You are currently viewing the stories for September, 2005
Rita: A Baton Rouge Diary, Part 6
by Johnny Adriani 09/29/2005Neighborhood: Letter From Abroad
September 23, 2005: déjà vu? Here we go again, first from the East, now from the West. What a mess! While in Jefferson Parish, Wednesday, I noticed utilities crews leaving in droves. The US Army was on the move as well. It was a strange day, very hazy. Haze and cloudy skies are a good […]
Mop Her Up: Homeless at the Vertical Club
by Mickey Z. 09/29/2005Neighborhood: Midtown
For six years I worked as a trainer and gym floor manager at the Vertical Club. What Studio 54 was to 1970s New York, the Vertical Club (VC) was to 1980s New York. A warehouse-sized health club, complete with neon lights and blaring dance music, it was where the Big Apple’s social elite came to […]
Milton: Alternative Abuses for the Yarmulke
by Richard Grayson 09/29/2005Neighborhood: Boro Park, Brooklyn
1973. Marvin was the photo editor at the Brooklyn College student newspaper. I liked him a lot, and when, in 1997, after I had an op-ed piece published in the New York Times, he saw it, and trying to locate me, called my mother, he described himself as an “old friend.” Yet I recall hanging […]
Two Stories About Teaching in Queens
by Hal Sirowitz 09/29/2005Neighborhood: Outer Boroughs, Queens
“The Case Of The Missing Pasta” I tried improving my second grade special education students’ skills at addition by having them count pasta. I had them line up the brown and white rigatoni into two groups. Then all they had to do was add them. It worked well – my students were learning while enjoying […]
Fiberglass Dogs
by Griffin Hansbury 09/27/2005Neighborhood: Times Square
There was a while when it seemed like every year New York played host to a parade of hand-painted fiberglass animals. The cows were the most famous. The German shepherds were a lot less famous and they disappeared from the streets pretty quick. But, here and there, you’ll still see one, sitting guard outside the […]
Brand New Leather Jacket
by Wayne G. 09/23/2005Neighborhood: Harlem
It was a beautiful November afternoon. I was relaxing in my house located in Wagner Projects, when I realized that I had enough money saved up to buy the leather jacket I wanted. So I went in my sneaker box, where I had $500 saved and went to a store called Jan’s. Jan’s is located […]
Katrina: A Baton Rouge Diary, Part 5
by Johnny Adriani 09/22/2005Neighborhood: Letter From Abroad
Sept. 21, 2005: Entering Orleans Parish “Enter Orleans Parish,” read the green sign cocked at a forty-five degree angle announcing my arrival. And with that, I traversed the bridge over the 17th Street Canal, leaving Old Metairie behind and driving into New Orleans. My only impediment to this point was some traffic through Jefferson Parish […]
Katrina: A Baton Rouge Diary, Part 4
by Johnny Adriani 09/22/2005Neighborhood: Letter From Abroad
Sept. 19, 2005: Bad Press Vast has been the breadth of bad press. It is true that the scope of this catastrophe has gone beyond the bounds of everyone’s foresight. And, in the beginning, nothing short of evil seemed to be seeping from the deluged City. The bad press has evoked action from seemingly stunned […]
Hugging Away the Dishwasher
by Mélanie Griot 09/22/2005Neighborhood: West Village
I came to Washington Park because I did not know where to go. Riding in a cab with my friend John, on his way to study at the NYU library, provided me with a sure and fast way out of his apartment. This morning, a fight had been close to breaking out between the two […]
Two Feet of Slippery Vinyl
by Marla Lehner 09/22/2005Neighborhood: Outer Boroughs, Staten Island
Although I moved to New York in 1994 with Manhattan in mind, I quickly became fascinated with the city’s boroughs. On weekends I’d take the subway to Coney Island, Brooklyn, Astoria, Queens, or the Bronx Zoo to see the other parts of my new home. Staten Island, however, remained elusive. In my early days, I […]
Katrina: A Baton Rouge Diary, Part 3
by Johnny Adriani 09/15/2005Neighborhood: Letter From Abroad
Sept. 10, 2005: A History My first memories of New Orleans come from my childhood visits with my grandparents. My earliest memory comes from being told that if you dug down five feet into the ground you would hit water. As a toddler, this little nugget of knowledge stuck me, and I remember going into […]
The Conduct Slip
by Michelle Kane 09/15/2005Neighborhood: Uncategorized
“Kneel. Sit. Stand. Kneel. Sit. Stand. Kneel. Sit. Stand!” Sister Mary Angelina bellows these words to a congregation of frightened eighth graders at St. Cecilia’s Catholic Church in southwest Detroit sometime in the mid-1980’s. Almost twenty years later, those angry commands from the most powerful nun known to the class of 1985 have not been […]