CULTURE & CRITICISM

BRUCE LERRO—One of the things I tried to do in hitchhiking was stay off the interstate highways because they bypass the towns where people live. Riding on them gives you no sense of local life. So, in heading up to Seattle I didn’t go on Interstate 5 or even US 101. I stayed on the slower roads. On these roads, if I got stuck I could either find a motel, a park or even the outskirts of a farm to spread out my sleeping bag and conk out.

In those days, there were a lot of freaks on the road, coming and going without any thought-out plans. People would hitchhike together for 50 to 100 miles and then part ways. I was with two other guys on U.S. 20 heading west for the coast. They were headed south for the SF Bay Area and I was headed north for Seattle. During these times, hitchhikers have a sense of which cars are likely to pick you up and which aren’t. VW bugs and VW vans were the most likely to stop. Pickup trucks were often driven by right-wingers, so we had to be prepared to have beer cans or other trash thrown at us as they passed. It was rare that women gave any of us a ride.

A set of rare videos documenting the unusual, often epic, architectural and urban treasures to be found in New York City.

ED CURTIN—Life is dangerous; we can end at any time.  We can also be swallowed by the inarticulate, find ourselves tongue-tied in the face of simple truth, especially the personal kind and how our small-world stories are intertwined with the larger social ones. How there is no escaping that. There are many, of course, for whom the bell tolls before they end.

PHILIP A. FARRUGGIO—Time always has a way of catching up to all of us. It sure did with Larry. How many years could a man just live this way, with no purpose but to make money, gamble and get laid? He was the ultimate survivor, or perhaps spectator is a better word. Larry didn’t care about issues or politics. He was actually oblivious to the events around him that did not touch him in any manner. He watched, or rather observed, his daughter getting older. The weekly phone calls and holiday visits did not prepare him for the young woman she became. HIs ex remarried years earlier and the bosses he worked for changed like managers on shitty baseball teams. He kept trucking… until they opened Staples Office Supplies all over the country.

JULISSA CASTILLO—As we settled into our new lives in this strange little town, my family constantly shared stories about people around town thinking we were Mexican, or Indian, or Honduran, or any number of other things. The most ludicrous assumption however — at least to my parents — was that we were black. We’re Dominican, not black!