You are currently viewing the stories for August, 2005
Smiling at the Rain
by Eric C. Novack 08/25/2005Neighborhood: Central Park
Have you ever had a great experience or adventure and you want to share it with every one you know, but you just don’t know where to begin? Well, that seems to be my particular problem right now. I’ve been staring at my laptop for at least an hour and I still can’t seem to […]
Dog vs. Duck
by Gabriel Cohen 08/22/2005Neighborhood: Central Park
The model boat pond in Central Park is often the scene of fierce competition, but on a recent sunny afternoon I witnessed a real life-or-death struggle. A yellow retriever named Sam bounded away from his owners and plunged into the water to chase the pond’s resident ducks. At first only a few passersby noticed what […]
The Sea-Green Incorruptible
by Luc Sante 08/22/2005Neighborhood: All Over, Multiple
[Mr. Beller’s Neighborhood is proud to share the following, a chapter of a new book from Soft Skull Press called “America’s Mayor: The Hidden History of Rudy Giuliani’s New York” edited by Robert Polner and with a preface by Jimmy Breslin. The book is an anthology that includes reminiscences and critical dissections of the Giuliani […]
Chronicle of a Divorce Foretold
by Debbie Gershenowitz 08/18/2005Neighborhood: Brooklyn, Park Slope
The F train hurtles through the tunnel and suddenly we’re above ground. Lower Manhattan twinkles in the distance. I gaze at the view and for a second my anxiety has disappeared. As the skyline recedes, my stomach muscles return to the knotted state they’ve been in since this afternoon, when I made the appointment to […]
Sweat: The Fortified Connoisseur
by Saki Knafo 08/18/2005Neighborhood: Brooklyn, Park Slope
I grew up in Windsor Terrace, a fan-shaped neighborhood hinged on a verdant traffic circle near Prospect Park. The circle was a lowlife Mecca, a point of convergence for the neighborhood’s various derelicts, criminals, drunks, addicts, lunatics, loners, vagabonds, and weirdoes. In the summer of my sixteenth year I took a job that occasioned my […]
Dante’s Traveling Inferno
by Fran Giuffre 08/11/2005Neighborhood: Across the River, Multiple
Luck was on my side. The “Q” train pulled into the 34th Street station headed to Brooklyn. I was relieved, not just because I would be whisked home by the air conditioned subway train. It meant that I wouldn’t have to stand on one of the hottest subway platforms in the city, forced to breathe […]
The Red Room
by Maya Cadwell 08/08/2005Neighborhood: Uncategorized
She did not call him. She leaned back, listened to the music and examined the ceiling. slicing eyes. beauty and envy in one frame. “I’m here,” she tossed. “Seriously?” “Yeah. In the Red Room.” Her pink, dainty pumps wept silver jewels in the fronts. Her hair was maybe too big but it worked. The drive […]
Should Have Worn Boots
by Alicia Sanzica 08/07/2005Neighborhood: Uncategorized
I pull on my brand new Calvin Klein white cashmere coat, wrap a cozy hand-knitted scarf around my neck, and then pull the matching mittens over my hands. I glance outside into the snowy night and curse because my hair will frizz in the snow. I scurry out the door of my apartment building and […]
Cleanup in Aisle Five
by Chris Sullivan 08/05/2005Neighborhood: Brooklyn, Brooklyn Heights
I wanted to buy a book the other night. I had read an old review of “The Minotaur Takes a Cigarette Break” and wanted to pick up a copy. So on my way home, I decided to stop at the Court Street Barnes & Noble. Things were fine when I got off the subway. I […]
Industrial Ruins, Digital Gallery: An Interview with Lowell Boileau
by Patrick W. Gallagher 08/05/2005Neighborhood: Uncategorized
“Athens has got ruins, Rome has got ruins. Ours are bigger, but there’s no guidebook to them.” —Lowell Boileau Part collage, part museum, part mausoleum, and all constructed around a series of intricately conceived online “tours,” detroityes.com depicts Detroit’s past and present in a library containing thousands of vivid photographic images. For many, the centerpiece […]
Remembering Gimbel’s
by Mickey Z. 08/04/2005Neighborhood: Upper East Side
My first after-school job was delivering the long-defunct Long Island Press but I really entered the working world when, at the age of seventeen, I started as a temporary summer worker at Gimbel’s department store (my Dad knew someone there…lucky me). I eased my way into the good graces of the bosses until I got […]