“Nersesian is this generation’s Mark Twain and the East River is his Mississippi” (Jennifer Belle, author of High Maintenance). These four sharply witty plays—three of which have been staged off Broadway—come from an award-winning playwright, poet, and novelist who has gained a cult following in his native New York City and beyond, and earned a reputation as “one of the wittiest and most perceptive chroniclers of downtown life” (Time Out New York). Included in this volume are: Rent Control Writer’s Bloc Plea Bargains Spare Change “Award-winning playwright Arthur Nersesian has woven an effective dramatic form through four plays, each quite funny in its own way. Each yields very powerful human results while subtly investigating the major social issues of our time.” —Evangelina Borges, Trying Time Press Named Best Indie Novel of the Year by the Montreal Mirror

A vibrant narrative history of three hallowed Manhattan blocks—the epicenter of American cool. St. Marks Place in New York City has spawned countless artistic and political movements. Here Frank O’Hara caroused, Emma Goldman plotted, and the Velvet Underground wailed. But every generation of miscreant denizens believes that their era, and no other, marked the street’s apex. This idiosyncratic work of reportage tells the many layered history of the street—from its beginnings as Colonial Dutch Director-General Peter Stuyvesant’s pear orchard to today’s hipster playground—organized around those pivotal moments when critics declared “St. Marks is dead.” In a narrative enriched by hundreds of interviews and dozens of rare images, St. Marks native Ada Calhoun profiles iconic characters from W. H. Auden to Abbie Hoffman, from Keith Haring to the Beastie Boys, among many others. She argues that St. Marks has variously been an elite address, an immigrants’ haven, a mafia warzone, a hippie paradise, and a backdrop to the film Kids—but it has always been a place that outsiders call home. This idiosyncratic work offers a bold new perspective on gentrification, urban nostalgia, and the evolution of a community.