Tsismis is the opposite of a speakeasy. It isn’t hiding anything; its glass facade on Orchard Street wants to strike up a conversation so badly that it almost follows you home. The windows are stenciled with cartoon characters and with text-message bubbles that call out in English (“Hello! New York”), Spanish (“que rico!”), French (“bon…
NEWPORT, R.I. — They met in Ios, Greece: locking eyes across the town square, both in their 20s then. (She had noticed his distinctive mustache.) Elayna Carausu was playing guitar and singing for a travel company; Riley Whitelum was living on the sailboat he had bought with money saved from working for years on oil…
When Shame Leads to Kindness My mother and I were driving through Detroit when we stopped at a light and noticed a blind man attempting to cross a busy street. My mother told me to go help him, but I — a shy, baffled teenager — refused. She got out and helped the man cross,…
WASHINGTON — For Representative Pramila Jayapal, there was no better party during her childhood in Jakarta, Indonesia, than the one that took place on Diwali, the Indian festival of lights. Jakarta didn’t have a large Indian population in the 1970s and ’80s, so the 100 or so people who lived in her area would meet…
The 52 Places Traveler The 52 Places Traveler visits the smallest country in mainland Africa, where historical reckoning, crippling heat, infrastructure woes and an island of apes make for a trip to remember. Oct. 22, 2019 ImageThe fishing village of Tanji, just outside of Banjul, is a great spot to take in the sunset. Our…
ImageMelissa Madara, the resident witch at the James New York — NoMad hotel.CreditAnnie Tritt for The New York Times “Hi, I’m here to see the witch in residence,” I told the front desk employee at a West Village hotel. He asked me, with a slightly alarmed look, what I was talking about. It didn’t take…
After falling for the bright azure sky, craggy mountains and Rat Pack lore of Palm Springs, Calif., in the 1990s, Clive Wilkinson finally bought an empty lot there in 2009, intending to build a getaway of his own. “You felt you were on holiday, even though you were only two hours out of L.A.,” said…
HOUSTON — The baby’s lips were turning blue from lack of oxygen in the blood when his mother, Kristin Johnson, rushed him to an emergency room here last month. Only after he was admitted to intensive care with a respiratory virus did Ms. Johnson learn that he had been dropped from Medicaid coverage. The 9-month-old,…
In the early days of last fall, my daughter was projecting confidence about the college application process. She’d make a spreadsheet, things would be checked off, it’ll all come together, Mom. But right around this point, with classes and sports in full swing, college mutated from something exciting to that-which-shall-not-be-named. To inquire about, say, a…
Like clockwork, the sound of the freight train came roaring through our bedroom in the middle of each night. Or at least what sounded like a freight train. In reality, it was me, snoring. And according to my wife, that freight train had gotten considerably louder over the years. Unfortunately, snoring frequency and volume is…