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Naughty and Not Nice on Craigslist
by Daphne 12/15/2007Neighborhood: Midtown
As always when I break up with a boyfriend, I go back to trusted Craigslist. There’s something comforting about shopping for sex on the internet. Safety behind the screen. This time, I was more daring. I wanted a dominant man. This much I knew for sure. I’ve had a lot of mediocre sex in my [...]
The Opening
by Roberta Allen 12/01/2007Neighborhood: Manhattan
In the gallery, I saw a woman on video shave her pubic hair and later, walk naked through Venice, but it turns out that I missed the best part of another performance piece in which an artist slowly releases a raw egg from her vagina, throws it at the screen where it smashes–as though in [...]
Travels With Travis
by Cynthia Kraman 10/28/2007Neighborhood: Outer Boroughs, Queens
Travis Barker–he of the Eminem-a-like hip hop wigger lifestyle replete with marital discord (in his iteration it includes a catfight between the old ball and chain and pre-prison Paris Hilton)–yes, that Travis Barker, was briefly my boon companion aboard a rather small US Air carrier for some four hours when the traffic radar in Atlanta [...]
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 [...]
Losing Your Mind at the Russian-Turkish Baths
by Jed Lipinski 07/28/2007Neighborhood: East Village
I’ve been living half a block away from the Russian-Turkish Baths on 268 East 10th St for two years, and until the other day I’d never been inside. The sidewalk thereabouts smells faintly of eucalyptus, like parts of San Francisco, but not because of the trees (which are mainly gingko and ailanthus). Eucalyptus and lavender [...]
Window Displays
by Kevin Nolan 07/20/2007Neighborhood: Midtown
Herald Square is not a good neighborhood in which to work. In fact, it’s not a neighborhood at all. It’s an area. On street level there is nowhere to go, nowhere to hide. Office buildings empty into crowds of slow-moving shoppers who move in and out of the oxymoronic Manhattan Mall. They move about at [...]
It Wasn’t Our Turn
by Thomas R. Ziegler 07/20/2007Neighborhood: Bronx, Outer Boroughs
Arriving at work for the night tour on October 29, 1974 I discover the firehouse to be as abandoned and silent as a cemetery at midnight, I was spooked by something but wrote it off to the approach of Halloween when in reality it was actually an omen. I am the first member of the [...]
The Diamond Cutter’s Daughter
by Hadara Bar-Nadav 07/12/2007Neighborhood: Midtown
The mysteries of 47th Street—men in oily black suits and beards the color of tar, swollen red noses and black eyes lined in soot, wiry eyebrows, faces half-hidden by coarse pepper-black hair, tallit dragging from the sweaty hems of their coats. Men with secrets. In their pockets, translucent wax paper folded and folded again like [...]
Kosher Nostra
by Ken Paprocki 06/18/2007Neighborhood: Letter From Abroad
Climbing the steps of the Chelsea townhouse, I hoped the guy who opened the door would be a stud. I found him on Craigslist, in the rideshare section. He was headed to L.A. via Omaha, where I was getting off. Nine days had passed since I answered his cross-country-in-a-cargo-van ad. In that time he assured [...]
The Super With The Toy Face: Redux
by Ennis Smith 12/31/2006Neighborhood: Harlem
[When the site first published Ennis Smith's "The Super With The Toy Face," its impact was felt immediately--not just on the site, but on the literary history of the United States. Smith has sent us a revised version of the piece, which we are happy to publish below. We're going to keep the original up, [...]
Something in Common
by erika 12/31/2006Neighborhood: All Over, Letter From Abroad
As a survivor of a tragic event, I remember it like it was yesterday and yet, it seems like a dream. The first five weeks were surreal. I don’t know how I got through it. My friends helped. Everyone said I was strong–I wasn’t. I wanted to die. I almost did but I held on [...]
I $^(&$#*! NY
by Bonny Finberg 12/31/2006Neighborhood: Lower East Side
6:30 A.M. I’ve only been able to sleep about six hours because there are three bars downstairs which close at around 3 A.M. It’s just getting light. I’m in a corner apartment on the 6th floor overlooking Orchard and Stanton Streets facing South and East. The morning sky is streaked with indigo, pink and brown. [...]
