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The Gift of Tongues
by Rebecca Moore 05/25/2012Neighborhood: West Village
It’s 1979 and the grown-ups are out of control. They are getting divorced and either going to law school or Studio 54. They are in therapy; they are smoking pot, taking lovers, coming out and finding themselves. My parents are married, but my mother buys Donna Summer’s Bad Girls and uses my Stagelight blue roses nail [...]
An Upper West Side Tragedy Set To Music
by ellen schecter 05/18/2012Neighborhood: Upper West Side
He always said, “Hello, “I’m so glad to see you? How are you?” even when he no longer knew our names. Starting in the last year, he didn’t care for answers. He cherished his long career as an impresario in the world of music, selecting and programming concerts for major institutions in New York City. After [...]
Growing Up Beastly
by Maccabee Montandon 05/17/2012Neighborhood: All Over, Letter From Abroad, West Village
In 1986 I became an international pop music recording sensation. I don’t mean that at the age of 15 I admired and tried to emulate Ad-Rock, a squeaky, strutting third of the fresh hip-hop phenomenon the Beastie Boys—I mean I was Ad-Rock. His band mates—Mike D and MCA—were my homeboys. Sure, there had previously been [...]
Old Enough To Die In Brooklyn: The Mortician’s Lament
by Chris Pomorski 05/10/2012Neighborhood: Cobble Hill, Featured
When the previous resident of my apartment, who was still living in it when my girlfriend and I viewed it for the first time, told us that the funeral home downstairs hardly ever held services, the effect on me was less than palliative. Jenna nodded thoughtfully in the way real estate shoppers are prone, apparently [...]
A Longer Walk
by paula katz 04/20/2012Neighborhood: All Over, Upper West Side
For twenty-one years I walked the same beat on Manhattan’s Upper West Side – from my apt on West 86th Street to my office on West 64th. I have lived in the same apartment for thirty-two years and have worked in the same office for twenty-one. I am a person who likes security and whose [...]
The Wild Turkeys Of Staten Island University Hospital
by Tom Diriwachter 04/17/2012Neighborhood: Featured, Staten Island
Wild turkeys roam the grounds of Staten Island University Hospital. When my mother was hospitalized in April 2011 with a respiratory infection, I had the opportunity to observe them in detail. Turkeys stand around a lot, sort of like escaped mental patients who suddenly find themselves free, but then what. One day, they might be [...]
On Turtle Bay
by Kevin Kinsella 11/11/2011Neighborhood: Featured, On the Waterfront, Turtle Bay
Twice weekly, we ride the ferry across the East River from the India Avenue landing in the Greenpoint section of Brooklyn to 34th Street on the Island of Manhattan. Two hours later, we make the return trip. Each time we come aboard, the pilot, the bill of his cap pulled low on his brow, greets [...]
The Handbag
by Quilty 10/28/2011Neighborhood: Midtown
My good friend’s elderly grandmother was always losing her handbag – leaving it in restaurants, bank lobbies, once in a Times Square movie theatre. One morning the old woman awoke and could not remember what her handbag was for; and so, within weeks her family moved her to a nursing home where her senility rapidly [...]
Friendly Fire
by Berton Miller 10/11/2011Neighborhood: Featured, West Bronx
I came home to a frightening scene one Saturday afternoon back in the spring of 1950. I was 10 years old and had been at the movies all day with my friends. I opened our apartment door and instantly smelled fire and tasted smoke. As I pushed the door in I saw my father on [...]
Living In The HOV Lane
by Joseph Scalia 08/16/2011Neighborhood: Murray Hill, Uncategorized
My sister Betty and I are in the HOV lane cruising east on the LIE toward her house in Suffolk County. She is in the front seat next to me in the The Silver Fox, my Subaru Forester, wrapped in a light blanket against the still cool April air. Bets is my older sister, ten [...]
My Father’s Father’s Coney Island Costume Jewelry Shop
by Mara Grayson 07/19/2011Neighborhood: Coney Island
“It was 1958,” my father says, “the year my dad opened Marcelle’s Jewelry Store on Mermaid Avenue in Coney Island. You should have seen this place. I wish there were pictures now, but who would have taken pictures of some shoddy storefront on Mermaid Avenue? Displayed in one window were all the pieces of costume [...]
G-2183
by Phyllis Schieber 05/01/2011Neighborhood: Featured, Uncategorized
When Jeffrey and I argue, my mother always weeps. "Shame on you," she says. "I wish my brother, Shmuel, was still here for me to argue with. Shame on you!" My brother and I hang our heads. We wait for her to leave the room, but she is not yet finished. "Is this what I [...]
