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Tupperware with a Twist
by Dorothy Spears 04/28/2003Neighborhood: West Village
All those who believe Tupperware parties have gone the way of Suzy Homemaker may have cause to break out the crinoline. As a party at PROUN space studio has recently demonstrated, Tupperware is alive and glib in the West Village. No longer the exclusive domain of Valium-popping post-WWII housewives, this particular Tupperware party, given by [...]
The Ayatollah of Nueva York
by Debbie Nathan 04/14/2003Neighborhood: Brooklyn, Flatbush
It was late 1979 — high point of the Iranian revolution — and the Immigration and Naturalization Service had just announced its nationwide dragnet. I was teaching ESL at Brooklyn College and had just confiscated the vocabulary test of one of the eighteen Iranian Jews in my beginners class. Cheating had increased since the INS [...]
Take Your Pick: A Rally or a Movie Today?
by Vivian Barsanti 03/03/2003Neighborhood: Midtown
On Saturday, February 15th, I woke up at my usual time, and as I pattered around the apartment, I glanced out of my window to check the weather. It was bleak, only twenty-five degrees, with blistering winds, and on 47th Street there were at least twenty police vehicles lining the sidewalks. I started to pick [...]
Becoming A Badass
by Cara O'Flynn 01/31/2003Neighborhood: East Village
A guy with his earlobes stretched around bingo chips and a bullring through his septum pulled a box of nose studs from the glass case. “How do they stay in?” I asked. “It’s a coil and it rests against the outside of your nostril,” he said, making a swirling motion with his finger. I chose the smallest [...]
Inside the Gore War Room on Election Night
by X 06/13/2002Neighborhood: All Over, Letter From Abroad
On this past Tuesday, November 7th, just about every living room in America was its own small war room. Phones rang, people screamed at the television, and moods soared and plummeted (it is an absolute certainty that every single person who cared about the election experienced, on that particular night, at least one gigantic mood [...]
Anti-War: Report from the U.S. Provinces
by Susan Connell-Mettauer 04/25/2002Neighborhood: Letter From Abroad
When U.S. soldiers came back from Vietnam they claimed to have been greeted at airports by hippies who spat at them and called them baby-killers. Recently historians have done research on this, the results of which have been: no evidence to support the spitting allegations, nothing, not one incident, zip. They forgot to talk to me. Not [...]
Mickey Cooks The Tenderloin
by Donald Dewey 02/24/2002Neighborhood: Times Square
Imagine a 20th-century history of the United States that omitted the 1900s, 1930s, 1950s, and 1960s. Something of the kind has attended the chronicling of Times Square’s latest identity as Disneytown, Goofyville, or Mickeymart. Most accounts of West 42nd Street’s conversion have been content to say that for decades the district was a magnet for [...]
Coming to America
by Tej Rae 02/04/2002Neighborhood: Chelsea
Mario is a white African of Portuguese descent. In New York some people tell him, “I didn’t know white people could be from Africa.” When they say this, he shakes his head. “Americans are so ignorant!” he says. “They don’t know about anything outside their own country.” Mario has come to New York from Mozambique, where I [...]
Unhinged, Baby In Tow
by Daniel Forbes 01/03/2002Neighborhood: All Over, Multiple
Part One Distinguishing true from harassing reports – some days, one in four – looms large for Emergency Children’s Services (ECS), the city office that responds to child abuse and neglect throughout the five boroughs during the night, and on weekends and holidays. Fake reports are less of a problem for the weekday nine-to-fivers. But nights [...]
Sign Language
by Seth Harkness 11/16/2001Neighborhood: Clinton
Paul Williams considers it is a blessing that he was once a squeegee man. Not because he enjoyed the work — he didn’t — but because it was only through being a squeegee man that he became a cardboard man, and on that he has built a life. Ten years ago, Paul was that familiar, slightly [...]
The Commissioner
by Brad Tuttle 01/07/2001Neighborhood: Manhattan
“Have you thought about what your Parks nickname should be?” Parks Commissioner Henry Stern asks me. He sits hunched over on a couch at his office inside a turret at the Arsenal, a red brick castle overlooking Central Park that for years was a military base and now serves as headquarters for the New York City [...]
See You in September
by Amy Portnoy 01/02/2001Neighborhood: Upper West Side
She listens to me. She comforts me. She keeps all my secrets. She knows me inside out. She is not my mother. She is…my therapist. The note sat on top of the July issue of Vanity Fair in her waiting room: “I will be on vacation from July 27-September 5th.” “Where are you going?” I demanded as soon as our session started. “Italy.” “Really.” [...]
