You are currently viewing the stories for July, 2002

Did You Show Fear?

by 07/30/2002
Neighborhood: Midtown

Le Parker Meridien on West 57th is not the type of hotel where my parents took my siblings and me when we weren’t camping or staying with relatives. It wasn’t in my budget during the winter of 2000 either. At the time I felt self-conscious of each cold step taken across the hard marble floors. […]

Claude, at Max’s Kansas City

by 07/28/2002
Neighborhood: Park Avenue South

Claude was smart and talented and I was beautiful but both of us were too boring to hang around with. That was what they thought at the Playhouse of the Ridiculous where we were each featured members of the chorus in a play called, “The Moke Eater” that ran most midnights at Max’s Kansas City. […]

My Mortal Enemy

by 07/27/2002
Neighborhood: Brooklyn, Brooklyn Heights

Illustrations by Elisha Cooper We all need a mortal enemy the way that we need true love. True love is love that will sweep us off our feet. We’ll live our life happily ever after if we find it: we won’t need to pay bills, we won’t have a cold or any illness, we’ll never […]

Drinking Redneck-Style

by 07/23/2002
Neighborhood: Chelsea

Manhattan just doesn’t make for good redneck living. You can’t bag a 12-point buck, park a Ford F250, get a gun permit, or buy a tin of Skol in this city. If you like Nascar racing, the N.R.A., Rush Limbaugh, and personalized bug-deflectors, finding like-minded friends won’t be any easier. Worst of all, as far […]

Stinky Versus Shakey

by 07/17/2002
Neighborhood: East Village

Lisandra and I both graduated from the same college with writing degrees and hopes of being comedy writers, but after graduation, neither one of us had a job. When I met Lisandra, she was a grad student with a cushy part-time assistant job. She spent her days trolling for MP3s, making copies, and listening to […]

The Pigeon Bagel

by 07/17/2002
Neighborhood: Gramercy Park

I was sitting on a green bench outside of a cafe on Irving Place, on a hot day with a blaring sun. I was in one of those moods where I was thinking of everything bad that had ever happened to me. I noticed a huge bagel on the edge of the sidewalk. It was […]

Helpless in a Highrise

by 07/13/2002
Neighborhood: Upper East Side

Several summers ago, my central air conditioning let loose. A fast drip became a flood. My daughter discovered the problem during the eleven o’clock news, walking around in socks that became cold and wet. I called the doorman, requesting that the superintendent come immediately. Often surly, Ely intimidates many residents in the building, who naturally […]

Outward Bound on the East River

by 07/11/2002
Neighborhood: Multiple, The East River

It was the beginning of summer and my two young sons had taken to counting Jaguars. “There’s one!” Alex, then eight, would cry, elated, from the backseat of the car. “Oh, there’s another one.” “Look over there—there’s two more!” five-year-old Ferran would trill. Anyone unfamiliar with the Hamptons might have assumed we were on a […]

Urgent and Confidential in the David Letterman Building

by 07/11/2002
Neighborhood: Midtown

Through four years of college Louise Holmes was always in my dreams and always out of my reach. So you might imagine the huge surge of adrenaline when one Friday afternoon, two years after graduation, I obeyed the DON’T WALK sign at 53nd and Broadway, looked to my left and discovered she was standing next […]

Code Blue: A Police Officer Unwinds

by 07/11/2002
Neighborhood: Harlem

Most evenings will find Michael Johnson, a New York City Police Officer, sitting at home alone in front of his TV with a bottle of Hennessy near by. Hennessy is top shelf he says. It doesn’t leave you with a hangover. Michael doesn’t drink every night to get drunk, according to Michael. He doesn’t even […]

London Terrace: Swim Free or Die

by 07/11/2002
Neighborhood: Chelsea

The Great London Terrace Rent Strike began in the Fall of 1992 over the swimming pool. Once billed as “the largest apartment complex in the world,” London Terrace occupies an entire square city block on the north side of 23rd street between Ninth and 10th avenues. The “Great Briton in Manhattan” opened in 1929 with […]

Roller Skating on Pearl Street, circa 1940

by 07/11/2002
Neighborhood: Lower Manhattan

There were no rollerblades in those days. We wore our roller skates on our shoes. The skates had straps that buckled across the instep — clamps, also referred to as “clams,” that we tightened with the all-important skate key we wore on a string around our necks. The wheels themselves were ball bearings; in fact, […]