Copyright 2008 The New York Sun Wed, 18 Jun 2008 16:37:23 -0400 http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss Ilya Marritz :: Stories from The New York Sun http://www.nysun.com/authors/Ilya+Marritz istoll@nysun.com (Ira Stoll) webmaster@nysun.com en-us ILYA MARRITZ http://www.nysun.com/new-york/quelling-the-hideous-stench-on-the-streets/21247/ Mon, 10 Oct 2005 00:00:00 EST Long after the restaurant kitchens and video parlors have closed, when the lotus root, bok choy, and fresh and dried shrimp have been brought inside grocery stores for the night, and the last denizens of karaoke halls are stumbling home, Robin Veintimilla sets out on one of the most quixotic jobs in New York: making the streets of downtown Flushing, Queens - some of the most pungent in New York - less smelly. His tools are an ordinary street sweeper ("the brusher") and a specially equipped... ILYA MARRITZ http://www.nysun.com/new-york/turf-war-erupts-over-so-called-dust-bowl/18455/ Thu, 11 Aug 2005 00:00:00 EST The central lawn of Cadman Plaza Park in Brooklyn has sometimes been called "the dust bowl" because of the depression at its center, where ragged clumps of grass give way to hard earth that has been packed down from years of informal use as a ball field. Now a plan to replace the hole at the heart of the park with a perfectly flat carpet of bright green is drawing the ire of some park users because it would include a variety of synthetic turf similar to Astroturf. "If this happened, it would no... ILYA MARRITZ http://www.nysun.com/travel/castles-and-cabbage/16426/ Fri, 1 Jul 2005 00:00:00 EST As almost any Czech will tell you, it's nearly impossible today to have an authentically "Czech" experience in Prague. A meal at the historic U Flek* pub? Today only the waiters are Czech. A walk across Charles Bridge? You'll have to dodge packs of rowdy British 20-somethings clad in matching stag party T-shirts. So when I decided recently to enroll in a Czech language course, I chose one not in Prague, the city where my mother was born, but in Brno, the Czech Republic's second city, and a... ILYA MARRITZ http://www.nysun.com/new-york/candidates-work-gay-pride-parade/16126/ Mon, 27 Jun 2005 00:00:00 EST The signs were affixed to barricades, mounted on sticks, and held high by cheering spectators. On one block alone, more than 70 were visible. Marching down Fifth Avenue yesterday, Mayor Bloomberg was surrounded on all sides by a near-wall of posters reading "Mike Bloomberg With Pride." Except for the cross-dressing cheerleaders in rainbow-colored wigs, one could have mistaken the gathering for a political rally, rather than the annual Gay Pride Parade. New York's parades have long been a forum... ILYA MARRITZ http://www.nysun.com/new-york/new-yorkers-salute-israel-with-parade-down-fifth/14908/ Mon, 6 Jun 2005 00:00:00 EST Under cloudless skies yesterday, politicians, schoolchildren, veterans, and other supporters of Israel marched in the 41st annual Salute to Israel Parade. Thousands of spectators lined both sides of Fifth Avenue between 57th and 79th streets to watch and lend their support. In a municipal election year, spectators could catch sight of more than a few elected officials and challengers, including Mayor Bloomberg and the four contenders in the Democratic primary for mayor. Mr. Bloomberg, grand... ILYA MARRITZ http://www.nysun.com/foreign/czech-survivors-recall-holocaust-60-years-later/13419/ Fri, 6 May 2005 00:00:00 EST BRNO, Czech Republic - Sixty years after she escaped from a German forced-labor camp and trudged over mountains back to her native Czechoslovakia, Zuzana Wachtlova, 85, is gripped by the memory of the events that led to the gassing of her parents and her own near-destruction. "I watch every program that comes on the television about the Holocaust, I read every article," Mrs. Wachtlova, an energetic woman with twinkling blue eyes, whose hands sometimes tremble with age, said. "I can't free... ILYA MARRITZ http://www.nysun.com/on-the-town/from-punk-rock-to-hollywood-and-back/10904/ Mon, 21 Mar 2005 00:00:00 EST Is Eugene Hütz really a libidinous, foul-mouthed punk who smells of sweat and onions, who left Ukraine for America as a refugee, and returned to Kiev years later as a rock star on tour? Or is he just some American's idea of what an ex-Soviet rocker and bon vivant should look like, the figment of a writer's imagination? Having not long ago finished filming for a role in the movie version of the novel "Everything is Illuminated," Mr. Hütz was preoccupied with the riddles of performance and... ILYA MARRITZ http://www.nysun.com/on-the-town/this-english-professor-explicates-the-hip-hop/8985/ Wed, 9 Feb 2005 00:00:00 EST Evelyn Nien-Ming Chi'en is always listening. Holding her breath, trying to catch that curious resonance that makes a moment complete. "I was up in the Adirondacks recently, and there was this lake that had this air between the slice of ice on top of it and the water. And it was, like, insane acoustics," she said between sips of steamed soy milk at a cafe near her home in Greenwich Village. "Like crackling, but also low notes, like 'wooo.' It was like hip-hop's surround sound craziness would to... ILYA MARRITZ http://www.nysun.com/on-the-town/this-brooklyn-teacher-has-a-mysterious-second/6587/ Tue, 21 Dec 2004 00:00:00 EST A small publishing house near Union Square is the pivot on which Rebecca Pawel's life turns. Most days, she passes underneath by subway on her way between home in Manhattan and the public school where she teaches in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, without coming up for air. But every so often Ms. Pawel breezes in to visit her editors at Soho Press, a publisher of mysteries set in exotic locales. On her way in to Soho's offices on a recent evening, Ms. Pawel chatted with the security guard downstairs... ILYA MARRITZ http://www.nysun.com/on-the-town/books-are-in-his-blood/4530/ Tue, 9 Nov 2004 00:00:00 EST A recent visit to the home of the publishing scion Charles Scribner III concluded with a surprise guided tour of Mr. Scribner's personal scrapbook. Recalling his early ambition to portray a doctor in soap operas, Mr. Scribner sought a photograph of himself, age 15, playing Cassius in a high-school production of Shakespeare's Julius Caesar. But Mr. Scribner's boundless enthusiasm got the better of the search for the photo, as he found something to detain him on nearly every page: a picture of... ILYA MARRITZ http://www.nysun.com/on-the-town/preservation-meets-development/2854/ Thu, 7 Oct 2004 00:00:00 EST Joel Towers has been leading groups of students on expeditions by boat up the craw of one of New York's most desolate waterways, Newtown Creek. The dank channel that marks the Brooklyn-Queens border was once one of America's busiest, dotted with flour mills and glue factories. Today it's taken up by warehouses and waste transfer stations and is the city's only Superfund site. "You help them to get over, first, the shock of a space like that, and then begin to liberate their imagination as to...