B-Man: The Next Door Neighbor From Hell

I live next to the neighbor from hell. B-man is about 5/10, slim and dark skinned. He always wears a black kango and one of his old black suits. I can tell they’re so old because of all the wrinkles in it,cand besides that its faded. On the east side of Harlem on 129th Street […]

Creole Commuting

It’s 12 degrees outside and I am standing at the corner of Flatbush and Glenwood Avenues waiting for the bus.  It’s dark already on this gloomy January day and the wind gusts feel like razor blades on my face.  There are about fifty other people waiting at the bus stop.  We are all weighted down […]

Confessions of an Accidental Voyeur

I was sitting in the front seat of Frank’s Cadillac Seville when he pulled out of a parking space and whipped into a u-turn without looking. We both saw the approaching headlights too late…and yeah, we got hit. In those pre-seat belt law days, my left hand reached out to the glove compartment to brace […]

Count Down in Red Hook

On a day of contradiction last February, my wife Kim and I test drove a mini-SUV through a few of the less heralded ‘hoods. The sun was brilliant, cutting through the brutal cold and lighting up the harbor with an intense glare off the snow and the ice floes, a simultaneously bone-chilling and body-warming type […]

Arbor Day for Rudy

I really did try all the conventional methods. Really. I wrote imploring letters to the Office of the Mayor, I called my City Council members’ secretary at all hours, I testified at public hearings before assorted half-awake bureaucrats. Nothing and again nothing. It would have been less frustrating to tell it all to the guy […]

Closing Time

Rio Mar was a Spanish restaurant that once occupied a little wedge of space between Little West Twelfth and Gansevoort Street in the meatpacking district. It had been there for decades, an obscure treat, and even when flashy Pastis opened directly across the street, it remained esoteric, hidden in plain site. From the outside you […]

Co-op Confessional

Wednesday 28 August, 7:30pm I sit on a folding chair in a circle of would-be members, sneaking handfuls of free whole-wheat pretzels as I wait my turn to speak. The twenty-three other people at the orientation with me are fresh-faced and earnest, dressed in shades of Lands End and L.L. Bean. When asked their reasons […]

The Comeback

Every high tide harvested beer bottles, oil containers, fishing lines, shiny candy wrappers, and plastic bags onto the sloping shoreline of Pattaya. At low tide I collected the trash into sea-worn rice bags. Within a half-hour the sand was devoid of any human refuse and I could smugly regard the pristine sand with pride. While […]

Going Home to Maine