Hi, I'm Choire Sicha, and the average distance that women in Africa and Asia walk to collect water is 6 kilometers. Oh, sorry, sir -- would you like fries with that?

I'm also the editor of Gawker, a website obsessed to death with Manhattan's media and culture, and a contributing writer at The Morning News. Certainly I do love me some freelance. Enquire within.



Recent essays and stories:

24 Hour Movie People [in Wired]. New York City's 24-hour digital film-making competition, with Xeni Jardin and Aliya Naumoff.



Entertainment, Weakly [in The New York Observer]. An evening with The Believer, in which -- go figure -- I find myself as conflicted as everyone else.



Meet Me On Joey Ramone Place [in The New York Observer]. Sometimes memorials have meaning; East 2nd Street gets a new name.



Chelsea's Crazy Hanging Garden [in The New York Observer]. West Chelsea may get an incredible -- or unincredible -- public park. But what do the landlords get?



French Film, French Film [at The Morning News]. After a decade in New York, every streetcorner, building, and section of the deli will remind you of someone you've been in love with.



Over the River And Through the Sleaze: Corcoran Uncorks [in The New York Observer]. Real estate queen Barbara Corcoran, conceptual artist Glen Seator, and a theory of the gentrification of Brooklyn.



The Media Lunch [in The New York Observer]. The California recall, porn star and candidate Mary Carey, The Day of the Locust, and the media profit centers do lunch.



Ronald Reagan and Reading Proust [at The Morning News]. So heavy hangs the head of she who wore the crown the night before: a three-day diary of literary celebrities, self-loathing, and the Wolfowitz Riots at the New Yorker Festival.



The Non-Expert: Broken Hearts [at The Morning News]. In this everchanging world in which we love in, to misquote Mr. McCartney, people get hurt every day. What we sometimes forget is that people get un-hurt every day too. Let's patch you up and get you back in the game.



The New York City Tattoo Convention [at The Morning News]. In a generation, body art has gone from subversive to suburban, so it now takes a lot more ink to stand out. Geoff Badner and I cover the permanently-etched tragedies that become comedies.



It Must've Been Something I Hate [at The Morning News]. I spent three days recently in New York City's prison industrial complex Criminal Court, being judged on whether I was the right person to judge others in a series of unseemly trials. Join me on an in-depth tour of jury duty in Manhattan, won't you? Just pass through this metal detector, check your politics at the door, and come on in!



The Complicated Art of Chelsea [at The Morning News]. Don't get me wrong: my middle name is Art. No really, after my grandfather. Anyway, I love the the stuff... or at least, I did. Join me on a three-hour tour of West Chelsea's art galleries.







block Saturday, May 3


 "Fucking's neither meat nor money,
Nor is it a crime
But fucking's often overmuch
a fucking waste of time..."

A poem for Law Office by Greg Purcell. ⊕

block Friday, May 2


 Dateline: Monday, June 28, 1999. "Argh, I'm starting to hate the web more and more every day. Why does everything seem to be so much more complicated than it used to be?" -- Meg Hourihan. Ha ha ha. Happy anniversary! ⊕

FYI. My server is getting upgraded this weekend: if I'm up and down, it's not that I'm leaving you. ⊕

So much for retiring rich. Or, really, retiring at all. "If you invest $15,000 now and $200 monthly at 6.00%, you'll be a millionaire in 67 years at age 98. To be a millionaire at age 60, you'll need to: increase the amount you invest now to $275,353, or increase your monthly investment to $1,461, or achieve a rate of return of 17.56%. When adjusted for inflation, $1 million in 67 years would be equivalent to $141,730 today." Let the Motley Fool Calculator ruin your day too. ⊕

She's not just a ferry: Alice Austen, Staten Island's famous lesbian. [via Philo] ⊕

block Thursday, May 1


 A surprisingly thoughtful article on Rachel Corrie in the New York Observer. ⊕

I'm officially single. Overhead, the tiny white flowers of Manhattan's rogue hybrid pear trees sprouted out like sparklers. The park was a sea of cruising police officers. Dogs barked. A man played the saxophone romantically. Hot Dog, everyone's favorite East Village raspy-voiced portly crazy 'n' homeless black woman, was wearing a stylish blonde wig. The sun was going down, and it was getting too cold to talk anymore. I finally had my first slow-motion breakup. ⊕

block Wednesday, April 30


 I'm a spaz. It's been so long since I had a crush on a boy that I forgot how awkward, stupid, and adolescent it is. After last night, it is evident that my understudy, Meg Ryan, will be filling in for me this week. America's fucking sweetheart indeed. ⊕

