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You are currently browsing stories tagged with Redeeming the Inanimate
Brujeria
by Kelly Kreth 02/26/2010Neighborhood: East Harlem
Having grown up in a predominantly Hispanic neighborhood, most of my friends were Cuban. Marly was my best friend throughout high school and beyond. I loved hanging out with her and her mother, Mirna, because their home was so exotic. I loved eating her mom’s rice and beans, okra and pork, and practicing my Spanish. [...]
They’ve Finally Cut Eggy in Half
by Albert Stern 07/02/2009Neighborhood: Brooklyn, Carroll Gardens
At the corner of Atlantic Avenue and Bond Street about a quarter of a block ahead of me, three young men waited at the crosswalk for the light to change. Two were dressed in thug-casual regalia: sneakers, baggy pants, baseball caps askew, and hoodies up to obscure clear lines of sight to their faces. The [...]
Sex, Craigslist, and Murder
by Daphne 05/02/2009Neighborhood: All Over, Multiple
The Craigslist murder of Julissa Brisman has left me wondering about my own choices as well as those close to me. Brisman’s murder by alleged killer Philip Markoff is a scary fact of what can happen when using the Internet for dating or other activities. I’ve been an avid fan of online dating for years [...]
At the Minetta Tavern Without Joe Gould
by Roseann Lake 11/10/2008Neighborhood: West Village
He was puckish and presumptuous, impudent and ebullient; a bantam and bumptious, dastardly and delirious hand-out seeking hotdogger with a bare head, bushy beard, and bushels of personality. On many nights he could be found fast asleep on a bench in Washington Square Park, his belly careening with gin and ale that he had bamboozled [...]
YEAH, YEAH, YEAH? NO, NO, NO!
by Candy Schulman 10/07/2008Neighborhood: West Village
I met John Lennon in Washington Square Park. My friend Susan and I were returning home to the Village from our jobs as drug abuse counselors in the roughest schools in Brooklyn…when we spotted him. It was 1973, and his hat gave him away: a black Beatles’ cap that had become their trademark, a newsboy [...]
Air Disaster 1960
by Michael J Toro 10/04/2008Neighborhood: Brooklyn, Park Slope
Numerous fissures and cracks can be observed on many buildings along the intersection of Seventh Avenue and Sterling Place, in the Park Slope section of Brooklyn. This quiet, upscale neighborhood, less than a half-mile north of Prospect Park, goes about its daily business with little notice for defects in a city so rife with fissures, [...]
Me and My Cane
by Candy Schulman 07/01/2008Neighborhood: West Village
“What happened to your knee?” Not since my pregnancy have so many people elevated a distended part of my body to public discourse. My neoprene knee stabilizer invited countless questions and unsolicited advice from friends and strangers in Greenwich Village, where I live, on the #6 train, and in the physical therapist’s office in Union Square—where [...]
Dawn
by Heidi Rain 05/12/2008Neighborhood: Across the River, Queens
It’s March 22nd again, Dawn Alfano’s birthday. I can’t figure out why every year for the past half-century I remember that, but somehow it’s always stuck in my mind. It’s not that Dawn and I were close or anything in third grade, but somehow the little we shared must have made an impression on me. Every [...]
The Tombstone Read L.E.S.
by Royal Young 05/11/2008Neighborhood: Lower East Side
Recently, driving with my grandmother to meet family for dinner at a French restaurant on Lafayette, mouth watering in anticipation of filet mignon, I bemoaned the fate of the once urban wasteland, now over developed, over exposed Lower East Side we had both grown up in. As I ranted she nodded, indifferent to the hipsters [...]
We Kindly Ask That You Turn Off Your David Mamet
by Jean Paul Cativiela 05/03/2008Neighborhood: Upper East Side
At first one or two left, dignified and quiet, as if they had to get home to relieve the babysitter. Then coats started rustling, whispers became impolitely perceptible, and the audience grew ever more restless. The Kaufmann Auditorium in the 92nd Street Y was turning into an unhappy, however cultured, hubbub. But David Mamet droned on, inexorably [...]
Meet Your Match on Craigslist–by a Victorious Veteran
by Prof Barbara Foster 04/20/2008Neighborhood: Midtown
As the New Years Eve hullabaloo in Times Square exploded, I followed suit with a cataclysmic orgasm. That was the good news! Then things became Byzantine! Did complications arise because I met Desmond on Craigslist, where a dizzying succession of weirdoes and losers answered my ad? Since that New Years, I’ve evolved a strategy, plus [...]
Lower Torso Must be Covered in Food Area
by Kelly Kreth 04/20/2008Neighborhood: Midtown
I’ll admit it, I was uptight. I didn’t know what to expect and tend to have social anxiety in big groups, even when the folks that comprise them are fully clothed. I sat uncomfortably in the Beamer, cruising down 2nd. Still, I don’t consider myself a prude and the opportunity to go and view seemed [...]
