*i remember my first glimpse of New York from the window of a Greyhound pulling into Port Authority, how massive, cold and grey it appeared.

*i remember being twenty three and putting on a jacket and tie to interview with Charlie Traub at the School of Visual Arts only to find him waiting for me with an amused smile, stockinged feet propped up on his office desk.

*i remember walking my suitcase block after block to arrive at a loft in the East Village -two floors up from the Pyramid Club- and meeting my crazy roommates for the first time.

*i remember when riot police on horseback would evict squatters from Thompkins Square Park and people were reluctant to visit me in Alphabet City.

*i remember the dollar and fifty cents breakfast special at Leshko's and the enormous styrofoam containers of spicy Kung Pao Chicken we got for lunch from the greasy spoon downstairs.

*i remember biking everywhere everyday -even in the dead of winter.
And the seven bikes stolen before I finally gave up on owning one in the city.

*i remember blistering summers with no AC.

*i remember blistering summers with one AC unit: placed not in my bedroom but in the darkroom I built for myself in Crown Heights, Brooklyn.

*i remember black teens on the streets of Crown Heights pointing at me and laughing incredulously repeating "white guy! white guy!" between peals of laughter.

*i remember the death threats from guys standing on street corners who took me for an undercover cop.

*i remember the flocks of Hasidim in front of 770 Eastern Parkway debating the same thorny points of law and doctrine which generations of Jews debated for thousands of years before them.

*i remember printing books and exhibitions for famous photographers and blasting salsa music clear through the walls of their darkrooms.

*i remember... as I find a copy of my YONKEROS in the stacks of the library at SVA. The same stacks that I used to pore through as a student twenty years ago. and I let the memories of younger years wash over me.