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My Father’s Father’s Coney Island Costume Jewelry Shop
by Mara Grayson 07/19/2011Neighborhood: Coney Island
“It was 1958,” my father says, “the year my dad opened Marcelle’s Jewelry Store on Mermaid Avenue in Coney Island. You should have seen this place. I wish there were pictures now, but who would have taken pictures of some shoddy storefront on Mermaid Avenue? Displayed in one window were all the pieces of costume [...]
We Need Someone Who Speaks English
by Granger Greenbaum 07/08/2011Neighborhood: Midwood, Williamsburg
Before I came to a stop at Bedford and Broadway the workers were attempting to flag me down like I was piloting a rescue helicopter. I’d asked Rob to translate for me in order to get the best guy for the job. Two young men approached the passenger side with hopeful expressions. “You speak English?” [...]
The Bookie
by Hillary Miller 07/01/2011Neighborhood: Flatbush
I attended elementary school in a non-descript brick building across the street from Mostly Books, whose humble proprietor, Sandy Tishcoff, was our local celebrity sighting. He was an unlikely one, spending his hours squinting at a microfiche mounted on his desk, from which he would divine book orders in the days before Add To Cart. [...]
Hung Out
by Connor Gaudet 06/20/2011Neighborhood: Park Slope
Looking out my kitchen window, I see a clothesline. It hasn’t always been there. It’s a bit saggy perhaps, and a long length of excess rope is untrimmed and dangling from the knot. But still, I look at this clothesline and feel pride. For it was I who put it there. My girlfriend Victoria and [...]
Overheated In Gravesend
by Candy Schulman 06/20/2011Neighborhood: Gravesend
It’s hot. We have one air conditioner and one TV. The TV is black-and-white; the air conditioner is in my parents’ bedroom. I usually sleep with my door wide open, letting in a cool breeze from the back door to our attached row house, the access to our backyard. Back then no one imagines someone [...]
Undone. A Moving Story.
by Margot Kahn 05/22/2011Neighborhood: All Over, Park Slope, Upper West Side
In graduate school, I dated a skinny fiction writer named Dan. It was a good relationship at the time, always having someone willing to read your draft of this or that, but when the time came to move from the Upper West Side to Brooklyn, I needed less brains, more brawn, and that’s exactly what [...]
Here Lies Jed
by Katie McDonough 05/22/2011Neighborhood: Featured, Prospect Park
We suspected it was illegal, but we had no choice. At the vet’s office in Park Slope, they told us cat cremation cost $125, and neither my boyfriend nor I had the money. Besides, cremation seemed too formal, too clinical, for Jed. He was always escaping out the window, taking self-guided tours of the neighborhood [...]
Close Shave
by Nicholas Soodik 04/03/2011Neighborhood: Brooklyn, Carroll Gardens, Uncategorized
On a steamy afternoon last July, I paid a barber to shave my face. I had no real reason to indulge in this service. I had no company party to attend, no weekend away with the missus scheduled. I didn’t even have firm dinner plans for the night. Like eating and ironing, shaving is one [...]
Low Point at High Point
by Rob Williams 04/03/2011Neighborhood: Featured, Park Slope, Uncategorized
As I walked past High Point Coffee on Fifth Avenue in Brooklyn, a heavy bag of groceries in each hand, I was surprised, even alarmed, to see that the windows were dim. It wasn’t even eight o’clock yet on a warm April evening. However, I reflected as I approached, I am High Point Coffee’s only [...]
The Bocce Courts of Dyker Park
by Erica Sollazzo 03/20/2011Neighborhood: Dyker Heights
Nestled in the shadow of the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge, Dyker Park is renowned throughout New York City for its lush golf courses. Proud Brooklynites, always ready to boast about their home borough, might inform you that these Dyker courses spawned a legend: Tiger Woods’ father, Colonel Earl Woods, caught the golf bug there in 1972 while [...]
Don’t Feed The Crackheads
by Melissa Febos 03/06/2011Neighborhood: Bedford-Stuyvesant, Featured
Tay Tay was my first friend in Bed Stuy. Yes, she stole my money, and yes, she nearly got me kicked out of my apartment, and yes, our relationship further alienated me from my neighbors, but she stuck around. Tay Tay, she was like glue. Let me explain. Crackheads are like seagulls: you feed one, [...]
Monkey In The Middle
by Ahron Yeshaiek 02/28/2011Neighborhood: All Over, Featured, Rockaway, The Catskills
“You from Long Island?” Danny, from Brownsville, Brooklyn, grilled. Before I could qualify myself, he turned to face the rest of the kids on our bus, and announced, “The skinny kid is loaded.” We had just left Chinatown and were cruising north, along the Hudson River, to sleep-away camp in upstate New York. My fellow [...]
