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Harlem Girls
by BreeanneDaniels 09/21/2011Neighborhood: Harlem, Uncategorized
I love this train station. 125th St. The 1 is sentimental, alluring. It’s Ice T’s shadow in the credits of Law and Order SVU, It’s an isolated and spectacular scene that rises from below at 125th street, and Harlem is unfolded from panoramic elevation. I stood on 125th street, listening the rumble above me as the [...]
Mayoral Control – A Love Story
by JB McGeever 09/01/2011Neighborhood: All Over, Greenwich Village, Uncategorized
It had always been an in-joke between us. I was the one who hailed the cab. “Let them see that big yellow head of yours,” Tiffany would say. We broke tradition only once, separating at a corner during a light summer rain in Greenwich Village. The ugly truth left me stunned and incensed. The cab, [...]
The Day the World Did Not End
by Robin Kilmer 07/08/2011Neighborhood: Harlem, Uncategorized
The world was supposed to end on May 21, 2011. One man I spoke to at a bar was a little disappointed when Earth was still turning at 12:01 AM on the 22nd. I guess that’s what you would expect from someone who is sitting by himself. His face was ruddy with alcohol and he was [...]
The Bookie
by Hillary Miller 07/01/2011Neighborhood: Flatbush
I attended elementary school in a non-descript brick building across the street from Mostly Books, whose humble proprietor, Sandy Tishcoff, was our local celebrity sighting. He was an unlikely one, spending his hours squinting at a microfiche mounted on his desk, from which he would divine book orders in the days before Add To Cart. [...]
Public School Bus(t)
by Molly Oswaks 03/13/2011Neighborhood: Nolita
In the packed playground of St. Patrick’s Old Cathedral School, the Friday night social chatter maintains a steady, low-level buzz, as cliquish tribes of girls and boys smoke cigarettes and drink red wine and imported beer from small, plastic cups. One girl wears a floppy, knit cap which, embroidered with a dizzying display of silver [...]
The Last Day
by Ken Nolan 06/03/2010Neighborhood: Windsor Terrace
I always woke up early the last day of school. My eyes would jump open and I’d sit up and look toward the windows in my parents’ bedroom to see if morning slid through the thick wooden blinds and thin white curtains. I’d jab the bottom of the bunk bed above where my older brother [...]
Sitting Behind Cybill Shepherd
by Hal Sirowitz 02/06/2010Neighborhood: Featured, West Village
I took a Chaucer English Literature class in 1968 at New York University. I was told Chaucer used a lot of dirty words. An erotic film was made based on ‘The Canterbury Tales.’ I figured the professor wasn’t going to screen it in class but maybe I could take a female classmate to see it [...]
Runaways
by Deirdre Faughey 10/01/2009Neighborhood: Across the River, Brooklyn
The weather is turning. At home I didn’t notice the wind, but by the time we’d walked all the way to the library our ponytails held only half as much hair as they did when we left. There was an easy remedy: hold the band between your teeth, gather up the loose strands, pull them [...]
My Semester With Ralph Ellison
by Hal Sirowitz 05/02/2009Neighborhood: Greenwich Village
In 1971 I took a class taught by Ralph Ellison, author of ‘The Invisible Man.’ It was my last year at the Washington Square Campus of New York University. In those days there was also a Bronx campus. Wannabe hippies, like me, went downtown. I was a little nervous about graduating, because most of the [...]
Three O’Clock High
by Katherine Dykstra 11/02/2008Neighborhood: Midtown
It is 3pm on a weekday, and I have left the office to caffeinate. As I step through the revolving doors and out into the day, I note that summer has seamlessly turned into fall. I gather this not from any change in the weather, but because the kids are back. I work in Midtown [...]
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 [...]
A Blue Chicken, and My First Naked Lady
by Tom Diriwachter 06/22/2008Neighborhood: Chinatown
Growing up on Staten Island, a trip to Manhattan, while covering only several miles, and less than an hour away, was an adventure. There are things I remember about “going to the city” from my childhood. I remember holding my ears and laughing when the horn of the Staten Island Ferry sounded. I remember eating [...]
