Christopher Ketcham
CHRISTOPHER KETCHAM, a freelance writer for Harper's, GQ, Mother Jones and many other magazines, divides his time between Brooklyn and the redrock country of Utah.
He can be reached at [email protected].
Erasing the Kung-Fu Judge
By Christopher KetchamThe case of the plundering of the estate of retired judge John L. Phillips is the nexus where corruption and a rainbow coalition of cliché meet, Brooklyn-style.
Crisis? What Crisis? Singing the Gospel at Crapola’s End
By Christopher KetchamMore good news in crisis from down the block here in Park Slope: The realty office that I could almost spit on from my stoop has shut its doors, boarded up the classy windows, sent its half-breed parasites home, no more to feed on old women tossed from rent control.
How to Spot a Junkie
By Christopher KetchamI recognize this smile: it’s that of the abuser, the fiend, or the crack addict.
Brooklyn No More
By Christopher KetchamIn the 1980s, when I was a kid, the section of Court Street where it meets Atlantic Avenue was broken-down and unhappy and full of crazy old men stumbling out of bars and nothing shined and you could get a plate of yellow rice with a half-chicken on the rotisserie for three dollars with a forty of St. Ides for a dollar more. I have a real nostalgie de la boue for it, which is unhealthy and self-deluding and I admit this freely.
The Slave Auctions and the End of the Kung-Fu Judge
By Christopher KetchamOn Feb. 6, the Brooklyn Supreme Court announced that it would soon begin auctioning off the storied Slave Theaters I & II in Bedford Stuyvesant, where black activists in New York once gathered to speak and protest.
Notes from September 11
By Christopher KetchamAnd the sun behind the plume went out orange and then violet…
The Bear and the Mouse
By Christopher KetchamIn the snowy March of 2003, I climbed Slide Mountain, the tallest of the Catskill range at 4,180 feet, and met a wild-looking man named Sean McFall, who was staying 35 days on Slide’s shoulders, in the three-foot snow drifts, with the ice blowing from the treetops and his demonic-looking white bulldog keeping him warm when the temperature dropped to minus 20 degrees Fahrenheit.
