OZY Daily Dose

One thing about Lou Reed - of Velvet Underground, black fingernail polish and the song "Heroin" fame - is that he made being dope-sick chic well before fashionistas followed suit in the '90s. But in New York of the early 1980s, specifically down on the Lower East Side, it was anything but.This was especially true in Alphabet City, so named for Avenues A, B, C and D. Now it's gentrified beyond all recognition.

There are no isolated incidents. Incidents are linked, even though the threads seem tenuous. Bullied as a boy in riot-torn Harlem, I held on to my rage until I exploded. I transformed myself from a shy, bookish boy to an out-of-control beast for short periods of time. I'd smash you with half a brick, kick you, whatever it took to protect myself."Any man whose errors take 10 years to correct is quite a man," American physicist Robert Oppenheimer once said.

The sun was setting as we drove through the crisp July evening in Madison’s dad’s 1985 Volvo station wagon. Summer was already cooling down up in the Great White North. We’d just spent the best weekend of our lives at the Winnipeg Folk Festival in Canada, dancing in the mud, flirting with boys and buying legal beer for the first time. Turns out, Lucky Lager tastes like the best craft beer money can buy when you’re 18. I wasn’t a bad kid in high school.

A funny thing happens inside Oracle Arena, the Oakland home of the Golden State Warriors, when point guard Steph Curry drains a deep three-pointer: nothing. Having enjoyed nearly a decade of two of the best shooters in basketball history on the same team, Warriors fans are accustomed to this. Until Curry, Klay Thompson or Kevin Durant really heats up, the crowd is on autopilot. That’s not a criticism.

OZY's Scenes of the Crime series stares into the hearts of darkness that drive our sometimes savage ways. OZY's Scenes of the Crime series explores what drives our evil ways. There was no deathbed. There was only death, period. It was a cool night in February, but I was boiling from the inside — the pores on my skin becoming tighter and tighter as I walked to the chapel. It wasn’t my first death.

If you’d been a gangbanger on your way to a lengthy prison stay, the last detour you’d expect would be one to a preschool. OZY's Scenes of the Crime series stares into the hearts of darkness that drive our sometimes savage ways. OZY's Scenes of the Crime series stares into the hearts of darkness that drive our sometimes savage ways. OZY's Scenes of the Crime series explores what drives our evil ways.

Dussehra, an annual Indian festival, celebrates the victory of good over evil. And during this special time on the Hindu calendar, in the village of Tappal in Uttar Pradesh, 90 kilometers from the capital of New Delhi, residents attend a much-anticipated day-long celebration: the equine version of So You Think You Can Dance.

Susan Del Percio is a New York-based Republican strategist.The first president I voted for was George Herbert Walker Bush. I was 18. A few months before the election, I had the privilege of meeting the then vice president. It was June 1988, and I was an intern working for his fundraising operation in California. While it was not the last time I met him, that handshake turned out to be the beginning of my career in politics and government.

My great-grandfather Artem Maximovich Chibalo was born in the Golovkivka village in Cherkashchyna, Ukraine. It's hard to imagine how hard things were back then, but things were hard. In 1867, which may or may not have been the year he was born but is close, record-keeping was neither good nor complete. The Tsar controlled things, but for all his control, not much or many of the benefits accrued to the country's rural people.

Anthony Davis is goading Clint Capela toward the middle of the paint. For a moment, Capela feels the opening, his eyes wide, readying for a rim-rattling dunk. But as the Houston Rockets center prepares to leave the floor, Davis’ long arms swat the ball upcourt. Six seconds later, Davis flushes a pass from Jrue Holiday through the hoop.