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Something About Turtles
by Thomas Beller 02/14/2004Neighborhood: Central Park
There was a time, not long ago, when turtles enjoyed a brief vogue in New York City. Turtles whose shells weren’t much bigger than a silver dollar were sold on street corners all over Manhattan, and people crowded around to buy them. In the midst of this turtle trend, my friend Kip moved back to [...]
Holiday Pets (Upper East Side Dogs)
by Thomas Beller 12/19/2003Neighborhood: Upper East Side
It was the day before the day before Christmas. Several puppies were carousing in the window of a pet store. The avenue was full of people. It was not the normal crowdedness, he felt. It was a less stressed out crowdedness, a crowd in the mood for lingering. He joined the crowd watching the puppies. [...]
Snapped
by Antonio C. 08/05/2003Neighborhood: East Harlem
It was a nice day, the sun was out and it wasn’t too hot or too cold it was just right. That after noon I was with my friends dub and Dee on the corner of 128th and Lexington Avenue chilling when Dee decided to go to the store. Now that we were walking to [...]
Natural Selection
by Bram Gunther 12/30/2002Neighborhood: The Catskills
It’s dawn and I’m fighting with a bobcat. For a raccoon, I’m doing pretty well. The sun is burning through the misty clouds, slowly warming up the forest – the forest, my home, that I love so well. Small birds sing loudly from the branches of trees, their lungs filled with sweet yearning. Crows, who [...]
Ratspotting
by Rene Georg Vasicek 12/13/2002Neighborhood: All Over, Manhattan
My mother taught me to fear rats. She still shudders when she recalls the rat-infested tenement overlooking the Harlem River in the Bronx that my Czech refugee family called home when we first arrived in America, in 1970. Strange crunching sounds could be heard emanating from the hollowed walls of our apartment, and after a [...]
Neighborhood Dogs: Drawings by Elisah Cooper
by bye 12/02/2002Neighborhood: All Over, Multiple
Once upon a time there was a drawing of a man and his dog. It was by William Steig. It was what the distinguished artist produced when we asked him to draw something that we at the Neighborhood could use as a, a, a…. (it’s to the right)… something. A Logo is the word I [...]
Dead Rat Walking
by Jean Strong 09/10/2002Neighborhood: Clinton
I electrocuted a rat early this morning. It was approximately 2:20 am. There were no eyewitnesses. I heard the electrical noise. It was a sustained bug-zapping sound that went on for a good thirty seconds. I knew immediately what was happening when I was startled awake. I just listened, victorious, with a great feeling that [...]
Did You Show Fear?
by Matthew Higgins 07/30/2002Neighborhood: Midtown
Le Parker Meridien on West 57th is not the type of hotel where my parents took my siblings and me when we weren’t camping or staying with relatives. It wasn’t in my budget during the winter of 2000 either. At the time I felt self-conscious of each cold step taken across the hard marble floors. [...]
The Pigeon Bagel
by Rosalie Q. Shore 07/17/2002Neighborhood: Gramercy Park
I was sitting on a green bench outside of a cafe on Irving Place, on a hot day with a blaring sun. I was in one of those moods where I was thinking of everything bad that had ever happened to me. I noticed a huge bagel on the edge of the sidewalk. It was [...]
Coco on the 47th Floor
by Paul Felten 06/29/2002Neighborhood: Manhattan
My girlfriend Emily recently got a job as personal assistant to a stockbroker who lives on the Upper West Side, on the forty-seventh floor of a building directly adjacent to Lincoln Center. The stockbroker goes to work at eight or so and often doesn’t get home until eight or nine in the evening, at which [...]
Pet Owning Competency Standard
by Caton Clark 06/27/2002Neighborhood: Upper West Side
“You can tell when a person’s just not ready,” the young man in charge of birds at Petland Discounts told me as I pressed my face against the glass atrium to get a good look at the small animals so close to danger. “Have you ever had to say no to anybody?” “There have been [...]
Bronx Swans
by Bram Gunther 02/17/2002Neighborhood: All Over, Bronx
The John Kieran Trail in Van Cortlandt Park in the Bronx is cut through sturdy black locust and black cherry trees, their crowns bending the day’s sunlight. As it veers towards the water, the trail mixes with wet mossy woods with willow branches hanging over the path like Rapunzel’s hair, patches of skunk cabbage and [...]
