You are currently browsing the stories about the All Over neighborhood
It Was Me (part 2)
by Hane Selmani 01/13/2008Neighborhood: All Over, Manhattan
After our engagement my family had decided that I would be allowed to talk to Fatmir on the phone. When my niece was engaged she had to make secret phone calls, but my family was modern. In anticipation for the phone call Asllan and Behare went out and took Sokol’s three boys. My Mom and [...]
It Was Me (part 1)
by Hane Selmani 01/06/2008Neighborhood: All Over, Manhattan
It was me, the girl standing in front of the Krusq, the wedding party, wearing a wedding dress. How did it happen? What went wrong? I had asked God to change things. I didn’t like the man I was going to marry — but I had no choice. “On the day you were born God [...]
The Subway Game
by Albert Stern 01/04/2007Neighborhood: All Over, Multiple
My subway epiphany came when I moved back to New York after a seven-year absence in the early 1990s. In the time I had been away, the subways had been vastly improved, and were no longer a place of thoroughgoing menace. The interior surfaces of the well-ventilated car I rode in were gleaming and graffiti-free [...]
Something in Common
by erika 12/31/2006Neighborhood: All Over, Letter From Abroad
As a survivor of a tragic event, I remember it like it was yesterday and yet, it seems like a dream. The first five weeks were surreal. I don’t know how I got through it. My friends helped. Everyone said I was strong–I wasn’t. I wanted to die. I almost did but I held on [...]
I Heart New York
by Kate Angus 12/31/2006Neighborhood: All Over, Letter From Abroad
This is a love letter to you, New York, because I have been gone for four months and won’t be coming back for yet another one but I am counting the days, I am crossing off boxes on my calendar (wildlife scenes, pretty pictures of nature, which is what I am living in now and [...]
What Goes Around
by Thomas R. Ziegler 10/31/2006Neighborhood: All Over, Bronx
It’s 1978, the annual “summer offensive” is well underway and chaos rules the streets. The ghettoes are burning and there are more fires than there are units to fight them. If TV stars and politicians resided here, you could bet we would be operating with a full second alarm assignment but here in Hunts Point [...]
Loaded Hallways
by JB McGeever 10/17/2006Neighborhood: All Over, Multiple
The campus of my public school building in New York City is a fortress these days. Gazing through the mesh caging of any stairway window, I can spot faculty deans, campus security (a branch of the NYPD with arresting powers), as well as regular NYPD uniformed officers patrolling the grounds like medieval sentries. As I [...]
Finding Fred: Death and Ice Cream
by Allan Goldstein 07/19/2006Neighborhood: All Over, Brooklyn
I was riding in our friend’s red, rattling car. The car that had been filled with balloons to celebrate my last birthday—the time we traveled to visit Mom. Now my wife and I were going to inform my forty-five year old brother of her death. To inform, support, and console my kid brother—the brother who [...]
Single is Not a Four Letter Word
by Abigail Frankfurt 07/19/2006Neighborhood: All Over, Brooklyn
In the past decade, many attempts have been made to assist women in our efforts to meet a significant other. Self-help books with titles like The Rules or He’s Just Not That Into You proliferated, but instead of providing a sense of relief or assurance, they seemed only to add to the mass hysteria. Well, [...]
Detroit, Detroit, Where Did Our Love Go?
by Ronit Feldman 06/08/2006Neighborhood: All Over
When I was seven years old my mother, ignoring my protests, packed me into the station wagon and drove downtown to the Detroit Institute of Art where I proceeded to vomit on the marble floor. I blamed my sick stomach on a sculpture, but it was more likely the stack of pancakes she fed me [...]
Adriani For Mayor
by Johnny Adriani 01/26/2006Neighborhood: All Over, Letter From Abroad
Today I had perhaps the most unique experience that I have ever had in my lifetime. I began walking the streets of New Orleans and speaking to people on a one on one basis. This may seem odd to you, and perhaps it is, but I canvassed New Orleans today not as a citizen but [...]
Christmas Day in a Parallel Queens
by Emily Weinstein 01/05/2006Neighborhood: All Over, Letter From Abroad
On this warm, wet Christmas, I ambled without purpose somewhere in America. I prefer the inevitable disappointment of a sodden Christmas–the remains of an earlier December snowfall dribbling down storm drains, the exiled smokers unshivering, unbothering with jackets, exhalations elongated in the humidity, the theatrical coziness of houses all the more fake against temperatures well [...]
