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Requiem for William A. Shea Municipal Stadium
by Kevin Nolan 08/26/2008Neighborhood: Across the River, Queens
The Mets new home, Citi Field looms in the outfield at Shea Stadium. (Photo: Kevin Nolan) I recall being shocked the first time I heard someone call Shea Stadium a shithole. He was a stranger, a gray-haired man in a mesh Mets cap, missing several bicuspids and an incisor. I was a wee boy walking [...]
Surviving the 5 Boro Bike Tour
by Bryan Charles 06/01/2008Neighborhood: All Over, Manhattan
This winter I spent two months in Michigan working on a book. Halfway through my stay my girlfriend called and said her parents were visiting New York soon, coming from California to ride in the annual Five Boro Bike Tour. She said they wanted us to do it with them. I said I’d think about [...]
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 [...]
The Last Days of Roller Disco
by Kate Daloz 02/17/2008Neighborhood: Brooklyn
Through the cinder-block walls of the roller rink, the beat leaks out onto Empire Boulevard. Inside, it’s two steps from the door to the rail of the rink where the skaters sail towards you, past you, and away, rounding the curve and bouncing to the beat; as they cruise down the far straightaway there is [...]
Tune in Tomorrow
by Richard Panek 02/03/2008Neighborhood: Manhattan
Every weekday and many weekend afternoons at around 12:30, I prepare a light lunch, sit down at the dining room table, and read The New York Times sports section. Which used to sort of surprise me, because I’m not that much of a sports fan. I go to a few baseball games a year. I’ve [...]
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 [...]
A Brooklyn Summer
by Kenneth P. Nolan 01/27/2008Neighborhood: Across the River, Brooklyn
We always arrived at least a half hour early to the hot concrete schoolyard with its two sad hoops. There were loads of us, boys and girls from six to the teens, waiting for PS 154 vacation playground to open and its counselors to throw out the softballs and bats, the volleyballs and pink spaldeens [...]
Washington Square Park Massacre
by Ellen Lindquist 01/19/2008Neighborhood: West Village
It was the first perfect day of spring; the air silky with warmth. People, like the daffodils, were blooming all over Washington Square Park: Bicyclists, street musicians, bag-lunchers, in-line skaters, mothers with strollers. Those who were just standing around, others who were walking—they flew into the air like handkerchiefs tossed by the breeze when the [...]
Re: Abingdon Square Park
by Lee Zimmerman 01/04/2008Neighborhood: West Village
please amend your story about The Fool of Abingdon Square Park. If you would like to be accurate about the facts mentioned in your story, please consider changing that Abingdon Square Park was restored under the auspices of the Greenstreets Program. It was actually funded by the city council in reaction to a petition delivered [...]
Downtown Dyke in Midtown Sports Bar
by Kate Walter 11/04/2007Neighborhood: Midtown
We were three gay women surrounded by a ring of testosterone in an Irish pub in midtown. The Rangers were on TV playing the Sabres in the semifinals taking place down the street in Madison Square Garden. Grown men sat at the bar in team jackets and hats and cheered the onscreen action. Maybe they [...]
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 [...]
