I was frantically designing for the Bloomberg presidential campaign when the pandemic arrived in the US like an uninvited guest who wouldn't leave. When the news broke that workers could finally—blessedly, miraculously—work from home, I leapt on that option like a man escaping a burning building. I have not set foot in an office since.

Having those two hours reclaimed from my commute opened up a void I didn't know existed in my daily life. At first I filled them with the Boobtube, doomscrolling, with the dull ache of being a human ping-pong ball, and lots of wine. But then, somewhere in the anxious spring of 2020, I started searching for online drawing tutorials like a man possessed. I binged them the way some people binge true crime podcasts—frantically, obsessively. A year later at 2 AM on a Tuesday. I wanted out of the corporate rat maze and into a life where I made things with my hands.

But here's the thing—I'm also a child of the internet's golden age, weaned on the sweet milk of dial-up modems and the promise of personal computing. So while art called to me, tech never quite let go of my other hand. There was a middle ground waiting to be found, somewhere between the Wacom tablet and the glowing screen. What I discovered is this: there are a ton of free tutorials online and in person, and I want to share one of the greatest ways to socialize and be creative in this entire damn city.

My favourite place to draw at—or just exists in—is The Society of Illustrators in NYC. This gem of a building is snuggled between two other prewar beauties on East 63rd Street, and if you have the chance, go. Visit. Get lost in the galleries. Smell the old wood and ambition in the air. Weekly Wednesday drawing is The Night to give it a try. Here's the deal:

The Society of Illustrators Weekly Wednesday Drawing

I have compiled in a calendar, with my own little hands, of weekly drawing events. Includes venues, independent studios and bars. It is updated as I find new events through out the year.

Here's what nobody in tech wants to admit: AI won't replace the human hand. It can't. A machine can mimic a pencil line, sure—it can spit out something that looks like a drawing, something that passes for art in a Instagram thumbnail kind of way. But it doesn't know the ache in your wrist after three hours of shading. It doesn't remember the first time someone told you your sketch was good. It wasn't there in a cramped apartment in 2020, staring at a blank page at 2 AM, terrified and excited and completely alone with the possibilities.

The power of making things by hand—that's human. That's irreplaceable. An algorithm can generate a thousand images in a second, but it can't feel the paper under its fingers, can't smudge charcoal into a cheekbone the way you would on a subway commute. What you make with your own hands carries DNA. Yours. The wobble in your line, the pressure you didn't mean to apply, the accidental mark that becomes the whole thing. That's not a bug. That's the point.

New York City’s first city-owned grocery store will be in the Hunts Point section of the Bronx, Mayor Zohran Mamdani said Monday. The 20,000-square-foot store will be located inside the Peninsula, an affordable housing and mixed-use development that was previously home to a juvenile detention center.

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