You are currently viewing the stories for January, 2001
Elevator Logic
by Zachary Levin 01/29/2001Neighborhood: Lower Manhattan
The brass-plated elevator door opens, revealing it’s operator, a man named Kenny Coleman. A horde of cops, assistant district attorneys, and clerical workers bustle inside as if they’re heading to a sale at Macy’s rather than for work at the state court building at 80 Centre St. In his mid-40s, thin-faced and short, and wearing […]
Hell’s Apples
by Joseph Scalia 01/27/2001Neighborhood: Boro Park, Brooklyn
So such of my life then was seasonal. As kids we had yo-yos, marbles, water pistols, pea shooters and box scooters, and appeared in the street with whatever the change of weather called for. Now it was carpet gun time. I was the best carpet gun maker on the block — in the whole neighborhood […]
Is She Sick?
by Judy Pokras 01/24/2001Neighborhood: Midtown
I wanted to be a writer for The Jon Stewart Show and figured that sending them a resume would be like sending junk mail; it would get tossed. I needed to do something with impact. So I did the logical thing. I bought a pair of white jockey shorts (size large, so there would be […]
The Daniel Boone of Jersey City
by Nick Mamatas 01/11/2001Neighborhood: Across the River, Letter From Abroad
When I left the Lower East Side of Manhattan in 1996, the stores on either side of my building included a bodega that sold heroin out the back and an empty, bombed-out hole. Today, a “funky” bridal shop and a tattoo parlor stand in their places. When a tattoo parlor is a sign of urban […]
Foot Fetish at the Food Emporium
by Dee Alpert 01/11/2001Neighborhood: Upper West Side
It was around 5 p.m. and I was on my way home. It was hot. I was tired. Feet hurt, and that’s not all. Spent all day standing in a heated sardine can courtroom in Housing Court. My back hurt. And my ego – after dumbass judge beat up on me for something I had […]
A Beverly Hills Holiday
by A. Leigh 01/10/2001Neighborhood: Letter From Abroad
I’m at my folks house in Beverly Hills. It is a fresh, clean, much needed change of place from my usual East 6th Street digs. It’s a lazy Thursday afternoon, the 21st of December, I am lounging about in a Champion sweatsuit, and hanging a few ornaments on our Jewish Christmas tree, which stands 11 […]
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 […]
Three Lives Books
by Daniel Openheimer 01/02/2001Neighborhood: Greenwich Village
There’s a cult of the Independent Bookstore, and Three Lives & Company, a small bookstore in the West Village, is one of its temples. Anne Roiphe proselytizes in the New York Times: “Three Lives feels like a personal library. You know that ideas and words matter here, that someone has handled each book and knows […]
The Stool Pigeon and the Indian Lake
by Irving Bronsky, M.D. 01/02/2001Neighborhood: Bronx, East Bronx
It never occurred to me that Norman would chicken out and become a stool pigeon. He was aggressive, a good athlete, a gambler, (for baseball cards and streetcar transfers), a veteran explorer of our neighborhood and Crotona Park. He was a very persuasive talker, a take-over guy and besides, he loved banana and mustard sandwiches. […]
Press Clips
by Thomas Beller 01/02/2001Neighborhood: Uncategorized
Two articles about the site that appeared in the paper of record. December 3, 2000 CITY LORE; A Web Site Reverberates With the Din of Urban Life By JIM O’GRADY I SEE it as a bizarre, sprawling narrative connected to the city.” The speaker, Thomas Beller, 35, paced his apartment on West 11th Street, a […]
November, November: Stop the Game
by B.W. Behling 01/02/2001Neighborhood: Upper East Side
Since last April I’ve been living in Allentown, Pennsylvania, and managing a pet shop which is part of a five store chain. A lady and a gentleman came into my store the other day to buy dog food and it was obvious that they’d been arguing. They continued the argument while they shopped, with the […]
Dirty Old Men And the Women Who Love Them
by Alexander Chancellor 01/02/2001Neighborhood: Letter From Abroad
There were strong reasons for thinking this, because she not only met her future husband in Houston, Texas, the city that pioneered the breast transplant, but she did so as a stripper in Rick’s Cabaret, the most famous topless bar in Houston. Everything I know about Rick’s comes from an enormously long article, which I […]