This figure is from a classical Greek sculpture that is part of a flagpole base in Manhattan's Union Square Park. After being shut in our apartment for the duration of a day-long snowstorm in 1992, Mark and I decided to go out the next day and frolic in the foot-high drifts. I took the camera, hoping to catch one of us falling on the ice and thus capturing the humiliation of the moment on film. That didn't happen, but in my opinion, I did snap one of the best photos I've ever taken.

 

What can I say about New York, good and bad, that hasn't already been said? While I am a New Jerseyan by birth, deep in my heart I will always feel like a native New Yorker. Since I was a kid, and especially because I came to terms with my sexual orientation at a fairly early age, New York always beckoned me and I feel I did my real growing up in Manhattan. I would, on a regular basis, take the bus from the Jersey suburbs into the big, bad city and explore the various neighborhoods, buy cool things, hang out at the bars and clubs and once in a while, make a new friend. I always thought I would eventually live in New York, envisioning my every day life as a scene from a Woody Allen movie. Six months after I met Mark at a trendy '80's gay bar called Uncle Charlie's in Greenwich Village, I moved into his apartment on the Upper East Side in 1988. We stayed in the same building on Third Avenue and East 76th Street for four years and then eventually moved downtown to the Village for the next three years. In July of 1995, we said goodbye to Manhattan and headed out to the Left Coast. There are some things I really hate about New York (don't even get me started about the supermarkets) but there are times when I truly miss all the great things it has to offer, not to mention all of my friends who still live there.

 

Art Deco detail from a building in Rockefeller Center. Picture taken in Fall of 1991.

 

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