You are currently viewing the stories for January, 2002
A Rhythm of Sounds
by J.B. McGeever 01/27/2002Neighborhood: Outer Boroughs
If I leave the windows open in my classroom, I can hear the endless hum of traffic coming from the Long Island Expressway. There’s a certain degree of wonder in its sound. So many people, an endless whoosh of thoughts and dreams whipping past me like rush hour- forever. There’s this postcard I keep in […]
The Brie Burger
by Gabriel Marc Delahaye 01/20/2002Neighborhood: West Village
There were a lot of things that should have been taken into account before our plane even touched the ground, but they were not taken, and we just kind of sat there. It rained all week. I’d come about three days earlier and Travis showed up later, his plane was a little delayed. I’d been […]
The Doctor From Norfolk, Virginia
by Brook Hauser 01/20/2002Neighborhood: Clinton
During the summer, approximately 25 to 35 students occupy the brownstone at 305 W. 29th St. and Eighth Avenue, a few blocks from Penn Station and Madison Square Garden. I’m living on the third floor, flanked by the kitchen and the staircase; paying a weekly rent of about $200 for a single room with a […]
Hungry Like the Wolf
by A. Leigh 01/20/2002Neighborhood: East Village
Allison and I met on the dance floor at Sway. The sign on the wall indicated “NO DANCING” but defiance was in the air that night, and what’s wrong with a little good time anyway? I felt like partying, was out to meet somebody, and always loosen up when dancing. I was wearing my Mariachi-inspired […]
Behind the Counter at Ivy’s Books
by Jay Pearsall 01/20/2002Neighborhood: Upper West Side
I hadn’t thought of Tiny Teeth in years. But there he was, invoked I guess, by my having told Tom (the manager of the small bookstore I own on the Upper West Side) about him earlier in the day. We don’t really hire high school kids, but I’d taken Tiny Teeth on about 10 years […]
Trash Like White Elephants
by Minter Krotzer 01/20/2002Neighborhood: Brooklyn, Greenpoint
There is a man who looks just like Hemingway who lives on India Street in Brooklyn in a building called the Astral, a dismal place with huge arching windows to remind you of its past glamour as an apartment building for international sailors (Mae West is said to have been born there). He lives right […]
Brother Theodore is Dead
by Nick Mamatas 01/20/2002Neighborhood: West Village
Brother Theodore astonishes David Letterman Brother Theodore was always a ghost to me. When I returned to Manhattan in the early 1990s, Theodore was a specter haunting downtown. His one-man show, terrible and comic all at once, was still running on 13th Street, and posters boosting the show were everywhere. I saw them at the […]
The Intervention
by Jim O'Grady 01/20/2002Neighborhood: West Village
The play was going to be close. The runner, my best friend Sam, was trying to go from first to third on a ball lined into the gap in right center field. But the guy in right had jumped off with the bat-crack and knifed in smoothly. He’d gloved the ball and was launching a […]
A Tale of Two Coats
by Theodore Mann 01/20/2002Neighborhood: West Village
I met the homeless man during a late night cigarette break on my apartment’s stoop. He was a black man wearing a tan barn jacket in the dead of winter; it was stained and full of holes. The man was friendly, though, and he smiled at me with a toothy, unshaven face. He pointed at […]
Village Cowboys
by Deborah Soffel 01/20/2002Neighborhood: West Village
During my junior year of high school my mother announced to me that I was unfit to be lived with. I was rude, obnoxious, wild, irritating, irresponsible, undisciplined, unpleasant, and ungrateful. I was therefore to make arrangements to move in with my father and his new wife at the soonest possible date. I was being […]
July, My Love
by J.D. Arens 01/20/2002Neighborhood: All Over, Manhattan
I saw it all from a bench in the park, sitting next to some gathered pigeons and a pile of peanut shells. And nearby, across the street, a statue and an American flag. The man with the black hat and the enormous red-shirted gut was sprawled out on a bench and he appeared to be […]
Pasta Peculiar
by Richard Nash 01/20/2002Neighborhood: SoHo
The elevator doors open and all I see is pasta drying on cardboard tubes. Multi-colored striped pasta, as if the most important costume from a prep school’s production of Sondheim’s Joseph and His Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat had been passed through some improbably large papershredder. Lasagne sheets from the kitchen of Mimi Oka and Doug Fitch, […]