You are currently browsing the stories about the Upper East Side neighborhood
Developing a Habit
by Thomas R. Pryor 05/24/2006Neighborhood: Upper East Side
In October of 1960, Mom was pulling for Kennedy and Dad was rooting for Nixon. I couldn’t have cared less one way or the other—my thoughts were on baseball. The Pittsburgh Pirates had just crushed my heart by beating the Yankees in the seventh game of the World Series (to this day, I still wonder [...]
iPod on the Tracks
by Thomas Beller 05/23/2006Neighborhood: Upper East Side
I was bounding down the stairs into the subway, three steps at a time, hoping to make the train. The stairs were wet. The air was cold. It was a day of harsh weather, a gusting snowstorm, but I had my iPod and was experiencing everything dreamily. To say it was a new iPod was [...]
Neville Chamberlain on the Upper East Side?
by Mr. Murphy 05/05/2006Neighborhood: Upper East Side
The monthly meeting of the co-op’s Board of Directors is tonight at 7:30, so I clean the basement a little earlier than usual. I am just finishing mopping the floor when Mrs. 11B, the President of the Board, steps out of the elevator onto the wet floor. She apologizes for ruining my hard work and [...]
An Untimely Death
by Mr. Murphy 03/31/2006Neighborhood: Upper East Side
Jimmy, the boss, and I are in the basement still mourning the passing of 16A, when the passenger car opens and a white envelope dances out of the elevator. The white rectangle shimmies and gyrates obscenely, beckoning us. We are powerless to resist. As we near the object of our desire, the envelope, and the [...]
On Being Cookie Monster
by Ken Paprocki 02/06/2006Neighborhood: Upper East Side
I have an idea for a new diet book. Dress up as a cartoon character for an hour. It is guaranteed to take off at least five pounds. At the behest of my friend Dawn, who works for the non-profit PBS affiliate Channel 13/WNET, I answered an ad for volunteers for a function sponsored by [...]
The Touch Artist
by Jill Sand D'Angelo 02/02/2006Neighborhood: Upper East Side
It took me a while to realize that Kenny was missing. I had been out of town for the holidays, visiting family in California. After almost a week without seeing him since my return, I began to grow concerned. I live on the Upper East Side in an area that used to be, in the [...]
Christmas Envy
by Linda Morel 12/15/2005Neighborhood: Upper East Side
Because I’m Jewish, my Christmas decorating habit started small. Creating yards of silver sparkle, I drizzled hundreds of tinsel strips on hanging plants spanning my living room window, which overlooks 77th Street near First Avenue. I clustered evergreens in vases too. Although my husband David came from a more observant family than mine, he didn’t [...]
Remembering Gimbel’s
by Mickey Z. 08/04/2005Neighborhood: Upper East Side
My first after-school job was delivering the long-defunct Long Island Press but I really entered the working world when, at the age of seventeen, I started as a temporary summer worker at Gimbel’s department store (my Dad knew someone there…lucky me). I eased my way into the good graces of the bosses until I got [...]
Justice at the Parking Meter
by Johanna Garfield 07/15/2005Neighborhood: Upper East Side
12:15: Heading downtown in car for two o’clock appointment with lawyer. Half-listening to Leonard Lopate on WNYC. Callers telling stories of bizarre summonses for unfair parking tickets. Mentally pat self on back for six months ticket-free. Cop calls in. Defensive. Won’t give name. Claims cops have no ticket “quotas” to meet, just “production goals.” Claims [...]
Rear Guard: Right Guard
by Luke Krueger 07/12/2005Neighborhood: Upper East Side
I stink. It’s not a good stink, musky, that hints of a hard workout but doesn’t offend. I’m offensive. I’ve been in New York for a month-and-a-half. I still haven’t done laundry. The one suitcase I brought held seven shirts, six pairs of boxers, four pairs of pants (one pair only for occasions), two pairs [...]
Eugenia
by Abigail R. Esman 06/07/2005Neighborhood: Upper East Side
I used to see her in the elevator. She was finely dressed, her white hair piled high, her dark red lipstick ennobling her mouth. In those early years she’d be with her husband, a kind-looking gentleman in a wheelchair—the result, I later learned, of the beating his knees took as an Olympic runner. He’d won [...]
The Non-A**hole
by Lia Norton 06/05/2005Neighborhood: Upper East Side
Seventy-five degrees, August, Sunday evening, Manhattan, yet no one is out on the street except for your neighbor and his geriatric Maltese. On nights like these you can’t help but wonder if you’re missing something; maybe everyone you want to be with is just around the corner jammed into a block of bars, restaurants, delis, [...]
