Series
Public Streets
In Public Streets, our urban observation series, writers reflect on spaces and places.
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Making Migrant Spaces: 34th Avenue, Queens
Thirty-Fourth Avenue is a reminder that displacement from one location, perhaps at a far remove, can instantiate emplacement elsewhere.
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The Street and the World: Rua do Benformoso, Lisbon
A short walk from Lisbon’s central Baixa district—where tourists flock …
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Signs of Bombay
In December 2016, Public Books Editor in Chief Sharon Marcus spent a few days in Mumbai, participating in the Times of India Literary Festival and walking around the city. Mumbai, also known as …
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The University and the Station: A Brontë Bicentenary in Taiwan
It takes a circuitous taxi ride winding up Lianhai Road to reach Taiwan’s …
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Durham and the Art of Cool
May 2016 in downtown Durham, North Carolina, was marked by two weekend music festivals, the Art of Cool and Moogfest, which were presented in the …
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The American West from the Air
I recently found myself 1,500 feet above ground, traveling at 180 mph. When I wiped away the breath-mist from the window, I could see the American West …
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Two Islands, Two Fates: Inishbofin and Inishark, Ireland
To get to Inishbofin, an island nine miles off the west coast of Ireland, you take a …
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Wading Through the Swamp: Nairobi, Kenya
Above the low traffic hum on Woodvale Grove, the main street running through Nairobi’s affluent neighborhood of Westlands, a woman in braided hair …
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The Gowanus Overpass: Brooklyn, New York
In 2012, I moved into a Sunset Park apartment with a kitchen window nearly perpendicular to the Brooklyn Queens Expressway …
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Planning Happiness: A Postcard from Christianshavn, Copenhagen
This is the latest installment of Public Streets, an urban observations series curated by Ellis Avery. This street used to be quieter, just an occasional bike rattling over the cobblestones along a pretty stretch of Copenhagen canal. The 19th-century residential apartments were built to service an older naval and industrial quarter. When we were renovating our…
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The Best Wall in the History of Walls: New Yorkers, Post-Election
On November 8, 2016, 80 percent of New York City voters cast their ballots for Hillary Clinton. On November 9, Donald Trump’s victory …
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Benidorm After Brexit and the “Burbuja”
In the early 1950s, Mayor Pedro Zaragoza left Benidorm, the sleepy coastal town he governed, to make the 300-mile trip to Madrid by Vespa. He had an audience with General Franco …
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The Heartbeat of Chattahoochee Forest: Dahlonega, GA
This piece, marking the release of Bledsoe’s new novel, A Thin Bright Line, is the latest installment of Public Streets, a biweekly urban observations series curated by Ellis Avery. Urbanites joke about rural hicks. Rural Southerners, especially, are the butt of jokes about their dogs, guns, and ignorance. But anyone traveling—with their eyes and hearts…
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Walking the Venetian: Miami, FL
To get to Publix for supplies, walk east on the pink sidewalk of Venetian Way, which links five man-made islands between Miami and Miami Beach. Biscayne Bay glitters green …
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Taimani Alley, Kabul
Winters, before the paving of the neighborhood streets, when rain and snowmelt gathered in long puddles, or froze into broad ruts of broken ice and slush, the alley was a shortcut …
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The Church House on Cannaday School Road: Floyd, VA
This is the latest installment of Public Streets, a biweekly urban observations series curated by Ellis Avery. Floyd, VA, sits at the intersection of State Highway 221 and Route 8, in the southwest point of the state. The sole stoplight in Floyd County guards that intersection, watching over the courthouse, an unadorned 20th-century clump of…
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The Art of the Communist Museum: The Leon Trotsky House in Coyoacán
This is the latest installment of Public Streets, a biweekly urban observations series curated by Ellis Avery. Villa Coyoacán, Mexico, home to El Museo Casa de Leon Trotsky, is now a posh neighborhood in the south of Mexico City, but it was hardly more than a provincial town on the outskirts of the capital when…
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Public Streets Storymap
In each installment of Public Streets, our series dreamed up and curated by Ellis Avery, a writer reflects on a locale—a neighborhood, park, city, street—of personal importance …
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Underground Distractions, Shanghai
This is the latest installment of Public Streets, a biweekly urban observations series curated by Ellis Avery. Windows on trains and planes are equipped with shades: vertical or horizontal, rigid or supple. They modulate the vehicles’ apertures, allowing passengers to frame their gaze on the passing scenery as they please. The scenery available to us…
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Earnestine & Hazel’s in Memphis: A Place Known for its Dead
This is the latest installment of Public Streets, a biweekly urban observations series curated by Ellis Avery. On South Main, in the newly revived arts district of downtown Memphis, sits a little dive bar called Earnestine & Hazel’s, named for the women who ran it in the middle of the last century. If you’re lucky, you’ll…
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Placerita Canyon
This is the latest installment of Public Streets, a biweekly urban observations series curated by Ellis Avery. North of Los Angeles, there is a canyon. It was once occupied by Tataviam Native Americans who hunted and gathered across it until the area was claimed, first by the Mexican government, then the United States. And there, in…
