You are currently viewing the stories for “July 2005.”
It happened on an unseasonably mild February night around 9:30 between 23rd and Christopher Streets on the No. 1 train: I fell in love all over again on the New York City subway. I was on my way home from seeing a movie alone in Times Square, a depressing Oscar-nominated flick about a woman stuck in a vicious cycle of [...]
I have lived in Brooklyn my entire life, but my name and number appear on little black books of matches all across the city. No, I'm not a slinky sultry hot babe whose name and number decorate bathroom walls and little match books in bars. You don't "Call Sairy for a Good Time." On the contrary, these little books belong [...]
"Hey, can you spare some coin?" The guy sounded pleasant enough as he approached our car. Todd was tucking his spare keys into the ashtray and I was applying Mac lipstick (ooh baby) to the sounds of John Briggs (a local jazzy techno artist). We climbed out of Todd's shiny 1998 Pathfinder, we were summer-drunk and ready to hit the [...]
It had been quite a long time since I’d last visited the Anthology Film Archives, that temple of avant-garde and everything cinema in the East Village. Last night, however, I lost my own personal battle with the heat and decided, fatigued and irritated, that a movie in the dark and cool of a film theater would be just the thing [...]
Cops. The left lane is for passing only, did you know that? I must have forgotten since driver’s ed class, like I’ve forgotten to take speed limits seriously. Even when you literally can’t afford not to, even in daylight. Which I can’t and which it is. But I’m going ninety in the left lane and ten minutes into my morning [...]
I go in the afternoon, before the hordes set in and children are let out from school. Your Fairway, my speedway, basket in hand, I dash past soft, yielding cheese;/crisp baguettes and spears of tender green, fast as I can. Racing through the crowded market, I avoid the stew of white-haired ladies with heavily laden carts/ and elbows, pointy and [...]
12:15: Heading downtown in car for two o'clock appointment with lawyer. Half-listening to Leonard Lopate on WNYC. Callers telling stories of bizarre summonses for unfair parking tickets. Mentally pat self on back for six months ticket-free. Cop calls in. Defensive. Won't give name. Claims cops have no ticket "quotas" to meet, just "production goals." Claims he's "just following orders." Sounds [...]
Emil Schupp always sat on the same stool at the end of the counter in Artie's Luncheonette at 223 West 14th Street. Artie was my father and he let me help out at the grill one summer. Every morning, same time, same stool, same toast and tea and tomato juice, Emil sat there for exactly an hour, calculating bowling averages. [...]
I stink. It’s not a good stink, musky, that hints of a hard workout but doesn’t offend. I’m offensive. I’ve been in New York for a month-and-a-half. I still haven’t done laundry. The one suitcase I brought held seven shirts, six pairs of boxers, four pairs of pants (one pair only for occasions), two pairs of shorts, and three pairs [...]
For reasons that involve politics, religion and the pursuit of life's persistent questions, I found myself gardening in front of my Church one Sunday afternoon in June 2005. First Church is located in Detroit, on the side of Forest Avenue where students rarely park, lest their cars turn up missing when they return from class. The Church has been a [...]
The first time I ever went to a rave it was in the old Packard Plant. I didn’t know the name of the Plant at the time, nor did I know where it stood in relation to the city at large. I was told that the event was “at Packard,” not realizing that this was shorthand for a historic auto [...]
For 10 years I lived in New York City in the House of Carpati. Moving to New York after college was an ideal next step for a person who wanted to be a magazine editor, so that’s what I did. After spending the summer post-grad as a nanny in Scarsdale, and then six weeks house sitting for friends of the [...]
In a small Detroit suburb referred to as Ferndale is a bar known as "Como's." It sits just off Main Street, which is quiet, solemn. Streetlamps give off an orange glow over a trash-littered sidewalk. Empty storefront windows line the street. Faded signs stand out from the few businesses that struggle to remain open. Buildings are old, uncared for, withering. [...]
