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A Sidekick for St. Patrick’s Day
by Brian Quinn 03/17/2010Neighborhood: Featured, Upper East Side
Walking the streets on St. Patrick’s Day in New York City is akin to walking into an insane asylum in which all the inmates have been starved for days, denied all their medications, punched about the head a few times, then painted green and released from their cells. Also, someone has pissed in all the [...]
Trolling Whores for Coke: How to Get Started
by Brent Shearer 03/17/2010Neighborhood: Chelsea, Washington Heights
So you’ve got the wife and the kids. You’ve got and are just barely hanging onto, the co-op in the chic enclave, you’re so middle-aged. Some men, finding themselves adrift in a wood in their middle years, go to the gym: I troll whores for coke. After you’ve seen the horrors of Chelsea Pier’s ice rink [...]
City Habitats
by Thaddeus Rutkowski 03/08/2010Neighborhood: Lower East Side
My partner and I found an apartment with one bedroom—one more bedroom than either of us had in our old places. The new residence did not, however, have a bathtub. The bathroom—an extension of a hallway that also served as the kitchen—was too small for a tub. The space left for a tub measured about [...]
Mrs. Graham, the White Ghost
by Carl Schinasi 03/08/2010Neighborhood: Beechhurst, Upper West Side
As a teenager, I lived with my dysfunctional family in a modest but comfortable apartment in Beechurst, Queens. One Saturday morning, too fried to suffer any longer the slings and arrows of my sorry-assed teenage life, I decided to run away from home. I told my mother I was going into Manhattan to spend the day [...]
Dental Cares
by Daniel Menaker 02/26/2010Neighborhood: Featured, Upper East Side
I have had a lot of trouble with my teeth, having been born with weak enamel in store in my childhood, a nutritional illness that almost killed me as an infant, and then a horribly incompetent dentist during my adolescence. Norbert Vaughan, who sadly encouraged his patients, even his teen-aged patients, to call [...]
Brujeria
by Kelly Kreth 02/26/2010Neighborhood: East Harlem
Having grown up in a predominantly Hispanic neighborhood, most of my friends were Cuban. Marly was my best friend throughout high school and beyond. I loved hanging out with her and her mother, Mirna, because their home was so exotic. I loved eating her mom’s rice and beans, okra and pork, and practicing my Spanish. [...]
A Small Part at The New York City Opera
by Raul A. Reyes 02/26/2010Neighborhood: Upper West Side
The only thing I never liked about performing at Lincoln Center was the fake snow. During the years I worked at New York City Opera as a “supernumerary,” or stage extra, the tiny bits of confetti used for winter weather effect bugged me. I would be acting away, as much as possible without lines, while [...]
Been Caught Steelin’
by Abigail Frankfurt 02/12/2010Neighborhood: Astoria, East Village, Featured
11pm Friday night I hear the buzz of an incoming text message vibrating on top of a pile of books and tangled wires across the room of my studio. I have to keep my cell phone jammed near the wall under the window of my place – a basement apartment in Astoria – or reception [...]
Twelfth Street
by Eve Glasberg 02/12/2010Neighborhood: Greenwich Village, West Village
Of all the streets in New York, 12th Street is the one with which I most identify. I’ve never actually lived on it, but it has threaded its way through my life and clung there. The street represents both some of my best and worst times. Not all of 12th Street, which runs from Avenue C [...]
Sitting Behind Cybill Shepherd
by Hal Sirowitz 02/06/2010Neighborhood: Featured, West Village
I took a Chaucer English Literature class in 1968 at New York University. I was told Chaucer used a lot of dirty words. An erotic film was made based on ‘The Canterbury Tales.’ I figured the professor wasn’t going to screen it in class but maybe I could take a female classmate to see [...]
And Bingo Was Her Name
by Christine Nieland 02/06/2010Neighborhood: Greenwich Village, West Village
She looked like a collection of spheres stuck together to represent the female body. Round little torso, round little head, protruding chipmunk cheeks like those on the marionettes on that TV show “Spitting Image.” Dark little eyes that glared from some bottomless well of anger and pain. Her mail came addressed to two completely different names. [...]
Holden’s New York
by Thomas Beller 01/29/2010Neighborhood: Central Park, Featured, Midtown
"THE first thing I did when I got off at Penn Station, I went into this phone booth. I felt like giving somebody a buzz. I left my bags right outside the booth so I could watch them, but as soon as I was inside, I couldn’t think of anybody to call up.” So begins the [...]
