You are currently browsing the stories about the Lower Manhattan neighborhood
Fish Guts & Glory
by Lucy Baker 10/13/2005Neighborhood: Lower Manhattan
If all goes according to plan, in three weeks I will run the New York Marathon. For most people, training for a marathon is empowering. It gives them a feeling of accomplishment and a sense of self-worth. For me, it has been one lesson after another in humility. At five am one morning this past [...]
Arbor Day for Rudy
by Matt Power 05/17/2004Neighborhood: Lower Manhattan
I really did try all the conventional methods. Really. I wrote imploring letters to the Office of the Mayor, I called my City Council members’ secretary at all hours, I testified at public hearings before assorted half-awake bureaucrats. Nothing and again nothing. It would have been less frustrating to tell it all to the guy [...]
Captain Z. and the Blackout
by Eugenia Klopsis 10/22/2003Neighborhood: Lower Manhattan, Multiple
The air on the fourteenth floor of 1 Police Plaza is a little thick, and Captain Z. wheezes. “You’re wheezing,” I say. “I am not,” he says, and pulls out his asthma inhaler, shakes it, and takes a puff. His lung sounds immediately clear. It’s 4:30 on Thursday, August 14, exactly nineteen minutes after the [...]
Roller Skating on Pearl Street, circa 1940
by Joan Henry 07/11/2002Neighborhood: Lower Manhattan
There were no rollerblades in those days. We wore our roller skates on our shoes. The skates had straps that buckled across the instep — clamps, also referred to as “clams,” that we tightened with the all-important skate key we wore on a string around our necks. The wheels themselves were ball bearings; in fact, [...]
Elevator Logic
by Zachary Levin 01/29/2001Neighborhood: Lower Manhattan
The brass-plated elevator door opens, revealing it’s operator, a man named Kenny Coleman. A horde of cops, assistant district attorneys, and clerical workers bustle inside as if they’re heading to a sale at Macy’s rather than for work at the state court building at 80 Centre St. In his mid-40s, thin-faced and short, and wearing [...]
