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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 [...]
Lost and Found in Prospect Park
by Connor Gaudet 01/08/2011Neighborhood: Featured, Park Slope, Prospect Heights
Having stayed in my apartment the better part of the last week or so, today I decided to hop on my bike and do some writing out of doors. It was a breezy 68 degrees and I wanted to enjoy the pleasant mildness of early fall before it became the cold old dreary, crappy, disgusting [...]
The Lucky One
by Emily Azur 08/16/2010Neighborhood: Lower Manhattan, Manhattan
I celebrated my 60th birthday and my 25-year job anniversary the same year my employer accepted billions of TARP money. And then, on a bright July morning, I was laid off. I could pretend that it was because business was changing, as the notice letter said, or that there was a need to make more [...]
Opera for the Poor, Cheap and Masochistic
by Ken Paprocki 08/16/2009Neighborhood: Upper West Side
I’m Number 28 in line for rush tickets at the Metropolitan Opera. Today there was a ripple in the curvature of the space-time continuum: they moved the rush ticket waiting line upstairs. Ongoing construction forced everybody out of the usual spot. This means that instead of waiting in the hyperborean dungeon beneath the main level [...]
Drinking Until His Next Paycheck
by William Drake 09/12/2008Neighborhood: Upper West Side
Hey man, do you have a cigarette?” A man asked me out of nowhere. I didn’t see him creeping up to me, usually I am aware of my surroundings but he was soundless in his approach. “Naw, sorry, I bummed this from someone.” Which was true, I did bum the smoke from my friend still [...]
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 [...]
The Check Thieves
by Tina Portelli 08/31/2007Neighborhood: Brooklyn, Carroll Gardens
In my downtown Brooklyn neighborhood were raised a breed of men who are check thieves. A rare breed of men who are slowly becoming extinct. Their turf is Court Street to Smith, Degraw Street to President. These are the sons of the older generation men, who would never let a woman pay for a check. [...]
Here I am in Bergdorf Goodman
by Sarah Miller-Davenport 08/24/2007Neighborhood: Manhattan
Here I am in Bergdorf Goodman, and not for the first time, holding up the left half of a pair of $900 boots with the kind of delicacy usually reserved for fine antiques and newborn babies. It’s an exercise in frustration, a form of self-inflicted torture: I barely have $900 in the bank, let alone [...]
Living with Nicola’s Single Life
by Jed Lipinski 06/01/2007Neighborhood: East Village
Nicola is a lively twenty-year-old girl of Thai and Italian descent, born and raised on the Upper East Side. She has been my roommate on East 4th Street for four months, since I answered her apartment ad on Craigslist, and she works as a cocktail waitress at Thor—a fashionable nightclub in the Lower East Side—until [...]
Water, One Dollar
by Beth Schwartzapfel 11/24/2006Neighborhood: Financial District
Mohammad B. Miah is a small man. He stands about five feet tall with his red and white and black leather hi-top sneakers on. He lives in Astoria, Queens, and he wants to know whether I work for the city. He motions in the direction of City Hall. “You have a job?” he asks. “I’m [...]
TIM is MONY
by Joseph Scalia 11/16/2006Neighborhood: Boro Park, Brooklyn
(The original title “Time is Money” was shortened in the interest of saving both time and money.) “Time is money,” my ex-wife used to say. Of course she said it mostly when she wanted me to go out and get a second job, and she said it usually from a reclining position on the couch [...]
Hindsight is 13,000: Playing the Stock Market in 1999-2000
by Mr. Murphy 10/17/2006Neighborhood: Upper East Side
I have just taken over the passenger car from Roberto. There are three tenants in the elevator and they are discussing their vacation plans. 3A and her family will be hitting the slopes in Jackson Hole, Wyoming; 5C is going to work on his tan and try his luck at the blackjack tables in Aruba; [...]
