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The Smell of Bologna (An Essay in Ten Parts)
by Patrick J. Sauer 12/31/2006Neighborhood: Bronx, East Bronx
[Patrick J. Sauer also has a website. --Ed.] The sense of smell is the most powerful reminder of past events. It’s the hardest sense to pin down, the hardest to define. A smell is never described as it is, only in simile form. It smells like burning leaves. You know, it smells wet, like…like…like a [...]
Wat is the Wat
by Matthew Fishbane 12/31/2006Neighborhood: Bronx, Outer Boroughs
One thing Sambath Suen can’t abide is the cold. Until four years ago, Suen lived in Kandal, a Cambodian province that borders on Vietnam. Before that, he lived in Vietnam, where he earned his diploma, and before that he had lived in his native village, about thirty knots downriver from Phnom Penh, where he spent [...]
Lobster Bisque on City Island
by Joseph Scalia 12/31/2006Neighborhood: Bronx, East Bronx
I always stop whenever I see “Lobster Bisque” on the soup menu, and I smile. That isn’t because lobster bisque is a particular favorite of mine. I never had much interest in “lobster anything,” unlike the people who rave about lobsters and have to order them whatever the cost, even though the menu may warn, [...]
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 [...]
Bye, Bye Buffa’s, Hello Wal-Mart
by Thomas Beller 09/03/2006Neighborhood: Bronx
“Seventy-eight years!” someone said, and there was that distinctive popping sound. I’d come for a tuna salad sandwich but now plastic cups of champagne were being poured and, in a democratic spirit, one was placed on the Formica counter in front of me. Before I could ask what was going on, the waitress came up [...]
Scenes from a Jewish Girlhood
by Alice Elman 07/19/2006Neighborhood: Bronx, East Bronx
On my corner of 167th Street and Grant Avenue in the Bronx was a small grocery that sold “Appetizers”—dairy foods, pickles, milk, eggs, and fresh tub butter and cheeses in large refrigerated glass cases. The owners were refugees. From the War, my mother said. I was twelve and that War had ended fifteen years ago. [...]
The New Season
by Kevin Nolan 06/22/2006Neighborhood: Bronx, Outer Boroughs
The Mets are out of town. My childhood friend Jim wants to see a ballgame before he’s tied up remodeling his Long Island house, which he estimates will take all of his free time May through October. He can’t wait until the Amazins, his favorite team and mine, return from a trip to the West [...]
We’re Doing It For Them
by Thomas R. Ziegler 06/07/2006Neighborhood: Bronx, Outer Boroughs
Looking around for the lieutenant, I find him standing alongside the firehouse, staring down into a neat row of freshly clipped hedges. I hurry to his side and he tersely commands, “Get to work.” Right then and there, my life changes forever. * For firemen, there is nothing more startling than a Verbal Alarm–the riotous [...]
My Only Regret
by Thomas R. Ziegler 04/27/2006Neighborhood: Bronx, Outer Boroughs
Arriving before the engine, with fire blowing out two windows on the third floor and people in the street yelling, “There’s two kids in there” our asses are about to be kicked and there is nothing we can do about it. It’s 1977, and Lieutenant Annello leads the way as usual. He is simply the [...]
Just Another Part of the Job
by Thomas R. Ziegler 03/31/2006Neighborhood: Bronx, Outer Boroughs
Inside the firehouse, sweeping floors, cooking meals and maintaining equipment are routine parts of the job. However when the doors go up and the rigs go out you have to be as flexible as Gumby, because you do not know what you are going to be faced with next. While responding to alarms, we always [...]
By Careful What You Ask For
by Tom Conaty 02/22/2006Neighborhood: Bronx, Outer Boroughs
A beaten body sat slumped on the back step of an anonymous pumper. We nearly walked right by Danny without recognizing him. Danny’s turnout coat was half open and covered with remnants of the building burning at the corner of Townsend Avenue and the Cross Bronx Expressway. His face and hands were black with soot. [...]
On the Train Tracks in Marble Hill AKA Manonx, New York City- the circumsized north end of Manhhhhhaaaaattaaaaan
by Suhay Rosario 02/14/2006Neighborhood: Bronx, On the Waterfront
That morning I got up in the afternoon. My friend Micki came from 204th/Post Avenue, from her man’s crib complaining about his small penis saying, "My baby brother’s got a bigger dick than his!" And I had to get up and shower, leaving her in my room and I took the loofa with me because [...]
