Bull City Summer
Selections from Sam Stephenson’s multi-artist project documenting a season with the Durham Bulls, the North Carolina AAA baseball team that inspired the film “Bull Durham,” which celebrates its 25th anniversary this year.
Better in the Dark
When I was a kid on the coast of North Carolina, I would watch the first half of Monday Night Football on TV and then it was my bedtime. So I’d listen to the second half on the radio under the covers with the lights out, an earplug under
Homage to Terrence Malick, Part Two
My wife Laurie and I are back at my family’s river house near Bath, North Carolina. The visit got off to a rough start the first night when a cap on one of my teeth popped off. Simultaneously, the landlines went out, and (of course) the pathetic AT&
Whose Fantasy Is This, Anyway?
Last week a New York Times baseball blogger posted an entry about sports radio. He described an hour he spent one afternoon listening to stations in Detroit and Philadelphia, certainly through his computer. He said that NFL football dominates the call-in shows, even in cities that have baseball teams in
Los Tiempos Van Cambiando
For the past 14 years, I’ve been studying the nocturnal goings-on in a dilapidated loft building at 6th Avenue and 28th Street, Manhattan’s wholesale flower district from 1954 to 1965. Ten years before that, I began listening to wee-hour sports talk radio from New York’s WFAN while
Everyone Gets a Go
3:38 a.m. I returned home yesterday from two weeks in Brooklyn. Summer became fall while I was gone. Our windows are open and tree frogs and crickets sing through them. The cicadas seem to be gone. My wife sleeps beside me. I switch on WFAN and plug in
The 5 a.m. Pugilist
I’m in Brooklyn again this week, working on a theater installation called Chaos Manor, which is part of the Brooklyn Book Festival on Sept. 16 and 17. The installation makes use of tapes and photographs made by W. Eugene Smith in a dilapidated loft building in Manhattan’s flower
Before Sunrise, Nobody Cares About Tennis
A few days ago I awoke and tuned my transistor to WFAN. It was around 4:31 a.m. Lori Rubinson was hosting the call-in show. Immediately she went to a break. The advertisements were for: MJHS, Metropolitan Jewish Health System, a home health provider; Midas “total car care”; GEICO
Into the Heart of Things
I’m in Brooklyn this week. It’s my 138th trip to New York in the past 13 years. For the first 135 trips I was in Manhattan, mostly on 9th St. near Sixth Avenue in a brownstone with studio apartments the owner rented per night, a place I first
Homage to Terrence Malick
My wife and I are vacationing at my family’s house on the Pamlico River near Bath, North Carolina, a coastal farming town of several hundred people, where Blackbeard supposedly anchored ship on a regular basis and buried treasures. It takes a dirt road to make it to our house.
Everyone’s Relative
9:27 p.m. Driving the back roads from the Durham Bulls Athletic Park, where the Bulls beat the Gwinnett Braves 4-0 behind a masterful performance by ace prospect pitcher Matt Moore, to our home 25 miles away, I’m listening to local sports radio 99.9 FM. The UNC
Voices in the Country
3:06 a.m. I wake up, flip on my bedside transistor to see what they are talking about on WFAN 660 AM out of New York City. I’m in rural Chatham County, NC, with three acres, heavy woods with eight kinds of trees, and a creek. Crickets, cicadas,
The Best Viola Player in the New York Phil Is a Bum
Bob from Brooklyn is the voice of reason: “Hey, Tone, this Derek Jeter controversy is a reflection of our society. You know, there’s gotta be a story every 10 minutes. Jeter gets hurt, the Yankees win without him, and all of a sudden he’s a bum. It’s