You are currently browsing the stories about the Financial District neighborhood
Falling In and Out of Love with a Neckless Scotsman
by Sherri Rosen 12/15/2007Neighborhood: Financial District
He began calling her everyday from Scotland. Once she heard his voice she couldn’t get enough. The first time she spoke to him she was working at home writing up a press release for one of her authors. She forgot all about work. He emailed her the day before from an online dating site saying [...]
Joyless Dancer
by Sherri Rosen 12/31/2006Neighborhood: Financial District
A young woman dressed in a leotard was dancing in City Hall Park today. The sun was brilliant and warm, the fountain flowing with water and the soft sound of an alto sax in the background. I felt nurtured in the sun, and great joy looking at the voluminous colors of spring tulips in luscious, full [...]
The Enchanted Jury Summons
by Laren Stover 12/31/2006Neighborhood: Financial District
I had gotten a summons for jury duty. Or should I say yet another one. I was afraid of those tall, gloomy, impersonal Wall-Street-area buildings full of people in somber look-alike suits. Jury duty was some sort of gulag. Stripped of rights. Where was the joie de vivre? What about poetic justice? Besides, I wasn’t [...]
Rage & Thanksgiving
by Sherri Rosen 12/01/2006Neighborhood: Financial District
It was 60 degrees this morning so I decided to do some of my work in City Hall Park. The park was relatively empty. I was reading my magazines and enjoying the outdoors when I began to hear this loud screaming. Living in NYC, you get used to this kind of sound, so I continued on [...]
Water, One Dollar
by Beth Schwartzapfel 11/24/2006Neighborhood: Financial District
Mohammad B. Miah is a small man. He stands about five feet tall with his red and white and black leather hi-top sneakers on. He lives in Astoria, Queens, and he wants to know whether I work for the city. He motions in the direction of City Hall. “You have a job?” he asks. “I’m a writer,” [...]
The Truth Hurts: Fiction, Memoir, and Publishing Today
by Thomas Beller 05/12/2006Neighborhood: Financial District
At the height of the scandal over the inventions in James Frey’s “A Million Little Pieces,” I was thinking about “Westchester Burning” by Amina Wefali. “A Million Little Pieces” is about a man and his addiction. “Westchester Burning” is about a woman and her marriage. Any resemblance between these two very different books is limited to [...]
Frosted Flakes and the Primitive Animal God: A Night in the Tombs
by Andy Hick 05/11/2006Neighborhood: Financial District
The pivot of this story is not the state of generic poverty that I found myself in upon entering New York. You don’t have to be poor to be thrown in jail, but it helps. I had broken some sort of levee on the China Town bus between Philadelphia and New York. That morning I had [...]
He Lived in the Streets
by Sherri Rosen 03/02/2006Neighborhood: Financial District
I met him in Starbucks while drinking a cup of coffee. He didn’t look like the kind of man that frequented Starbucks. He was reading a newspaper and I sat down at the table and chairs next to him. Even sitting down he seemed very tall; his hair was neatly shaved off his head, and [...]
Asking For Love
by Allan B. Goldstein 02/16/2006Neighborhood: Financial District
An “incident” had occurred at the group home where my younger brother lives with five other men and three women who all have mental retardation. His supervisor, more amused than upset, followed procedure by notifying me and beginning an investigation. Fred, a 103 pound, 5’2” 52-year-old man, was discovered standing with his roommate of two [...]
Billionaire Spermatozoa and Deadly Peking Ducks
by Ken Paprocki 12/07/2005Neighborhood: Financial District
I, along with the rest of the catering staff, had no idea that the party that evening was for a billionaire when we arrived at the loading dock of the old Cunard Shipping Building by Battery Park. All the details had been kept hush-hush until the last minute. Only when all 70 cater waiters and [...]
Kind of
by David Holbrooke 02/07/2005Neighborhood: Financial District
I was riding downtown on a 1 train after basketball with two of the players from the game, Nick and Tom. Tom and I are both 6-6 and had spent the previous ninety minutes beating the crap out of each other on the basketball court. We were much like the fox and the sheepdog in those [...]
Sunset Panic
by Sam Booker 02/01/2005Neighborhood: Financial District
I decide to slip out of the office to see the sun set. I look at my watch. It is a ten minute walk from my office to the west side highway. My heels slip off my feet as I put on a pair of winter boots and fetch my coat and earmuffs from the [...]
