You are currently browsing the stories about the Across the River neighborhood
Runaways
by Deirdre Faughey 10/01/2009Neighborhood: Across the River, Brooklyn
The weather is turning. At home I didn’t notice the wind, but by the time we’d walked all the way to the library our ponytails held only half as much hair as they did when we left. There was an easy remedy: hold the band between your teeth, gather up the loose strands, pull them [...]
Where Have You Gone, Amelia Earhart?
by Joseph Scalia 09/22/2009Neighborhood: Across the River, Long Island
For decades my libertarian desire for privacy kept me lining up with the teeming hordes of commuters at the Verrazano and Throgs Neck Bridges because I didn’t want “them” to know where I was going to or coming from, and how often. But eventually, against my better judgment, I silenced the screaming voices in my [...]
The Piano
by Raanan Geberer 09/14/2009Neighborhood: Across the River, Bronx
The old upright piano was in the living room from my earliest recollection until the day my father died. He must have brought it sometime in the early ‘50s, soon after he’d gotten married. Dad would spend hours playing Brahms, Schumann, Clementi, Chopin. At the end, he would always start playing an old Russian folk song [...]
The Last Lesson
by Allan B. Goldstein 09/07/2009Neighborhood: Across the River, Brooklyn
Our hands had not touched–other than to acknowledge each other’s presence or successes–in over thirty-five years. Now his open right hand lay by the side of his softly draped figure, a whisper’s distance from where I was sitting. A curtain, walling off a roommate, shadowed us from the bright day. “Remember how we agreed I’d tell [...]
Turds Fall Within Pepe’s Bailiwick
by Marcelle Harrison 08/16/2009Neighborhood: Across the River, Bronx
Someone pooped in the cabinet today. It wasn’t the first time the staff bathroom had been despoiled. It happened once before but I’d completely forgotten about it in the general whoosh of activity around the clinic. The bad part is we don’t know if it was a patient passing by or a staff person. That [...]
The Greatest Game
by Ron West 07/19/2009Neighborhood: Across the River, Letter From Abroad
Some people say the 1958 NFL Championship game between New York and Baltimore was the greatest game ever played. Some say it was the playoff game where Carlton Fisk hit that home run. Some say it was the 1980 Olympics when the US Hockey Team beat the Russians. All those people are wrong because I [...]
Old Nuns
by Anne Meara 06/08/2009Neighborhood: Across the River, Long Island
I’m watching a documentary on the Sundance Channel, Sex In a Cold Climate—the source material for the fictional film, The Magdalene Sisters—and I’m having a flashback. It’s 1936. I’m six years old in St. Joseph’s boarding school in Monticello New York. My mother is ill and recovering from an operation for “lady problems.” About fifty [...]
The Hidden Deal: Underground Poker in NYC
by JB McGeever 05/20/2009Neighborhood: Across the River, Queens
The story was supposed to begin here at an illegal poker hall in Queens called The River, but The River ran dry and I’m left staring at a blackened door with a mailbox next to it that says, FISH. It must have been a marker or tag for new players to locate the building. Fish [...]
The Most Important Thought In the World
by Tom Diriwachter 03/23/2009Neighborhood: Across the River, Staten Island
Those given to make art are probably the least well equipped to handle what is demanded of the artist. The criticism. The egos. The business – because when it comes right down to it, the artist is a salesman, and his art is the product. It’s enough to push a borderline personality over the edge. [...]
I Left My Youth at Fred & Rudy’s Candy Store
by Peter Cherches 12/13/2008Neighborhood: Across the River, Brooklyn
When I was a kid in Brooklyn, in the Sixties, the “candy store” was the local hangout, the crossroads of the neighborhood. Actually, these ubiquitous institutions were a combination of soda fountain, luncheonette and newsstand. We probably called them candy stores because as kids the candy we bought there was the center of our culinary [...]
An Evening With the Nichiren Shoshu of America, 1980
by Mary O'Connell 12/07/2008Neighborhood: Across the River, Brooklyn
I remember now that we took the R train from Court Street to 75th Street in Bay Ridge. I thought how ironic it was to be returning to Bay Ridge, from which I had fled for my life, to seek enlightenment. But my sponsor, Ellen, assured me that I could chant for anything, ANYTHING, fulfill [...]
The View from Ebbets Field, 60 Years after Jackie Robinson Broke Baseball’s Color Barrier
by Cannon Kinnard 11/10/2008Neighborhood: Across the River, Brooklyn
Photo by Cannon Kinnard The faded green sign at 1700 Bedford Avenue that reads “NO BALL PLAYING” has had tenants of Brooklyn’s Ebbets Field Apartments laughing at the irony, as they walk across the street to Jackie Robinson Park to play ball. This is the former site of Ebbets Field baseball park; home of the Brooklyn Dodgers [...]
