos and a growing number of families.

The history of the Folsom Street East Festival
isn’t as sinister—MacLachlan said that it’s never had any problems with the police
or the city—but FSE is still anticipating pushback from its new neighbors.

Wright was more sanguine. “If the process happens
slowly and more naturally, then you have time to work with everyone,” Wright
said. “It could be that we just work with neighbors in the area. I’m hoping
that’s what happens.”

To outsiders of the leather community, however, the
sight of men flogging one another isn’t easy to become accustomed to. As the
audience on the High Line demonstrated, leather, fetish and S&M makes most
people uncomfortable—and sometimes visibly disgusted.

“Weirdos,” one passerby commented. “So gross,” said
another.

“Even as a New Yorker, it’s still weird,” said one
woman, who wished to remain anonymous.

The leather community is used to these kinds of
judgments, and it has created movements to raise awareness and fight against
prejudice. The festival is one such way of trying to gain acceptance. In fact,
the $10 suggested entrance fee also raises money for charity and over the years
has contributed to the
Anti-Violence Project, the National
Coalition for Sexual Freedom and The Center,
New York’s LGBT Community Center.

“There’s still so much persecution and
discrimination,” said Wright, who is also a spokesperson for the National
Coalition for Sexual Freedom. “We have to be visible so that people realize we
are just part of the community. We are New Yorkers.”

Wright and MacLachlan both swore that FSE, even if
it was forced to move locations, would not be shutdown. The event is too
important for their community. “We are a large subculture in New York City,”
Wright said. “We need to be able to gather. Just like Puerto Ricans get their
day. This is our day.”