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Trash Fiorucci
by peter nolan smith 07/01/2011Neighborhood: Featured, Midtown
In the late-70s Fiorucci on East 60th Street was the style center for the disco world of New York. The windows boasted the latest flash fashion from Italy. These trendy threads guaranteed almost immediate entrance into Studio 54 or any exclusive disco in Manhattan. Joey Arias was the store manager in the summer of 1977 [...]
Lies My Canvasser Told Me
by Mac Barrett 05/01/2011Neighborhood: Herald Square, Uncategorized
I support a poor kid whose name I don’t know in a country I don’t remember the name of, somewhere in South America, I think. This happened because I was stopped on the street on my way to meet a friend for dinner at a nice restaurant, singled out from the after-work stream of people [...]
Monkey In The Middle
by Ahron Yeshaiek 02/28/2011Neighborhood: All Over, Featured, Rockaway, The Catskills
“You from Long Island?” Danny, from Brownsville, Brooklyn, grilled. Before I could qualify myself, he turned to face the rest of the kids on our bus, and announced, “The skinny kid is loaded.” We had just left Chinatown and were cruising north, along the Hudson River, to sleep-away camp in upstate New York. My fellow [...]
Where Is Singer?
by Peter Wortsman 12/13/2008Neighborhood: Murray Hill
The old man seated beside me awaiting the appearance of the celebrated Isaac Bashevis Singer at The Workman’s Circle Auditorium is becoming a pest. From a rumpled brown shopping bag he pulls out and shamelessly shows off photographs of his grandchildren to which I offer the obligatory compliments. Light and sound technicians, meanwhile, test the [...]
Barney’s Christmas Spectacular
by Guy Patrick Cunningham 11/18/2008Neighborhood: Midtown
My legs ached, but we had nothing else to do so we kept circling the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree over and over again. All I had on was this long brown jacket that looked like a cross between a trench coat and a windbreaker. It provided no warmth at all, but I was convinced it [...]
George Isn’t Homeless
by Melissa Dunn 10/12/2008Neighborhood: Across the River, Manhattan
“Hi George,” I said, with a wave, as I rushed toward the subway. George, who was sitting in his low-to-the-ground folding chair at his usual post in front of the liquor store, sat up bolt straight, as if I had touched him, giving him a shock of static electricity, and said with some outrage, “How [...]
What We’re on This Earth For
by Granger Greenbaum 09/06/2008Neighborhood: Brooklyn, Outer Boroughs
“You’re blocking the whole fucking street, you’re a total asshole!” The woman in the road screamed at me. But she only knew one of my attributes and that hardly qualified her to give a generalizing narrative to all of the other onlookers. I agreed to move my vehicle but she was the bitter, lingering sort. [...]
Walk Like a Woman
by peter nolan smith 04/11/2008Neighborhood: East Village
I always thought Billy Wilder’s film SOME LIKE IT HOT was funny, until my next-door neighbor asked in his basement, “Who you think is prettier as a woman? Jack Lemmon or Tony Curtis?” “Neither.” This was 1964 and men in dresses weren’t supposed to be funny to 11 year-old boys on the South Shore of [...]
Petrillio, or Love on the 90th Floor
by Prof Barbara Foster 02/23/2008Neighborhood: Chelsea
Even the janitor’s wife has a perfectly good love life and here am I, facing tomorrow, alone with my sorrow, down in the depths of the 90th floor.  –Cole Porter It may not have been the 90th floor, perhaps the 30th or 40th. The exact number is foggy in my memory, but the rest of [...]
The Calypso Women
by Thomas Beller 02/03/2008Neighborhood: Upper East Side
We went into Calypso, on Madison Avenue and 69th Street. The first thing I noticed upon entering the store was a young woman paying for something at the register while she distractedly texted. Then, as she texted, she got an actual phone call. She picked up and announced her coordinates and her purchase, “A gray [...]
Naughty and Not Nice on Craigslist
by Daphne 12/15/2007Neighborhood: Midtown
As always when I break up with a boyfriend, I go back to trusted Craigslist. There’s something comforting about shopping for sex on the internet. Safety behind the screen. This time, I was more daring. I wanted a dominant man. This much I knew for sure. I’ve had a lot of mediocre sex in my [...]
A Christmas Treasure
by Kevin Nolan 12/09/2007Neighborhood: Midtown
My wife is one of an elusive American species: the serious reader. And like many serious readers, she also indulges in crap. For a long stretch she indulged in a guilty pleasure known to many but not known to me, until one Christmas season years ago: the Regency-era paperback romance. These books aren’t the sexed-up [...]
