GPOYW: Things Were So Much Simpler Then Edition. This is me, roughly sixteen years ago, standing in front of ABC-No-Rio when you could still buy heroin from dudes on the corner whispering, “Black death!” into your ear on the Lower East Side. Because it was 1994, I was wearing a backpack, a red windbreaker with the Embrace album cover silkscreened on the back, and a winter cap — even though it was probably spring. (On my feet, most likely, was a pair of canvas Israeli military shoes that my friends and I were kind of obsessed with at the time. We called them “Vegan Warriors.”) I was 20 years old, I made a living by publishing a fanzine, and my rent to live in Manhattan was $300 a month. Salad fucking days, people.

Photo: Brian Maryansky