I wrote a story for TheNewYorker.com about watching the filming of a riot reenactment in Tompkins Square Park. It starts:
The first time I saw a riot in Tompkins Square Park, in New York’s East Village, was a hot summer night, in 1988, when I was twelve years old. Growing up on the fifth floor of a St. Marks Place brownstone, I was usually able to sleep through any street noise. But this street noise was exceptional. Actually, it was deafening. There were helicopters, anarchist squatters flinging bottles, even policemen on horseback. Like people all up and down the street, I leaned out the window and watched what looked like the end of the world. The second time I saw a riot in Tompkins Square Park was on a recent Thursday, in May, at the age of thirty-eight... Read the rest here.
