You are currently browsing the stories about the Financial District neighborhood
Elevator Days
by Joseph Scalia 02/10/2012Neighborhood: Featured, Financial District, Lower Manhattan, Manhattan
Whenever I go to a party or I am introduced to people I don’t know, they invariably ask me what I do. “What do you do?” And I always tell them, “I am an elevator operator.” I say that I drive an elevator in downtown Manhattan. The reaction to my announcement varies. Some people smile [...]
Talking Back: My First Encounter with the Human Microphone
by Jean Garnett 12/31/2011Neighborhood: Financial District, Uncategorized
I first visited Occupy Wall Street on a chilly evening in the middle of October. A few hundred people were gathered near the eastern steps of Zuccotti Park for the nightly meeting of the General Assembly. On the steps a young man was shrieking inaudibly. A few yards away, a jackhammer was being applied to [...]
The Whip and The Bonnet
by Toni Schlesinger 02/14/2011Neighborhood: Featured, Financial District, Uncategorized
For a long time I used to go down to Pearl Street at the bottom of Manhattan. It was around the time that I had started writing a book about the famous case of the man and the woman who had disappeared from Pearl Street in 1997. The book led to the street and, in [...]
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, [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
