Posts Tagged ‘Our Own Stories’

Drug Wars Raged

Written by admin on . Posted in Special Sections, West Side Spirit Anniversary

By Jim Rutenberg No one story stands out from my time at the Manhattan Spirit, as it was called then. Several do. Together they tell the tale of New York City then and now, a city transformed wonderfully and tragically, yet in some ways stuck in time. Certainly one of my favorite stories from back
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Go Ahead, Call the Cops 

Written by admin on . Posted in Special Sections, West Side Spirit Anniversary

By Charlotte Eichna I am pretty sure the only time the police were called specifically on me was while working for West Side Spirit. The story I was reporting focused on so-called illegal hotels, which were often found in Single Room Occupancy residences and other types of buildings that weren’t outright classified as “residential.” When
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The Chinese Menu Wars

Written by admin on . Posted in Special Sections, West Side Spirit Anniversary

By Chris Erikson To some people, a Chinese menu shoved under the door is an appreciated convenience. To others it’s a minor annoyance. But for a time on the Upper West Side, it seemed like something else entirely—it seemed like a very big deal indeed. It also seemed like the story that wouldn’t die. There
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Two Great Editors

Written by admin on . Posted in Special Sections, West Side Spirit Anniversary

By Whitney Scott Looking back at an article I wrote for the “Interiors” section of West Side Spirit in 1990 (then only five years old) about decorators in the 1990s moving away from the excesses of the ’80s, I had to laugh—at myself. One of the better lines in the piece read: “Yuppies (who sometimes
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10 Crazy Races, One Crazy Night

Written by admin on . Posted in Special Sections, West Side Spirit Anniversary

By Edward-Isaac Dovere Primary night 2005. The last phone call came in from a freelancer we had sent to bounce between the campaign parties in Spanish Harlem to get some color and election results from a Council race split between a former union organizer, a one-time Fox 5 newscaster-turned-self-styled beat poet, a local activist making
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A Plucky Bunch

Written by admin on . Posted in Special Sections, West Side Spirit Anniversary

By Michael Rothfeld One of the first West Siders I met as a reporter for West Side Spirit was an artist named Burned Neighbor. This was in 1995, just as the Disneyfication of Times Square was taking hold. I had been assigned a story about a group of people fighting eviction from their loft spaces
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The Best Beat in the World

Written by admin on . Posted in Special Sections, West Side Spirit Anniversary

By Stacey Asip My byline first appeared in the Spirit in 1989, under the headline: “The Mayoral Marketeers.” I was fresh out of Columbia Journalism School when Tom Allon assigned a story to me about the candidates all hiring media consultants. (In hindsight, they were probably united in trying to save New Yorkers from the
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