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Nina’s Wedding

by Marilyn Horan 02/12/2010
Neighborhood: Park Slope

If my twenty-year-old sister Janet not been maid of honor, I would not even have been invited to my neighbor Nina Milano’s wedding. Nina was 18, one year younger than I, and her fiancé Larry was just 21 on their wedding day, not that unusual in 1969, when many young men, Larry included, were [...]

To Hell and Back: My Trip to IKEA in Red Hook

by Rob Williams 01/23/2010
Neighborhood: Park Slope, Red Hook

I’ve lived in my apartment in Park Slope for about seven months now, yet somehow I’ve entirely neglected getting curtains for the windows in the living room. It never really occurs to me that this is a problem unless I’m home during the afternoon on a sunny day. At night, I like the uncovered windows [...]

Our reading series moves to Brooklyn!

by Thomas Beller 01/22/2010
Neighborhood: Brooklyn

Join us on THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 18, 7pm at Freddy’s Backroom, 485 Dean Street in Prospect Heights.  Free, and open to the public.   SPORTS! SPORTS! SPORTS! YEAHHHHH!!! If there is one thing New York loves it’s SPORTS, so this first installment of the NEWLY-RESTARTED Mr. Beller’s Neighborhood Reading Series is ALL ABOUT SPORTS!! YEAHHHHH!!! Mr. Beller’s Neighborhood Reading Series [...]

War

by Kenneth P. Nolan 12/25/2009
Neighborhood: Brooklyn

The only time my father talked about the War was when he was dying and Bud Pope came to visit in the hospital. “Remember the time I nearly killed the cook,” my father said somewhat weakly, “he wouldn’t give me enough food. And the Captain came over, Jack, Jack put down the gun, the only [...]

A Hard Lesson Upside the Head

by Todd Cobb 12/25/2009
Neighborhood: Carroll Gardens

She was never really my girlfriend. She was my occasional hook-up, I guess, my sometimes companion. Nothing more than that. A girl, true enough, but I don’t think she was ever really any kind of friend. This story isn’t about her, anyway. I was a month-old New York newborn, a 39 year-old infant who could only find [...]

Ditmas Park

by Rachel Sherman 11/26/2009
Neighborhood: Brooklyn

It is hard to live near houses. Big, broad Victorians, houses I dream of, with rooms and dark staircases, and sky painted porch ceilings. Houses with trees that shade unattainable octagonal-walled bedrooms, with people who I never see, walking up and down the stairs. It seems not right to live near houses, houses with yards, and [...]

The Haters: The Angriest Softball Team in New York City

by Patrick Sauer 10/01/2009
Neighborhood: Brooklyn, Williamsburg

Last August, on a brutally hot Sunday afternoon, after a debilitating outdoor 90-degree basketball game courtesy of The Word bookstore league, I was shuffling along the sidewalks from Greenpoint to the Bedford L stop trying to bring my core temperature below triple-digits. Needing a respite, I stopped to watch a softball game on a playground [...]

Becoming American in New York

by Sabine Heinlein 10/01/2009
Neighborhood: Brooklyn, Greenpoint

When asked why I left Germany for New York, I have two answers, depending on my mood and on the patience of the listener. The short answer is: I fell in love with an American. The second answer is: On our birthdays my sisters and I were given pieces of silverware from a prestigious German manufactory [...]

Runaways

by Deirdre Faughey 10/01/2009
Neighborhood: 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 09/22/2009
Neighborhood: 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 Last Lesson

by Allan B. Goldstein 09/07/2009
Neighborhood: 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 [...]

A Snow Storm in Brooklyn

by Flo Gelo 09/07/2009
Neighborhood: Brooklyn, Williamsburg

A tree grows in Brooklyn, and snow falls. Both are scarce, as were friendships on Madison Street. My only friend was a girl my age whose single mother was a police officer. Only once was I invited to her house to play. It was a row house like mine with three long rooms: windows in [...]