You are currently browsing the stories about the Queens neighborhood
Taxi Driver: The True Story of a Man Who Saved My Life
by Lori Jakiela 01/23/2010Neighborhood: 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 meant [...]
Better Signs in Sunnyside
by Sabine Heinlein 11/26/2009Neighborhood: 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 [...]
Everyone’s Glass Onion
by Abigail Frankfurt 11/26/2009Neighborhood: 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 07/02/2009Neighborhood: 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 05/20/2009Neighborhood: 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 08/26/2008Neighborhood: 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 [...]
Farewell, Jamaica High School
by JB McGeever 08/19/2008Neighborhood: 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 06/01/2008Neighborhood: 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 05/12/2008Neighborhood: 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. [...]
Supporting Mick Jagger’s Habit
by Mickey Z. 03/31/2008Neighborhood: 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 [...]
A Fan’s Statistics
by JB McGeever 03/15/2008Neighborhood: Jamaica, Queens
Two times per year the New York State English Regents Exam visits the high schools of our fair city, four comprehensive essays over a period of two days, and this January’s results are in. In my building, preparation for the exam begins in the ninth grade and continues right until the students enter class to [...]
The Bitches of Banner Elk
by Ryan Sloan 01/04/2008Neighborhood: Across the River, Queens
The trip from Greensboro, North Carolina to New York will be safe and superfast in our little plane. I climb in, pleased to find I have a seat alone. An elegant young couple sits across from me – they have a small, silent beagle in a carry-on case. The man’s probably thirty and has a [...]
