You are currently browsing the stories about the Uncategorized neighborhood

Talking Back: My First Encounter with the Human Microphone

by 12/31/2011
Neighborhood: Financial District, Uncategorized

I first visited Occupy Wall Street on a chilly evening in the middle of October. A few hundred people were gathered near the eastern steps of Zuccotti Park for the nightly meeting of the General Assembly. On the steps a young man was shrieking inaudibly. A few yards away, a jackhammer was being applied to [...]

Passing For 62

by 12/15/2011
Neighborhood: Uncategorized, Union Square, Williamsburg

Every Spring, tennis players in New York City who want to play on the city courts have to buy a tennis permit. The Parks Department doubled the price this year to $200 for an adult permit. Seniors only pay $20 . If I can pass for 62, I’ll save $180. I'm unemployed. The first time [...]

We Had Never Heard of Pearl Harbor

by 12/09/2011
Neighborhood: Featured, Uncategorized, Upper West Side

I hated Saturdays. We had been moderately observant Jews in the small German town where we had lived before we fled to the US. The trauma and anxiety of starting over in a new land with two young children and the horror stories that were filtering out of Europe pushed my mother towards the security [...]

Payback

by 12/01/2011
Neighborhood: Midtown, Uncategorized

My first real job was in a recording studio on 8th Avenue and 44th Street, producing movie commercials for broadcast on the radio. I was the second engineer, which sounds a lot more impressive than it was. I set up microphones, recorded the talent, edited sound effects and music, layered the voice over the background [...]

Dr. Shoe

by 12/01/2011
Neighborhood: Uncategorized, Upper West Side

The next time your life coach tells you to reinvent yourself, think of this. During the years I worked on West 57th Street, I would sometimes browse in Daffy's, a discount department store. I grew to expect to see (and hear) a certain salesperson who roamed the women's shoe department, intoning, "Doctor Shoe here! Doctor [...]

The Red Berets

by 11/11/2011
Neighborhood: Midtown, Restaurant Row, Uncategorized

In my youth I wore a red beret. Twenty-some years ago, I was a New York City Guardian Angel who patrolled Restaurant Row with Curtis Sliwa and his wife, Lisa, and about ten other vigilantes. We were a small group who made a lot of noise. We also patrolled the “A” train, which we nicknamed [...]

The Cry of Tarzan

by 10/11/2011
Neighborhood: Midtown, Uncategorized

Back in the 1970’s, my girlfriends and I decided to spend a Saturday night without boys at a restaurant in midtown called Jacques. Long gone now, Jacques was a cool, elegant white table-cloth place that stayed open late and served delicious Hungarian food. We looked lovely walking in, in our pretty summer dresses and soft [...]

Harlem Girls

by 09/21/2011
Neighborhood: Harlem, Uncategorized

I love this train station. 125th St. The 1 is sentimental, alluring. It’s Ice T’s shadow in the credits of Law and Order SVU, It’s an isolated and spectacular scene that rises from below at 125th street, and Harlem is unfolded from panoramic elevation. I stood on 125th street, listening the rumble above me as the [...]

Brightness In A Darkened City

by 09/19/2011
Neighborhood: Uncategorized

On the morning of August 14, 2003, my wife Catherine and I learned that she was pregnant for the first time. That evening we sat huddled in the darkened Chelsea apartment building stairwell of an old friend, waiting for her return home from work, riding out a vast summer blackout. We lived in Brooklyn and [...]

Café Espresso

by 09/19/2011
Neighborhood: Featured, Little Italy, Uncategorized

When I moved to Little Italy in the fall of ’82, my ground floor studio on Mott Street was directly next door to the Café Espresso. This did not appear to be a fact that bore much significance, as the café was a broken down mess of a place, with faded gold letters peeling off [...]

Manhattan Eyeline

by 09/11/2011
Neighborhood: Uncategorized, West Village

September 10th, 2001. 6:30 PM. The corner of 11th Street and Fifth Avenue. The weather is glorious. The air is crisp. The sky, tranquil. I am walking downtown en route to a trendy West Village bistro. As I approach the corner of East 10th Street I come to an abrupt stop ... “I never realized [...]

My Friend, The Fire Chaplain

by 09/11/2011
Neighborhood: Chelsea, Uncategorized, Washington Heights

I met Mychal Judge in the spring of 1985 when my boyfriend, Javier, and I decided to get married. As a lapsed Catholic, estranged from the Church for over a decade, I was tormented with guilt and worry, yet I wanted to have a church wedding without having to account for prior errant ways—our daughter, [...]