nonetheless

“The first place I lived in was a sublet from an artist friend on Gold and Fulton Streets. It was just one room with a toilet down the hall and a shower that hooked up to the sink in the room. My kitchen was just a fridge, two hot plates, and a toaster oven. I think we were all there illegally, because sometimes people would make really elaborate systems of hiding the bed and the kitchen.”
~ Cindy Sherman

[NYMag]

“So I came to New York and worked three jobs: at Film Forum; at Lion’s Head, on Sheridan Square; as the houseboy for a Broadway producing family who lived on Park Avenue. I would also perform here and there, mostly at an old jazz club called Deanna’s, in the East Village, but I couldn’t make enough money or any friends. Nobody was interested in my point of view. I tried to perform at the Lower East Side club Sin-é, but they refused my tape three times. I’d go to the old Crowbar to see Misstress Formika, during the East Village Renaissance that I had absolutely nothing to do with.”
~ Rufus Wainwright

[EV Grieve]

“We soon realized that New Yorkers don’t muck up their kitchens by doing breakfast. We got in the habit of walking down Second Avenue and trying every restaurant on the left-hand side, which is very interesting because you go from the tolerable to the absolutely marvelous to the intolerable in the space of six blocks. Within a very short time, the New York vortex kicked in. When you’re on the outer edges you can swim quite happily in cool waters, but as you get closer and get to know more people, you get sucked into a level of activity which is calculated to drive you crazy. It was very exciting—and very eighties.”
~ Harold Evans

[Michael Sean Edwards]

Waking Up to New York (NYM)