Issue: 2009

My Chinatown: A New York Sketchbook

Photo by Nicole Tung
Photo by Nicole Tung

The crowded and noisome fish markets, the vendors sitting in crude shanties filled with counterfeit handbags, the language and lettering: all transported me to a different city that I didn’t understand. ‘I’m not in Manhattan anymore,’ I thought when I first moved into Chinatown two years ago. I felt like an outsider in my own neighborhood. Because I was an outsider.

Cuban Rhapsody
Babushkas Just Don’t Understand
Campaigning Monks

A Note from Editors Pete Hamill and Mary D'Ambrosio

This magazine features top reporting and storytelling by undergraduates at New York University's Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute. The stories were developed and edited under their' professors' guidance, and ours. More »

Rent Control in Cairo

Rent Control in Cairo

My great-grandfather was a lawyer from Cairo, Egypt’s bustling capital city. His father lost his shirt in the stock market with disastrous consequences, so when it was my great-grandfather’s turn to try his hand at making a fortune, he took a different tack.

A Family Cancer

A Family Cancer

Kerry Higgins was at a concert with her best friend from college. They were standing outside the arena when a guy to her left began to stare. He was looking at the two-foot long, jagged pink scar on Kerry’s right leg. He finally asked her what had happened to her. Without hesitation, she looked him in the eyes and said, “I was attacked by a shark.”

Your Next Tailor

Your Next Tailor

Michael Mantegna has an alluring presence. He is well built, and almost looks like he could be Tom Ford’s younger brother. Perhaps not surprisingly, Mantegna counts Ford as one of his style icons.

Life a la Rice Cart

Life a la Rice Cart

On weekends, Sharif Esmail works the night shift at one of New York’s many halal food carts – one that never moves and never closes.

Warboss Zagdakka Takes on the World

Warboss Zagdakka Takes on the World

Though squashed into a strip of bland chain stores, Games Workshop embraces an entirely different reality.