Mac King
Characters make a story memorable: jokesters, geniuses, gossips, children, octogenarians, your neighbor Maureen, your uncle Jerry, cobblers, clock-winders, professional foosball players, artisan mayonnaise-makers. In this job (and in life), I like to think I seek out characters. I'm a reader (fiction, non-fiction, books, magazines, the entire Internet). I'm a TV/movie-watcher. I'm a former camp counselor. I'm an intramural sports enthusiast. Every story of my little league career is at least mildly exaggerated. I grew up on Bainbridge Island, Wash., with two sisters, Newfoundland dogs and Siamese cats. My parents still live there with all of those pets and all of my favorite sports teams. I went to high school at Andover, where I spent more time playing stickball than studying for chemistry (Mr. Cardozo gave me a C). I then attended Bates College, where I wrote a sports column for the school paper filled with more drinking jokes than game stats (thankfully, the online archives seem to have vanished). I went to graduate school at Northwestern, where I once submitted a story about the most delicious cinnamon brioche in all of Chicago.
The latest from Mac King
“Meet the Breeds” with the American Kennel Club
This weekend the American Kennel Club hosts its 11th annual Meet the Breeds at the Javits Center on Manhattan’s West Side.
'Subway car of the future' has more doors and fewer seats
Maximizing capacity on the next generation of subway car apparently does not mean adding seats.
Turning rubber into art in the East Village
For the last couple of decades John Casey's spent the majority of his waking hours within the depths of his narrow East Village workshop.
Popular Birdcamp no longer accepting boarders
Birdcamp owner Rosalee Gibson has stopped accepting boarders.
Quality coffee office delivery service in Manhattan
Goffee delivers a thousand 12-ounce cups of coffee, lattes and cappuccinos—each tailored exactly to the drinker's specification, down to the brand of java and number and varieties of milks and sugars—to 45 different companies every weekday morning.
Lyft to begin offering car rentals
The ridesharing company Lyft sent a shockwave through the global car-rental market on Thursday when they announced that they plant to start renting vehicles to customers in the Bay Area and Los Angeles.
Rappelling architects inspect skyscrapers from the outside
Amy Deluca and Elyse Marks are building envelope specialists. That means they hang from the city's many skyscrapers, completing mandatory local law inspections looking for building deficiencies.
Christmas tree prices rise 2 years in a row
It takes as long as 10 years to grow a Christmas tree, so any change in how many trees a supplier might plant won't affect supply for nearly a decade. Christmas tree growers planted fewer trees after the Great Recession. That is why the prices of Christmas trees rose about 4% in 2018 and are likely up about the same amount in 2019.
Veterans rescue horses to help other veterans
Amy McCambridge-Steppe and her husband Mark Steppe, both veterans, founded the Unbridled Heroes Project. Last year, they rescued four wild mustangs from government round-ups in Nevada and Wyoming and brought the horses to New Jersey.
New York's 'fallout shelter' signs remain relics of history
Many buildings in New York still have those yellow fallout shelter placards visible. But these are actually historical relics and not indicative of any actual shelter or supplies on site.