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Here Lies Jed
by Katie McDonough 05/22/2011Neighborhood: Featured, Prospect Park
We suspected it was illegal, but we had no choice. At the vet’s office in Park Slope, they told us cat cremation cost $125, and neither my boyfriend nor I had the money. Besides, cremation seemed too formal, too clinical, for Jed. He was always escaping out the window, taking self-guided tours of the neighborhood [...]
A True Life Fish Tale
by Susan Volchok 04/11/2011Neighborhood: Upper West Side
I thought I’d been having a bad year—chewed up and spit out after a couple of months in the New York City public school system (which is a whole other story I was advised by my attorney not to write about until after our lawsuit was resolved)—but then I met the saddest, sorriest creature I’d [...]
Hemmed In
by Sally Pla 02/14/2011Neighborhood: Midtown
This is a story about my grandmother, who was young in Manhattan in the 1920s. Speakeasies, nightclubs, drop-waisted dresses, bobbed hair, cloche hats, waist-length strands of dime-store pearls. Even for a middle-class workaday office girl like Frances Thornton, those were heady times. She was among the first of the gals in her office to bob [...]
Scary Scary Scary New York City
by Patrick J. Sauer 10/31/2010Neighborhood: All Over
Be afraid, they tell us. Be very afraid. I read the Timeses, the Newses, the AM New Yorks. I watch the Ernie Anostoses, listen to the Brian Lehrers, check out the NY1s, peruse the Gothamists, and call the 311s, only to end up hearing the same message, the ongoing drumbeat pounding in my brain in [...]
Some Lice to Live
by Carol Paik 03/02/2008Neighborhood: Midtown
I come home to find a message on my answering machine from the nurse at my daughter’s school. “We had a case of head lice in the 5th grade, so we did a school-wide check.” Pause. “Meredith has some nits.” I immediately think of The Thorn Birds, which I read when I was a kid. [...]
The Fig Trees of Bensonhurst
by Thomas Maschio 12/31/2006Neighborhood: Brooklyn, Outer Boroughs
I hesitated before walking through the alleyway that led to my old backyard. I could see that my mother and father’s old fig tree was still there in the yard. It was late summer and there had just been a light rain. This would have been prime fig picking time back in the old days. [...]
The Bird Funeral
by Lucy Baker 07/27/2006Neighborhood: Midtown
This morning I saw a dead bird on 52nd Street. It was lying on its back on the sidewalk in between Park and Madison Avenues, in front of a Duane Reade Pharmacy. Its feet were in the air. At first I wasn’t sure if it was dead. It looked like it was just dozing, sunning [...]
Earth First (And Last)
by Thomas Beller 06/04/2006Neighborhood: West Village
Bill Dilworth may have one of New York’s most relaxing jobs. He is keeper of the New York Earth Room, a permanent installation by the artist Walter DeMaria, sponsored by the Dia Foundation. The work has been on display at the same location at 141 Wooster Street for over ten years, and Mr. Dilworth has [...]
There’s No Rainbow on the FDR
by Josh Lefkowitz 05/31/2006Neighborhood: Upper East Side
It was an unseasonably cool Sunday evening in July, and, like the weather, I was feeling a bit out of sorts. I was looking for a new job and getting used to the pressures and angst of being in my first serious relationship. Walking on 78th Street between First and York, heading to the subway [...]
Tulips and Addresses
by Edward Field 05/31/2006Neighborhood: Midtown
The Museum of Modern Art on West Fifty-third Street Is interested only in the flower not the bulb. After the Dutch tulips finished blooming in the garden last year, They pulled them up and threw them away–that place has no heart. Some fortunately were rescued and came into my possession. I kept them all winter [...]
Fiberglass Dogs
by Griffin Hansbury 09/27/2005Neighborhood: Times Square
There was a while when it seemed like every year New York played host to a parade of hand-painted fiberglass animals. The cows were the most famous. The German shepherds were a lot less famous and they disappeared from the streets pretty quick. But, here and there, you’ll still see one, sitting guard outside the [...]
Tulips in the Dark
by Thomas Beller 04/20/2005Neighborhood: West Village
I saw Ed in the shadows on Perry street. A streelamp must have gone out because it was very dark. There was a helicopter circling the neighborhood, it’s spotlight straffing. “A sign of things to come,” he said, as though they were looking for him. A couple of houses down from where Ed sat there [...]
