Review
Victory City by John Strausbaugh – Review
Jim Feast
John Strausbaugh, Victory City: A History of New York and New Yorkers During World War II (New York: Twelve, 2018), 488 pages.
John Strausbaugh’s Victory City is a chronicle of New York City right before, during and after World War II in a book that is at times sweeping in its marshaling of data, at others intimately in-depth in characterizing individual lives. Moreover, with an exemplary judiciousness, the book, while showing many instances of social solidarity as the city pulls together to battle the Axis, also reveals in every depiction, the counter-stresses that would maintain sexual and racial hierarchies, even to the point (before the U.S. directly enters the war) of many New Yorkers rooting for pro-fascist and anti-Semitic groups.
His description of the Stage Door Canteen, for example, highlights this dual energy. The club on West 44th Street “was rather like a USO, only staffed with stars [who pitched in to aid the w...
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Podcasts
Episode 3 – Patrick O’Neil
Patrick O'Neil
In conversation with Bernard Meisler.
Patrick O'Neil began his career as a visual artist, before getting involved with the San Francisco punk rock scene of the '70s and '80s. He worked as a roadie and road manager for the...
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Review
One Hundred Years Among the Daisies, poems by George Wallace – Review
Ron Kolm
One Hundred Years Among the Daisies, poems by George Wallace. Published by Stubborn Mule Press, 2018.
I have this notion that the chunk of time we’re going through in ‘our’ American culture, under Mr. Trump, is ...
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Podcasts
Episode 2 – John S. Hall
John S. Hall
Hosted by Bernard Meisler.
John S. Hall is a poet, musician and lawyer. He's a fixture on the downtown NYC poetry scene, and achieved fame in the early '90s with the band he co-founded, King Missile (Jesus Was Way Coo...
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Poem
Three Poems by Eve Packer
Eve Packer
146
she has red hair
this girl, in an upsweep,
sitting on the third step
of the fourth floor
in the hall, at 146—
big sweat,
first rush,
head shoulders body
back eyes thru
ceiling shrugs
‘sometimes you g...
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Podcasts
Episode 1 – Peter Blauner
Peter Blauner
In conversation with Bernard Meisler
Greetings humans and welcome to the very first Sensitive Skin Magazine Podcast! Our format is simple - your host, Bernard Meisler, will have a 45-minute-or-so conversation with a guest...
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Review
Tosh: Growing Up in Wallace Berman’s World – Review
Marc Olmsted
Tosh: Growing Up in Wallace Berman’s World
By Tosh Berman
City Lights Books
$17.95
reviewed by Marc Olmsted
I first came across Wallace Berman's artwork in an underground newspaper in the late '60s - I can no long...
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Essay
Matty Jankowski, RIP
Ron Kolm
There was a posting on Facebook on Saturday, January 12th, by Joe Maynard, an old friend, saying that a buddy of ours, Matty Jankowski, had just passed away in Florida. It was a very moving tribute, and it also contained a l...
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Poem
A Kind Of Love Story
Jennifer Juneau
A Kind Of Love Story
Walking along Avenue A I was kind of drunk
It was kind of desolate and kind of late
All the stores were kind of closed
And there was this guy who kind of looked like you
He kind of smiled
I kind ...
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Poem
THE COMPUTER ARCANE
Jack Hirschman
1.
To have this at one’s fingertips,
the whole world before one
and it not be zero—,
that’s the humbling meaning
of this revolution one’s a part of
and one’s been party to
for a long time now, at firs...
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Story
Fourth of July in Gotham City
Maria Koby
I had a tradition of celebrating the Independence Day with a twist. It’d start as the typical celebration - hot dogs, BBQ meat skewers and corn with cheap lager and wine at a friend's backyard or rooftop, discussing how ma...
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Purgatory & Paradise: Sassy ‘70s Suburbia & the City – Photographs by Meryl Meisler
Franklin Mount
Purgatory & Paradise: Sassy ‘70s Suburbia & the City
Meryl Meisler, Bizarre Publishing, 2016
Do you remember New York before Reagan and the cult of the Free Market? Before it became Singapore on the Hudson? Meryl Meisl...
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Story
The King’s Hashish – 1971
Tsaurah Litzky
You pack twenty bricks of black hashish from Lebanon in an empty air canister as part of your scuba diving equipment. We call it the King’s Hashish because every brick is stamped with a gold crown. You ship your diving equ...
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Story
Number 109
David Huberman
I would never admit to being interested in sexual conquests for the sake of showing off. But I was indeed part of the First Wave of 'wide eyed men’ of the James Bond Generation, who desired wickedly beautiful and sexy wom...
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