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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 [...]
As Elevators Shrink
by Ellen Greenfield 04/16/2012Neighborhood: Flushing, Pomonok
When had the elevator gotten so small? When I was ten and living on the top floor of a building in the New York City Housing Project called Pomonok -- a word the Algonquin Indians used for Long Island -- I dreamed of stabling my horse in that elevator. The fantasy of actually having my [...]
A Forgotten Game
by Peter Wortsman 03/27/2012Neighborhood: Jackson Heights
I don’t know who invented the game or whether it is still played today. Slap Ball had a brief vogue in New York City schoolyards in the early Sixties, and in Jackson Heights, Queens, where I grew up, it attained minor cult status as the game of choice for the physically challenged. A welcome alternative [...]
I Love You, U-Bet
by Candy Schulman 03/26/2012Neighborhood: Brighton Beach, Brooklyn, Coney Island, Sheepshead Bay
When I was a young man—no bigger than this A chocolate egg cream was not to be missed Some U-bet’s chocolate syrup, seltzer water mixed with milk Stir it up into a heady fro—tasted just like milk You scream, I steam, we all want Egg Cream. [...]
175 Bleecker Street
by Mary Shanley 02/13/2012Neighborhood: Greenwich Village, Uncategorized
Annie was the whitest, white girl I ever did see. A walking anemic, she looked in perpetual need of a blood transfusion. If she were to walk through the halls of the high school dragging an I.V. pole with a bag of blood hanging off the top, I don’t think anybody would have batted an [...]
Elevator Days
by Joseph Scalia 02/10/2012Neighborhood: Featured, Financial District, Lower Manhattan, Manhattan
Whenever I go to a party or I am introduced to people I don’t know, they invariably ask me what I do. “What do you do?” And I always tell them, “I am an elevator operator.” I say that I drive an elevator in downtown Manhattan. The reaction to my announcement varies. Some people smile [...]
Richie Two-Ax
by Donald Reilly 12/29/2011Neighborhood: Featured, Gowanus, Manhattan, Park Slope
When my father walked onto the construction site of the Western Electric Building on Broadway and Fulton, he asked a dark-skinned guy in hard hat where Richie Two-ax was. The construction worker eyed my father’s neatly pressed slacks and asked, “Who are you?” “I’m his friend? He told me to meet him here for lunch,” [...]
We Had Never Heard of Pearl Harbor
by FRED J ABRAHAMS 12/09/2011Neighborhood: Featured, Uncategorized, Upper West Side
I hated Saturdays. We had been moderately observant Jews in the small German town where we had lived before we fled to the US. The trauma and anxiety of starting over in a new land with two young children and the horror stories that were filtering out of Europe pushed my mother towards the security [...]
Payback
by Ann Mintz 12/01/2011Neighborhood: Midtown, Uncategorized
My first real job was in a recording studio on 8th Avenue and 44th Street, producing movie commercials for broadcast on the radio. I was the second engineer, which sounds a lot more impressive than it was. I set up microphones, recorded the talent, edited sound effects and music, layered the voice over the background [...]
The Immigrants’ Daughter Learns A Lesson
by Mindy Greenstein 12/01/2011Neighborhood: Brooklyn
I learned about sex when I was twelve. My mother called me over while she was watching a rerun of The Honeymooners on the 13” black and white TV in my bedroom. She often watched there, because my father couldn’t stand her smoking in their room. My parents are Holocaust refugees. My mother had lived [...]
Chola’s Habit
by Flo Gelo 11/16/2011Neighborhood: Featured, Williamsburg
My younger sister, Chola, a second grader at Our Lady of Good Counsel, is chosen for a special part in the school play. My sister is real cute and the Sisters adore her. Chola loves Sister Romona and gave her a candy necklace for Christmas. She helps Sister Romona erase the blackboard every day and [...]
The Red Berets
by Quilty 11/11/2011Neighborhood: Midtown, Restaurant Row, Uncategorized
In my youth I wore a red beret. Twenty-some years ago, I was a New York City Guardian Angel who patrolled Restaurant Row with Curtis Sliwa and his wife, Lisa, and about ten other vigilantes. We were a small group who made a lot of noise. We also patrolled the “A” train, which we nicknamed [...]
