You are currently viewing the stories for “January 2002.”
This is a re-appreciation of Alfred Kazin's classic Brownsville memoir, "A Walker in the City." Published in 1951, the book captures the summer of 1932 before he went off to college. Some books practically walk on their own, as if borne from the streets they describe. None, perhaps, leaps from their pages quite as emphatically, as lovingly, as Alfred Kazin’s [...]
One night the owner of Sweet and Vicious, Hakan, hurled a block of ice the size of a softball and hit me in the temple. I was in the middle of pouring another drunk girl a Cosmopolitan. It was a Saturday night, and the bar was absolutely packed. Her mouth flew open, revealing a piece of well-chewed gum. I froze, [...]
I do not generally travel by limousine. When the long sleek cars drive by in the mad tangle of traffic I peer curiously at the tinted windows with the rest of the masses, hoping for an elusive glimpse of fame and wealth, Madonna going to the Grammy’s perhaps, or Bono on his way to his Upper East Side apartment. They [...]
In The City. Manhattan. 41st Street and 8th Avenue, seven-thirty Friday morning. I'm waiting on the M10 bus uptown. I have a new job on 57th street. I'm reading my Daily News when I hear a strident voice say, "I'll give you DOUBLE anything you give me. DOUBLE! You give me a dollar, I'll give you TWO. You give me [...]
Photographs by Josh Gilbert The New Face of CBS News? Ed, in winter. Electronic Ed called out to me and I pulled my bicycle over and heard his news: CBS is interested in his story. He was lounging on a stoop on West eleventh street, in the dappled shade. "This Girl, this woman," he corrected himself, "from CBS. She saw [...]
Illustrations by Elisha Cooper They're huddled in the far corner of the office, all of them peering out of the enormous window. They vibe is jittery. "Jumper?" I ask, throwing down my bag. "Yup!" All five exclaim in unison. Sure enough, here we are again. Our generous view has coughed up ringside seats for another round of human tragedy. Standing [...]
"I LOVE THAT MAN A BITCH!" SHOUTS LIAM GALLAGHER. HE JUMPS OUT OF HIS CHAIR and paces around the room in a small tight circle. "If anyone stepped on his toes, I'd cut them off!" Liam sits down, and his voice becomes grave and somber. "I'd do time for 'im. I luv 'im. Me and 'im are cool. But..." and [...]
In the beginning, there was a brownstone with a crackled façade and a ground floor apartment for rent. I took the tour. Hardwood floors, a tiled fireplace, and a country kitchen. But the rooms didn’t get much light. I wanted sunlight, the kind that slid from four windows into the diamond-bright bathroom, the kind that did not reach the window-free [...]
Sal: "You want it short?" I needed a barber not a stylist, in a barbershop not a salon, owned and operated by one man, not a local franchise of a national chain, who would cut my hair, not tag my head like some graffiti artist. I wanted a barber. "I know what you need," my friend Nick said as he [...]
Bogardus was a watch-maker and inventor who was awarded thirteen US patents and one British patent, for clocks, spinning machinery, grinding mills, gas meters, and devices for pressing glass cuttings, working with rubbers and making postage stamps. He built the first cast-iron fa?ade in history in 1848 at 183 Broadway (it has since been destroyed). In 1850, he patented his [...]
The subway station at 53rd Street and Fifth Avenue is among the most heavily trafficked and congested places in New York. Watching people elbow each other for position on the platform during rush hour is like watching two NBA centers do battle in the paint. It's hot, the air is thick, and you can tell by scanning the crowd that [...]
Entering the Rootstein Mannequin Showroom on W.19th Street is just like entering a typical gallery opening, only there's no art on the walls. Very slender people wearing fabulous clothes stand in groups of twos, threes, and fours engaging in hushed, exclusive discussions. You're offered a drink and the stereo system plays some kind of sophisticated world music. No one turns [...]
The other day I got an email forward from a friend, an occurrence that typically happens more often than I brush my teeth in a day. As forwards go, it was all right. It lacked the berserk brilliance of the recent “Every Time You Masturbate God Kills a Kitten” forward, but at least it also lacked the strident grandiosity in [...]
Lenny “The Rage” LaPaglia sat down at the post-fight conference looking like a man who was missing an important limb, though he didn’t know which one. It had been six rounds and countless number of punches to the head since he had stepped into he ring at the Felt Forum. At the time, the expression on his battered and pock-marked [...]
Walking through the backyard to get to the basketball courts, to work out by myself at 6:00am, like I do everyday. It was kind of misty outside and the grass was wet and the benches and ground were slippery. I had on basketball shorts, Orlando sweatshirt, and my ball kicks dribbling the rock through the backyard on the wet floor. [...]
There was once a very good film called Breaking Away about a working-class boy in Bloomington, Indiana, who yearned to be Italian. He sat for hours in his bedroom practising the guitar and playing records of Italian opera. He invented an Italian character for himself, and he successfully wooed a college girl by singing her Italian love songs. It seems [...]
I said my good-byes to Oasis in the lobby of a posh hotel in San Francisco. Elevators ascended to the skies in clear glass tubes and businessmen in dark suits marched in and out while the boys lay around on the overstuffed couches, profoundly hung over, trying to rouse themselves for the sound check for that night's show, the second [...]
We had such great plans. We wanted to kiss off the second millennium, and this goal directed our New Year’s Eve itinerary: a matinée of the "Rocky Horror" stage show (the icon for which, of course, is the juicy pair of lipsticked lips), dinner at Lips (a West Village drag-queen restaurant) and drag-queen extraordinaire Lypsinka's late show with a midnight [...]
As a kid growing up in Brooklyn, much of my life was based on routine. Some I couldn't avoid, some I depended on. Tuesday nights we ate veal cutlets pounded thin by my mother, then breaded, fried and served with a splash of lemon juice. Fridays we had Nona's pizza, rolled out on the flour-covered wooden board on the kitchen [...]
French Roast has a gleaming pane glass window looking out onto Broadway, and a gleaming copper bar inside. From where I stand behind the bar, I see the city outside the window as a collection of lights, darknesses, and people who remain anonymous to me unless they decide to venture through the door of the restaurant. My shift, from 11:30pm [...]
New York City and the US Navy have a relationship that goes right back to the very beginning of the Navy. This is to be expected for a city that is this country's major Atlantic port. From 1801-1966, the principle site for the Navy-New York relationship was in Brooklyn, at the Brooklyn Navy Yard. Its three big piers show up [...]
Newer Entries »
