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You are currently browsing stories tagged with Crime and Punishment
Guns Guns Guns
by peter nolan smith 12/19/2010Neighborhood: Featured, Upper West Side
Kids in America are supposed to like guns. Our movie heroes majestically wield weapons on the silver screen and TV cops dance through primetime gun ballets. Armed with air rifles and plastic weapons my friends and I played WAR in the woods behind my house. Imaginary bullets tore holes through the make-believe Nazis and Japs. [...]
Door Buzzers that Never Ring
by Flo Gelo 12/19/2010Neighborhood: Williamsburg
I leap down the stairs, unlock and swing open the wrought iron gate. Priscilla, my best friend and playmate, is leaning against the fire hydrant, fidgeting with her treasured Elvis Pez dispenser. She runs to me, pulls on my sweater, and drags me to the corner of Madison Street. Speechless and excited, she nudges my [...]
Son of Sam Got Me Out of Guitar Lessons
by Tom Diriwachter 12/19/2010Neighborhood: Staten Island
New Dorp Lane, even in 1976, was a traffic jam of cars in search of parking for the shops and restaurants up and down the strip. On the corner of Clawson Street, was Lane Music, its window drawn with a transparent yellow shade. Inside, guitars hung on one wall, while, opposite, were the doors to [...]
Theft of Service
by Sam Axelrod 05/02/2009Neighborhood: Lower Manhattan
It was the third week of what was to become my first real job, at Irving Plaza, the club in Union Square. I was working three days a week after school, doing odd jobs around the venue. Basically whatever tedious tasks they needed me to do. I was a junior that year, and took the [...]
The Fool of Abingdon Square Park
by Thomas Beller 06/08/2008Neighborhood: Manhattan
The fool of Abingdon Square Park entered the park in a huff. He marched up to the person speaking at the microphone, and tapped her on the shoulder with a rolled up newspaper. She was in the middle of reading from a work about being the mother of an adopted Ethiopian girl, and all the [...]
Graffiti
by Saïd Sayrafiezadeh 05/12/2008Neighborhood: Lower East Side
On Saturday night I walked from my apartment on the Lower East Side over to Housing Works in SoHo. It was a little after 8:00 at night and my intention was to spend a few pleasant hours drinking coffee and reading Grapes of Wrath. It was also a way to give my wife some time [...]
What Can Do
by Granger Greenbaum 04/27/2008Neighborhood: Across the River, Brooklyn
My landlord George fled communist Armenia at a young age. Whenever I have occasion to talk with him in the hall he is infallibly cheerful and quick to offer words of encouragement. “How a you doing?” he asks me, “is beautiful day but must still be working, what can do.” He shrugs at the day’s [...]
Detroiters Make Citizen’s Arrest, Save Starbucks CDs
by Eric C. Novack 04/27/2008Neighborhood: Across the River, Letter From Abroad
It was Tuesday and I held the door for a well-dressed black woman on my way into Starbucks at Mack and Woodward. She thanked me and I thought of my mother who had taught me to be a gentleman. I followed her up to the counter where four or five more people were waiting to [...]
Squirrel in the Birdfeeder
by Joseph Scalia 01/19/2008Neighborhood: Across the River, Long Island
There has always been something about the change in seasons, something that has stirred me to make changes in my life. I was married in winter and divorced in the spring, started a new job in fall and quit in the summer. That’s probably why it was in the beginning of winter when I decided [...]
Magic City: Not In Our Town
by Patrick J. Sauer 12/22/2007Neighborhood: Across the River, Bronx
One of the great, underrated things about living in New York is meeting all those people who come from everywhere else. Not that Gotham natives aren’t a barrel of monkeys, but it’s cool that someone always seems to have a different frame-of-reference, a different slice of life about where they came from, which is my [...]
Falling In and Out of Love with a Neckless Scotsman
by Sherri Rosen 12/15/2007Neighborhood: Financial District
He began calling her everyday from Scotland. Once she heard his voice she couldn’t get enough. The first time she spoke to him she was working at home writing up a press release for one of her authors. She forgot all about work. He emailed her the day before from an online dating site saying [...]
Liquid Straightjacket Works Every Time
by Thomas R. Ziegler 11/18/2007Neighborhood: Murray Hill
It’s 1983; I’m on the job ten years and have received my first promotion. Yesterday as a firefighter I carried an axe and fought fires; today as a Fire Marshal I carry a gun and fight crime. In most departments around our country, the title Fire Marshal denotes a person who performs inspectional duties. In [...]