The National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association (a group of men who, at least here in New York, should probably drop the "lesbian" from their name) held a forum last night on the state of pornography and journalism. I've never spent a more bizarre evening. While I liked each of the panelists (gay skin mag editors, AVN writers, a straight guy from Forbes.com, and film directors), the panel as a whole was quite odd. Magazine editors compared the user-friendly safety and importance of magazines to the wild untrustworthy abrasiveness of the internet. When asked from the audience which writers and magazines were covering sex and pornography well, the panel couldn't come up with a single name. The group as a whole dismissed weblogs derisively, and made a stirring and dated case for the importance of pornography in the emotional development of gay men in rural areas and small towns. The porn reviewers, publishers, and editors present had each participated in the blackout of coverage of bareback/modern condomless pornography. I wanted to ask them if they also believed that Beavis and Butthead had compelled teenagers to light things on fire and beat each other. Overall, I had a difficulty assessing which decade it was for these people; surely it was either the late 70s or the early 90s. ⊕

"my mother walked out of her stall at that moment, saw what was going on, turned on the little crowd that had gathered and said very clearly, 'stupid bitch.' to generally everyone and then she bought me a milkshake and sat with me while i cried and leaned into her underneath her arm and sniffled and drank my chocolate shake at the road stop." An amazing story about women's locker rooms and being beautiful from Jennie. ⊕

Mazel! Happy birthday, you vixen. ⊕

block Tuesday, April 29


 "When I hear that song, for instance, I just want to tell the world that I do often wonder what it is like for a girl. Especially for a girl who parachutes out of an airplane with a hairy chested Brazilian kick boxer who never really says the girl's name so much as just grunts it from the back of a Jeep parked in enemy territory." Not a girl, but not yet a woman. ⊕

I guess fag-baiting is still the most outrageous gesture straight men can make. I hereby challenge Neal Pollack, James Frey, and the Bad Boy Carnival of Over-Rated Heterosexual Writers to a week-long practicum of street hustling on Santa Monica Boulevard. Stupid dumbasses. Hey boys, you're writers! You're little nancy-girls who like literature! You wouldn't last five minutes as a real faggot, so stop overcompensating. ⊕

How are all the dykes these days? It's lezzie roundup day!

"We spent all of Saturday and Sunday pool side polishing off 3.5 cases of beer and half a bottle of sunscreen. Closed out the weekend with a big BBQ last night." That's my dream weekend.

"Two years is 730 days, 17,520 hours, 1,051,200 minutes… or in more pragmatic terms, it’s about 300 loads of laundry, about 52 movies with 52 shared tubs of popcorn, about 26 full moons, 2 Christmases, 4 birthdays, 3-then-2-then-3-then-2 cats, 1 hamster, 1 pathetic raise, around 50 parking tickets, 35 orders of McDonald’s pancakes, and 5 new pairs of shoes." Happy anniversary!

"I have not had a cup of coffee or a drink for 9 weeks, have not had a steak, a chocolate bar or anything that remotely seems like edible pleasure (unless you count my love life) for 9 weeks!" Rossi rants on deprivation.

"The all time absolutely worst birthday... was when I was about twenty. My first girlfriend chose the day of my birthday to deliver up a six page letter that detailed my frailties and defects (I know! I don't really have any! What was she thinking?)." Jadedju has (another!) birthday.

"Her breasts were like two Olympic swimming pools and I just sat there in the theatre wishing I were Greg Lougainis." Elaine has the Queen Latifah experience.

And of course, the old classic and potentially actionable 'My lover's company invited me for a job but remembered my lover worked there and withdrew their offer' story over at Jill Matrix. ⊕

Please hold. I am experiencing extreme neck difficulties. Like Dr. Evil, I must turn my entire body to look to the right or left. Also? Ow fucking ow. I'll be right back -- when I'm not seeing double. ⊕

block Monday, April 28


 "Ever since enduring Dubya's insipid little war and bearing witness to the international humiliation and resentment America now faces, I've been unable to achieve orgasm. Right as I'm about to climax, up pops Rummy's ink-black eyes or Ari Fleischer's puling sneer or Dubya's dumb-as-nails smirk and, poof, the moment is ruined." Rick Santorum, advice columnist. [via 601] ⊕

block Sunday, April 27


 Super Spastic Offensive Summer Dance Party. The on-liner notes for my Metafilter CD Swap entry are here. I'm glad I made this CD. It helped me clarify my summer goals. Those goals are, in no particular order: party, rock out, wear short shorts, be shallow, and smoke often. I hope I can cram that all in this summer. I better start now. ⊕



the xml feed is here, and if you really must, you can delve into the past here.
thanks for spending a moment with me. perhaps you'd enjoy seeing who i see:
my girl gang will totally cut you:
→blaise →elizabeth →jennie →jonno →lance →leslie →meg →philo


gangsters from the block:
→aaron →anil →ariel →ernie →faustus →lisa →lockhart →mom →nick →richard →steve


join me for a meeting in town hall:
→gothamist →the morning news →world new york


clock some mofos who can write:
→alison →bob →dana →dong resin →mary →matthew →michael →mimi →skot


about this site:
©2000-2003, choire sicha. i use blogger for posting automation. the rest is handcoded by my squirrels. i am hosted by kinetic medium. this page is validating css.




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