Where Am I?
You are currently browsing stories tagged with Out of Towners
Becoming American in New York
by Sabine Heinlein 10/01/2009Neighborhood: Brooklyn, Greenpoint
When asked why I left Germany for New York, I have two answers, depending on my mood and on the patience of the listener. The short answer is: I fell in love with an American. The second answer is: On our birthdays my sisters and I were given pieces of silverware from a prestigious German manufactory [...]
Almost Feeding the Hungry
by Jeff Kyle, Jr. 05/20/2009Neighborhood: Midtown
I live in New Jersey. That means that I have been known to frequent Manhattan as a somewhat out of place and bemused bridge and tunneler. A friend of mine is a rising star in the New York music scene. (This means that she occasionally gets a free beer and sometimes she even gets paid!) [...]
Barney’s Christmas Spectacular
by Guy Patrick Cunningham 11/18/2008Neighborhood: Midtown
My legs ached, but we had nothing else to do so we kept circling the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree over and over again. All I had on was this long brown jacket that looked like a cross between a trench coat and a windbreaker. It provided no warmth at all, but I was convinced it [...]
Escape to the Tip of the Island
by Tricia Capistrano 11/10/2008Neighborhood: Inwood
When I was 14, and living in an affluent, gated community in Manila, a handsome young boy from our neighborhood gave me a sapphire pendant. We were both members of a church youth group and were attending a party for new members. It was early evening. As our friends ate pork kabobs by the pool, [...]
José and the System
by Michael E. Miller 09/01/2008Neighborhood: Union Square
As he sits on the railing in Union Square Park, surrounded by hundreds of young men and women absorbing the first warm day of the year, José’s hands move nervously over a bottle of orange juice. On the label is an idyllic American farm, no doubt in some far-off corner of the country, where the [...]
Welcome to Washington Heights
by Kristen Bonardi Rapp 08/05/2008Neighborhood: Washington Heights
The day I moved to Washington Heights, a kid stood on the sidewalk and stared at me. And not a trying-not-to stare, either; a slack-jawed, wide-eyed, rooted-to-the-spot stare. It was sweltering that day—the first day of summer—and even though it wasn’t the most practical choice for moving day, I wore one of those tank tops with [...]
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 [...]
Tolerance
by Paul Vidich 06/08/2008Neighborhood: Times Square
I didn’t know I had a problem until the telephone call. It was 2:31 a.m. I know the exact time because we have a digital clock by our bedside phone. I lay in bed next to Linda in my mismatched pajamas because we’d come home slightly drunk at midnight from Balthazar and I couldn’t find [...]
Cats Are Prisoners
by Lesley Clark 05/25/2008Neighborhood: Upper East Side
Little yellow post-it sticky notes were posted all over the apartment. “Help yourself” was on the refrigerator, “coffee’s here” was posted on the silver Gevalia canister. In big red letters atop the post-it note was, “Warning- Caffeinated” and a postscript, “I know how you are on caffeine,” all this accompanied with a little bewildered looking [...]
Small Claims is a War of Attrition
by Sarah Miller-Davenport 04/06/2008Neighborhood: Lower East Side
It is a cool, dry August evening and I am in a windowless room at 111 Centre Street. I leave New York, the city of my birth, in less than a week. Yet, through a series of escalating events, I choose to be here, stubbornly clinging to the dream of winning back a minor sum [...]
Where We’re From
by Jeanette Thornton 04/06/2008Neighborhood: Upper West Side
It is rare, in New York, so I’ve noticed, that conversations pop up with strangers but I have experienced a few. I was in the bakery down the street from my apartment on the Upper West Side, the one with only two tables and a line out the door, and I was searching for the [...]
Young Russian Immigrants Turn to Heroin
by Anne Noyes Saini 03/31/2008Neighborhood: Brooklyn, On the Waterfront
Her daughter tried dozens of rehab clinics and treatment programs. After awhile, Olga says, they blurred into a familiar pattern: “program, back, program, back.” “Back” meaning: back on heroin. Olga, who asked that her and her daughter’s names be changed for this story, came to New York City with her family in 1997, refugees from the former [...]
