Outside Duane Park

I got the idea for Tribeca Citizen after I quit my job in the summer of 2008. I’ve lived in the neighborhood since 2003, but I had always loved it a little blindly. Perhaps because I had time to take my pug, Howard, on much longer walks, I found I had all sorts of questions: What was filming on Duane Street? What will that huge new Frank Gehry building look like? What is David Bouley up to now? When I couldn’t find a website with the answers, I began to envision one.

Want to help out?
I had been the editor in chief of Budget Travel magazine (and before that, an editor at Fortune, Travel + Leisure, and Town & Country magazines), where I came to believe that no one person can be as much of an expert as all of us put together. As excited as I am about being a reporter on the local beat, my goal is that other people—such as you—will be willing to help. Think of it as community garden, where different people come together to build something for the good of the area. If you love shopping, or restaurants, or neighborhood history, or taking photographs, or drawing a better building than the one in our logo, or attending community board meetings, or writing in general, or whatever, and you’d be interested in contributing, please email me at tribecacitizen@gmail.com. There’s no compensation yet, because we’re doing this on a shoestring.

Trust is everything
Tribeca Citizen is entirely independent. While I hope that there will be advertising one day, and sooner rather than later, our editorial integrity will never be compromised. I want this site to be smart, fun, useful, interesting, and above all, trustworthy.

Please feel free to comment! But…
Comments have to be approved before they’ll be posted. In a perfect world, this wouldn’t be necessary, but spammers discovered the site about a week after it went live. We will never edit your comments, but we reserve the right not to publish them for whatever reason. A general rule of thumb: If you’re not comfortable putting your name on what you’re saying—and we hope you will!—then maybe it’s not appropriate. Likewise, if you have a vested interest in whatever you’re commenting about, please say so.

Reach your target audience
Having only done this for a few months, I’m already astounded at how many people are reading the site—in other words, it’s a great place to advertise. Let’s talk about ways to get your message across. For more on that topic, go here.

What is Tribeca, anyway?
Our definition of Tribeca is fairly broad, because I’m as interested in what’s going a few blocks north of Canal, or east of Broadway, or in Battery Park City, as I am about what’s happening at the corner of West Broadway and Franklin. In essence, I’m defining Tribeca as anywhere I could persuade my partner, Adam, to walk for dinner. And I’m not spelling it TriBeCa because that’s too hard to type.

Please email me any thoughts you have, positive or otherwise, or even if you just want to say hello. (And please let other Tribeca residents know about the site!) If I don’t respond immediately, it’s because I’m also working part-time as an editor at TripAdvisor and writing a novel. But I promise I will get back to you.

Erik Torkells
tribecacitizen@gmail.com