This one meant a lot. In December 2021, I came across an ostensibly innocuous tweet that talked about how a couple on Fire Island had discovered this trove of mixtapes the former residents had left behind. I sent the Mixcloud link to some friends, and then sort of forgot about it for a month. For whatever reason, I started thinking about it again in January and sent off a very short pitch to the Real Estate editor at the New York Times, thinking that this might work as a small human interest story about a couple who stumbled upon a cache of musical history in their beautiful bungalow.

But when I started looking at the dates on the mixtapes, the story unfolded in front of me. This was a musical map to the AIDS crisis, a history etched in magnetic tape. My editor and I decided to go big, and the story blossomed into a tale of love and loss on New York dance floors. I shared a lot of tears with the men and women I interviewed for this story, and what meant the most were the notes of gratitude I received in the days following publication. We knew there was a moral weight to telling this story the right way to honor the people who fought against a disease while the world around them ignored it. It is the most important story I’ve ever worked on, and I am forever grateful to the people who helped tell it with the respect and reverence it deserved. Read the story here and listen to the entire Pine Walk Collection here.

🐀

〰️

🐀 〰️

Jutharat Pinyodoonyachet for The New York Times

Jutharat Pinyodoonyachet for The New York Times

🎧

〰️

🎧 〰️

I, uh, never thought I’d have a New Yorker byline. It was kind of a stroke of luck, the right editor at the right time who had read the right piece of mine. But hey, it happened, and the story took me from Detroit to Frankfurt to report on two different music museums.

Stories like this are never just about one thing though. What I wanted to explore here was the concept of legacy and community, figuring out who gets to write the history of cultural phenomenons and why that matters. This piece was the product of months of reporting, writing, editing, and the most thorough fact checking experience of my life.

Read the whole thing here.

This story all started when my mechanic found some rat shit on my engine block. He told me he had been seeing more and more of it since the pandemic, and I immediately got to work calling dozens of mechanics from all over the city to see if it was true. I am now the king of Rat Chat and have the New York Times byline to prove it. Read on if you dare.

I interviewed Courtney Barnett for the Village Voice back when it was a real paper and not whatever the fuck it is now. She was cool. Talked about birds and also being sad.

Honestly, writing for the Village Voice had been my dream since I was like 14 and I had a weird little column for like a year before the whole thing imploded. It ruled. I loved that year. All those pieces are archived here.

Apparently Leon Michels of El Michels Affair said I was one of the easiest journalists he’s ever talked to which is pretty neat because he rules and my favorite thing he said re: always saying yes to sync requests which is how his cover of “Shimmy Shimmy Ya” ended up in The Gentlemen.

I always forget I wrote this piece but this is effectively my first piece of narrative music writing which Vice paid me exactly zero dollars for. But being able to transform going to the club and judging all the Belgians and Spaniards and Brits into a piece that like a dozen people read was pretty cool. Shout out Drew Millard.

I have a bunch of other clips but putting them on my website is a chore so just ask for them.