You are currently viewing the stories for “August 2003.”
8-21-03 Next Wednesday, Mars will be closer to the Earth than it has been in 60,000 years. Already it’s the brightest object in the night sky. I assume by then I will be no closer to having a job. That’s not so bad, really -- by next Wednesday, I will have only been living in New York for a week. [...]
My parents were due in at 6pm on Blackout Thursday. I see them but twice a year, when I travel to their home in Beverly Hills; but this time, for the first time, they were coming to me, to my new "adult apartment" uptown. I was looking forward to entertaining them, had a fridge full of gourmet food and chilled [...]
57th Street, 8th Avenue, midafternoon: I’m at the newsstand when the traffic light goes out. It has the same ominous, empty face a dark stoplight always has. Newsstand man looks up. His light went out too. We turn in tandem. The subway light is out. Now we look at each other. Not good. We shake our heads. Nothing like a [...]
It was a nice Saturday morning, sun shining bright and all. I woke up to get ready to go to my grandmother’s house to go shopping for her. It was about 11:00 a.m. as I got ready to go. I put on my sweatpants, my slippers, a wife beater, and a hoody. I did not have to travel far because [...]
One March afternoon, I was at my neighbor’s house on the balcony. I was excited because it was a nice sunny day, and there were a lot of people outside having fun and listening to music. At the time my neighbor and I were listening to Elvis Crespo, Suavemente, eating nice juicy mangos. She was making her own scene, by [...]
I can remember one Saturday evening, a nice and beautiful day in April. It was about 70 degrees and everyone was happy, showing smiling faces and enjoying the weather. I was at work on 125th Street between 7th & 8th Avenues at McDonalds and it was busy as usual. Then a maniac came inside the store and he began bothering [...]
Two weeks before Christmas, my Aunt Cooklyn and I were decorating. We decorated the Christmas tree, put lights on the windows; we also decorated the apartment door. It was snowing; the exact date was December 8, 2001. “Hurry up, you’re as slow as a half dead chicken, give me the tape.” said Aunt Cooklyn. I said, “OK, but can you [...]
One day I was on the M60 bus going across 125th Street. It was a nice bright sunny day. There were lots of people who had just came from shopping, from all the stores on 125th Street. I was with my friend and my little sister, who is four. My little sister’s name is Maya. She is in Pre- K [...]
Sometimes I think about the reasons why I love New York, but the one thing I love the most about it is the parades in the summer time. When I was in Flatbush, Brooklyn, at my aunt’s house, we stayed to see the parade. It was the West Indian Parade and everyone was outside. There were dancers hyping the crowd [...]
The street fight had happened on 122nd between 2nd and 3rd Avenue in front of a bar. That was not the first fight that had happened on the block. There are many fight on that block. That block is real bad. The big issue that makes the block even worse is all the drugs and gun shootings that go on [...]
It was March 16,1998 around 3:30pm, I remember it like it was just yesterday. As I made my way through my house door from school, I heard the phone ring from the kitchen. I went to drop my books off in my room which is at the end of the hallway. I went back to the kitchen to see who [...]
Finally after eight years I can go back to where it used to be fun for me and other children to hang out at Wagner Project’s pool. It still looks the same but really doesn’t feel the same. The children are still splashing in the water, the babies are still in the baby pool with their parents, but it has [...]
Every day when I come home from a very hard day of school, I walk up the gray stone steps of my old dusty yellow house. And every day there this old lady with a large housedress and old decayed leather slippers is sitting at the top of the steps. She is always sitting in the same spot, nothing budging [...]
It all started about a year ago in the summer time. We all finished going shopping, me and my mother, who is about five foot seven inches tall, wears glasses and is kind of chunky. Along with us was my little sister. We then decided to stop on 117th Street at 3rd Avenue for a bite to eat. Since we [...]
Walking through the backyard to get to the basketball courts, to work out by myself at 6:00 a.m., 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 [...]
It was a nice day, the sun was out and it wasn’t too hot or too cold it was just right. That after noon I was with my friends dub and Dee on the corner of 128th and Lexington Avenue chilling when Dee decided to go to the store. Now that we were walking to the store, dub, Dee and [...]
When I was assigned to photograph the bank manager, something inside me gave a decisive nod. The bank manager was someone I could hate. The bank manager was someone I could hunt. Even though he had suffered this horrible experience the day before, I looked at the photographs of him flailing on the ground, attached to what he thought was [...]
While studying piano in college in Mississippi in the mid-seventies, I discovered I could make money with my ability at the keyboard. I played the pipe organ at a church in Hazlehurst, where my parents still live, every Sunday morning. During the week I played the piano for singing lessons and ballet classes in Jackson where I went to a [...]
