You are currently viewing the stories for December, 2002
Sunshine Travel’s Challenge (survive!)
by Jennifer Sears 12/12/2002Neighborhood: Chinatown
“Seats are left,” the man assures me over the phone, “but please, hurry, hurry.” Sunshine Travel Tours won’t take reservations but he provides me with directions to the agency in Chinatown. A frequent traveler to Boston, I was happy to see the ad in the Village Voice offering one way tickets for $15 compared to […]
Jam Master Jay: His Sounds Will Stay
by Patrick J. Sauer 12/11/2002Neighborhood: Jamaica, Queens
I would like to believe that I went out to Queens to leave the My Adidas sweatshirt in tribute to Jam-Master Jay, but I’d be lying. I’ve long gotten a superiority chuckle watching "mourners" on television who bring hand-painted signs, 99-cent store teddy bears, daily newspapers with 64-pt. headlines announcing the celebrity death, and acres […]
Knicks Notes: The Golden Age of Losing
by Hal Sirowitz 12/04/2002Neighborhood: Clinton
The more games the New York Knicks won the more they raised the ticket prices. I could only afford to see them at Madison Square Garden if they continued to have losing seasons. I’d buy a ticket from a scalper. Instead of charging more he’d sell it for a fraction of what it was worth, […]
Unfinished City
by by Said Shirazi 12/02/2002Neighborhood: Greenwich Village, Multiple
Lately when I go for a walk I make a vow not to walk under any scaffolding, in protest of there being so much of it these days. Two minutes later I realize I’m walking under scaffolding. One day I stopped and looked at the scaffolding around the NYU tower at East 8th Street and […]
Bad Day in Chinatown
by David C. McAninch 12/02/2002Neighborhood: Chinatown
Everyone has bad days. But for some souls fate comes down hard and fast and delivers a load of bad luck so rotten that the events of that person’s life from that point on have to be filed into two categories: before the bad day and after. Around dinnertime on a still, muggy June evening, […]
Not Far From Heaven
by Thomas Beller 12/02/2002Neighborhood: West Village
I was at the bar of Florent very late Sunday night. A snow storm was raging outside. Pastis, that seat of slutty mayhem, sat up the block. There are now tastefully bright lights all over the meat packing district, where there was once just meat and the people who packed it. It was strange to […]
Detachment and the Yoga Teacher
by Annie Bruno 12/02/2002Neighborhood: All Over, Multiple
First of all, and please note that this preventive axiom applies to many long and painful life detours, never take a job that you hate, particularly when it happens to be with a large company where people refer to working in their offices until 11:00 p.m. as “staying late” and recount it—“I could just relax. […]
Neighborhood Dogs: Drawings by Elisah Cooper
by bye 12/02/2002Neighborhood: All Over, Multiple
Once upon a time there was a drawing of a man and his dog. It was by William Steig. It was what the distinguished artist produced when we asked him to draw something that we at the Neighborhood could use as a, a, a…. (it’s to the right)… something. A Logo is the word I […]
Chemical Fire
by Jasmine Dreame Wagner 12/01/2002Neighborhood: Brooklyn, Sunset Park
The building, Morgan described, was a monolith of brick with a flat, black hole blasted out of the side. Standing at the edge of the entrance, he peered inside and swore that he saw someone moving. He shivered and stumbled to the curb, then quickly retraced his footsteps back up First Avenue, skirting the fringe […]