You are currently browsing the stories about the Williamsburg neighborhood
The Haters: The Angriest Softball Team in New York City
by Patrick Sauer 10/01/2009Neighborhood: Brooklyn, Williamsburg
Last August, on a brutally hot Sunday afternoon, after a debilitating outdoor 90-degree basketball game courtesy of The Word bookstore league, I was shuffling along the sidewalks from Greenpoint to the Bedford L stop trying to bring my core temperature below triple-digits. Needing a respite, I stopped to watch a softball game on a playground [...]
A Snow Storm in Brooklyn
by Flo Gelo 09/07/2009Neighborhood: Brooklyn, Williamsburg
A tree grows in Brooklyn, and snow falls. Both are scarce, as were friendships on Madison Street. My only friend was a girl my age whose single mother was a police officer. Only once was I invited to her house to play. It was a row house like mine with three long rooms: windows in [...]
The Diner
by Madison Smartt Bell 04/09/2009Neighborhood: Brooklyn, Williamsburg
The Diner in Williamsburg is a 21st century institution now, I guess (just celebrated its tenth anniversary)—you can get arugula there! And the rest of their food is good too. It’s pleasant at their sidewalk tables if the weather’s fine, though you have to watch your step if you don’t want to trip over two [...]
Disappointment with the Color Brown
by Joe Benincase 03/09/2008Neighborhood: Brooklyn, Williamsburg
At the tender age of seventeen, I discovered that tigers were not in fact yellow and brown, but are rather orange and black. It never did much harm, my color deficiency, nor did it prevent me from getting my own way. It certainly never interfered with my love life. However, by no fault of my [...]
Survivorship
by erika 02/23/2008Neighborhood: Brooklyn, Williamsburg
I went out with my friend Dylan last night. We met in 2003 on the internet. Tried dating, but were better friends than anything. He was the first person I met when I moved back to New York and looking to date. I had left because my husband was killed in the World Trade Center. Dylan [...]
One Snort
by Shawn Vandor 10/09/2007Neighborhood: Williamsburg
Cocaine did not ruin my life any more than video games or an overprotective mother ruined my life. Which is to say, not at all. Whether or not cocaine impaired my intellectual abilities (I am not a member of MENSA) is something I’ll never know but as for my physical development (I’m six foot nine) [...]
The Cry of the Water Wolf
by Tony Antoniadis 07/06/2006Neighborhood: Brooklyn, Williamsburg
Last July, a friend of mine called to tip me off about an upcoming water gun assassination tournament. I was swamped at work when he called, crimping duvets for a big Neiman Marcus order—but seconds later I was on the tournament’s website, reading the requirements for entry. By midnight I was in the back of [...]
BQE Sunrise
by Katharine Guttman 05/05/2006Neighborhood: Brooklyn, Williamsburg
It was 4 am. Maybe 4:30. The sun was just coming out, shading the city gorgeous cool oranges and blues and pinks and yellows. It was late spring, early summer. We had been up all night listening to Johnny Cash, smoking cigarettes and drinking whiskey. We were on Skillman Avenue, Brooklyn, in my canted railroad [...]
A Boy & His Dog-Poop
by Daniel Nester 12/01/2005Neighborhood: Brooklyn, Williamsburg
It’s January 2, 1997. I head out to the corner bodega to buy coffee and a New York Times. I wear a robe and slippers. I am still hung over from New Year’s Eve. It is the time of year when the frozen ground in Williamsburg forms an admixture of leftover snow [...]
Antihistamines
by June Coleman Magrab 11/10/2005Neighborhood: Brooklyn, Williamsburg
They say she’s holed up like a squirrel, nuts to last the winter, glimpses of green bath- robe when she shuffles down the hill to her mailbox to collect more rejection. People start laying bets, perhaps she has a corpse hidden like, what’s her name, was it Emily? Maybe she’s taken a bad spell, some female kind of thing. No, they have stuff [...]
You Want My Ball?
by Saki Knafo 10/13/2005Neighborhood: Brooklyn, Williamsburg
9/3/05 7:51 PM Whenever I feel melancholy I like to find the nearest basketball court and play until I sweat and my knees buckle. I have kept up this habit for about three years, during which I have lived in five neighborhoods, playing in about as many courts. I played on a strip of black tar [...]
A Specter is Haunting Williamsburg
by Emily Clark 09/01/2005Neighborhood: Brooklyn, Williamsburg
Last August, I lived with my ex-boyfriend in my ex-neighborhood of Brooklyn, neither of which could I find my way around. Coming back from the city late one night — I remember it being very hot and damp out — I exited the G’s Metropolitan stop around 2 a.m. and halted at the top of [...]
