You are currently viewing the stories for “October 2003.”
Photos: Matthew Roberts They were boilermakers. They were blue collar guys in a labor union "local No. 5" in Queens and they had made a ton of cash by day trading on the market. These guys had done it all legally and legitimately, sort of, doing the same after market trading that Putnam Securities and other mutual funds are now [...]
For three years, I lived with the blinds that came on the windows when I’d moved in: plastic, listing, motel-room-beige blinds. While barely scraping by on a teacher’s salary, purchasing window treatments isn't a high priority. When the blinds finally collapsed, the bare windows looked so tall and bright, so pleased to have been freed-up, that I didn’t have the [...]
The Editors of Mr. Beller's Neighborhood and The Whitney Museum Invite you to a Party on Friday, November 7th. 945 Madison Avenue, at 75th Street. 6-9pm Admission to the party (and the whole museum!) is whatever you want, including free. There will be a reading featuring Phillip Lopate, Rachel Cline, and Thomas Beller. Snacks, Drinks, Doo-Dads, Door-Prizes, and an audio [...]
The air on the fourteenth floor of 1 Police Plaza is a little thick, and Captain Z. wheezes. "You’re wheezing," I say. "I am not," he says, and pulls out his asthma inhaler, shakes it, and takes a puff. His lung sounds immediately clear. It’s 4:30 on Thursday, August 14, exactly nineteen minutes after the power went out. I had [...]
Now Elle stands to demonstrate the Bunny dip— Playboy’s signature manner of serving drinks. She is all cool grace: knees together, a slight roll, the bosom strategically directed away from the customer while the Bunny tail rises. “When I got out of school in 1965,” Elle says, returning to her stool at the bar, “every job I went for: they [...]
My devotion to fashion shows began with the designer Cynthia Rowley. About six years ago I inherited an invitation to her show when a fashion editor at the magazine where I worked couldn't attend. I still remember grabbing a cab at the last minute and scrambling in as the show was just beginning. Sly Stone's "If You Want Me to [...]
I’ve always been a bit obsessed by mastheads, and one of my favorite mastheads to peruse is that of The Paris Review. The print is very small, because there are so many names to fit on the page. The normal fluctuations of people arriving and vanishing from a magazine do not apply here; a name might get moved from one [...]
When I first moved to New York I worked at a large accounting firm in west Midtown and lived in Yorkville, at 90th and Second. One day in early October, about two months after I began my job, I decided to walk home from work. I determined that I could walk on Fifth Avenue until I reached 90th Street, at [...]
