You are currently viewing the stories for March, 2002
Inside the Needle: The Chrysler Building Gets Lit
by David Michaelis 03/31/2002Neighborhood: Midtown
The cellar of the Chrysler Building is midtown’s one great monument to the American filling station. It offers (for free) the same perfume of motor oil, the same lulling throb of distant engines, the not unpleasant heat, the mesmerizing hiss of compressed air. And it is always noontime in the Chrysler Building cellar, the same […]
And the Winner Is
by Ona Rynearson 03/28/2002Neighborhood: Central Park
I’m not much of a TV person. I am completely unfaithful to any one show or annual event, certainly anything like the Academy Awards. My theory has always been, why watch a three-hour awards show when I can watch E!, or some other all-celebrity network, and get the highlights in thirty minutes? But this year […]
Three Minutes of Pleasure
by Alex French 03/26/2002Neighborhood: Chelsea
I’m standing on the corner of Ninth Avenue and 14th Street staring up at an enormous billboard advertisement, which in behemoth white letters is instructing me to “ProCreate.” Gaslight, the venue for this evenings HurryDate party, is on the bottom floor of the building directly below that billboard. HurryDate takes fifty eligible singles and pairs […]
The Humming
by Debra Fontaine 03/24/2002Neighborhood: Manhattan
The other day I realized that the further away September 11th gets, the rawer I seem to get, and the less I want to talk about, be reminded of, or think about it. When people ask even the simplest questions about that day, I’m tempted to hand out copies of “Witnessing,” and then, like Forrest […]
The Believer
by Henry Bean 03/24/2002Neighborhood: Multiple
In October 1965, the New York Times received a tip that a young man arrested at a recent Ku Klux Klan demonstration in the Bronx was, in fact, a Jew. His name was Daniel Burros, he was twenty-eight, and lived in Ozone Park, Queens. Until a few months earlier he had been a high-ranking member […]
The God of High School
by Rachel Cline 03/20/2002Neighborhood: Greenwich Village
I don’t think I thought of Eli every single time I walked down lower Seventh Avenue, but I may have. His parents’ West Village brownstone had been a shrine to me in high school insofar as Eli, himself, had been a god. When passing it back then, I craned my neck at the upstairs window […]
Bleeker St. & Hudson St.
by Thomas Beller 03/18/2002Neighborhood: Uncategorized
Bleeker&hudson This page requires QuickTime. Download it here. Navigation Tips To Move Through Image: Hold down mouse button and drag mouse in desired direction. To Zoom In: click on magnifier icon with + or press the shift key. To Zoom Out: click in maginifier icon with – or press the control key.
Victoria’s Dirty Secret
by Gabriel Marc Delahaye 03/15/2002Neighborhood: Midtown
I was temping. My ‘agent’, as I liked to think of him, was overweight and short, with a firm handshake and a friendly manner. He called me “Bud” a lot. Although he was very enthusiastic every time we spoke on the phone, he seemed incapable of placing me in a job that paid more than […]
The Numbers
by Bryan Charles 03/11/2002Neighborhood: Lower Manhattan, World Trade Center
Mr. Beller’s Neighborhood was started in the year 2000, and we have published many stories about what happened in New York on 9/11/2001 and the months that followed. Today is the 20th anniversary of that day. We are featuring one of those stories this week. This story was first published on March 11, 2002. (JM) Here […]
Unbearable Lightness
by Paul W. Morris 03/10/2002Neighborhood: World Trade Center
It’s a trick of the light. Depending on where you stand, the “Tribute in Light” memorial looks more like a pillar of fire descending from heaven than a recreation of the World Trade Center. You’d be forgiven if, after 9/11, you thought you’d never crane your neck to look that high up again, because there […]
Little Girl Lost
by Reid J. Epstein 03/04/2002Neighborhood: Outer Boroughs
Like the homes of many New Yorkers these days, the Illera apartment in Flushing, Queens, has a small American flag taped to the door. Six-year-old Vanessa answers the knock, her hair held back with a stars-and-stripes headband. She walks inside, past the Colombian flag in the kitchen, into the living room. The walls of the […]
The Klein’s Farm Blues
by Mike Wallace 03/04/2002Neighborhood: Outer Boroughs, Queens
Since I wrote my piece about Fresh Meadows a year ago, the sleepy little Klein Farm has exploded into public prominence. In late 2001, word spread that the elder Klein, now happily ensconced out in Jericho, had indeed decided to sell the no-longer profitable farm, despite the younger Klein’s desire to continue the enterprise. (“It’s […]