Within the walls of one freshman dorm exists a magical place, known to most first-year students only as “Narnia.” Narnia’s mythical reputation as a refuge in which students sip beer and smoke marijuana without RA interference has spread like wildfire throughout the freshman class.
Indeed, the rumors are based on truth. The party never stops in Narnia: nearly every day of every week, four suitemates invite friends and strangers alike to celebrate life with sex, music, alcohol and weed.
Narnia is actually an eight-by-four-foot room in a spacious suite. The room is clean and uncluttered with a bedsheet spread across the floor. Photographs and hand-drawn illustrations adorn the sanctuary’s walls, and lava lamps, ashtrays and a defunct popcorn maker sit near a small window. A large poster of “The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian” rests on the room’s center wall.
The recession is such a bummer. Wouldn't it be nice to time travel to a simpler era the 1950s when money was plentiful, appliances were shiny, and rock was just beginning to roll? A carefree time, when wiggling a Hula Hoop rather than watching the Dow plummet was the favored pastime, and love could be found at a sock hop. Happily, a DeLorean time machine a la "Back to the Future" isn't necessary. Doo-wop shows, record hops, and soda fountains are all here. As it turns out, happier days can be had again.
This Upper East Side dining room, a one-time neighborhood joint for Bernie Madoff, hasn't changed its mood since it opened in the '50s.
Mr. Ziprin, a brilliant, baffling, beguiling voice of the Lower East Side and the East Village in all its phases — Jewish, hipster and hippie — died last Sunday in Manhattan. He was 84. The cause was chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, his daughter Zia Ziprin said.
For decades, Mr. Ziprin, a self-created planet, exerted a powerful gravitational attraction for poets, artists, experimental filmmakers, would-be philosophers and spiritual seekers.
He ran his apartment, on Seventh Street in the East Village, as a bohemian salon, attracting a loose collective that included the ethnomusicologist Harry Smith, the photographer Robert Frank and the jazz musician Thelonious Monk, who would drop by for meals between sets at the Five Spot. Bob Dylan paid the occasional visit.
