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Wonderland

by Nicole Ferraro 03/08/2010
Neighborhood: Featured, Whitestone

In Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland, 19-year-old Alice – played by Mia Wasikowska – returns to Wonderland, 10 years after her last visit there, to rescue it from the Red Queen. At 26, two decades since my last trip to the rabbit hole, I can only say I envy her. I was six years old in [...]

Mrs. Graham, the White Ghost

by Carl Schinasi 03/08/2010
Neighborhood: 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 [...]

Taxi Driver: The True Story of a Man Who Saved My Life

by Lori Jakiela 01/23/2010
Neighborhood: Queens

I’d written down the wrong rotation number and reported to LaGuardia instead of Kennedy. Easy mistake for a new flight attendant: Rotation 1010 – LGA to Kansas City. Rotation 1001 – JFK to Madrid. Rotation 1010 meant the Kansas City Best Western, watered-down orange juice at Waffle House, and no in-room movies. Rotation 1001 [...]

Better Signs in Sunnyside

by Sabine Heinlein 11/26/2009
Neighborhood: Queens

Happy Thanksgiving: One of Nelton Small’s hand-painted signs at Home Depot. (Photo: Sabine Heinlein) In September 2008 my husband and I bought an old house in Sunnyside, Queens. Due to unpredictable but steady cracks, leaks and drafts, we spent much of our first year at our local Home Depot. While some cunning pigeons who had moved in to [...]

Everyone’s Glass Onion

by Abigail Frankfurt 11/26/2009
Neighborhood: Astoria, Queens

There is something unsettling about having a therapy session at the home of your therapist. It is on par with a Halloween night of childhood trick or treating and having to step through the threshold of a nameless neighbor’s doorway for handful of candy corn or tootsie rolls. Your seven-year-old nose inhales a waft of [...]

You Gotta Believe

by Emily Meg Weinstein 07/02/2009
Neighborhood: Queens, Shea Stadium

My best friend Rebecca’s birthday present this year was two tickets to see the Mets at Shea Stadium. After a bag search and full-body metal-detector sweeping, we made it to our seats just in time to sit out the national anthem. I like to get to a ball game on time, if only for the [...]

The Hidden Deal: Underground Poker in NYC

by JB McGeever 05/20/2009
Neighborhood: Across the River, Queens

The story was supposed to begin here at an illegal poker hall in Queens called The River, but The River ran dry and I’m left staring at a blackened door with a mailbox next to it that says, FISH. It must have been a marker or tag for new players to locate the building. Fish [...]

Requiem for William A. Shea Municipal Stadium

by Kevin Nolan 08/26/2008
Neighborhood: Across the River, Queens

The Mets new home, Citi Field looms in the outfield at Shea Stadium. (Photo: Kevin Nolan) I recall being shocked the first time I heard someone call Shea Stadium a shithole. He was a stranger, a gray-haired man in a mesh Mets cap, missing several bicuspids and an incisor. I was a wee boy walking across [...]

Farewell, Jamaica High School

by JB McGeever 08/19/2008
Neighborhood: Across the River, Queens

In New York, boy, money really talks–I’m not kidding…   Holden Caulfield Remarkable events have always had their place in the English wing of Jamaica High School, occurrences so uniquely American, happening at such a steady rate, that after awhile they almost seemed ordinary. This fall, for instance, I’m fully confidant that George will shoot Lennie [...]

Remembering a Barber Shop

by Philip Wesler 06/01/2008
Neighborhood: Jamaica, Queens

Some years ago, I came across a story in a magazine, possibly The New Yorker, entitled “Emil J. Paidar”. That name struck a familiar chord. I had seen it staring at me so often from the footrests of the barber chairs where I had my hair cut, in my early childhood, that it was practically [...]

Dawn

by Heidi Rain 05/12/2008
Neighborhood: Across the River, Queens

It’s March 22nd again, Dawn Alfano’s birthday. I can’t figure out why every year for the past half-century I remember that, but somehow it’s always stuck in my mind. It’s not that Dawn and I were close or anything in third grade, but somehow the little we shared must have made an impression on me. Every [...]

Supporting Mick Jagger’s Habit

by Mickey Z. 03/31/2008
Neighborhood: Astoria, Queens

In the glory days of Steinway Street, there was an establishment called Record Spectacular. A combination record store/head shop, it was located between 30th and 31st Avenues, on the west side of the street…and was a meeting place of sorts for music aficionados, potheads, and other 1970s misfits. I still remember walking wide-eyed into Record Spectacular [...]