You are currently viewing the stories for March, 2006
An Untimely Death
by Mr. Murphy 03/31/2006Neighborhood: Upper East Side
Jimmy, the boss, and I are in the basement still mourning the passing of 16A, when the passenger car opens and a white envelope dances out of the elevator. The white rectangle shimmies and gyrates obscenely, beckoning us. We are powerless to resist. As we near the object of our desire, the envelope, and the […]
Just Another Part of the Job
by Thomas R. Ziegler 03/31/2006Neighborhood: Bronx, Outer Boroughs
Inside the firehouse, sweeping floors, cooking meals and maintaining equipment are routine parts of the job. However when the doors go up and the rigs go out you have to be as flexible as Gumby, because you do not know what you are going to be faced with next. While responding to alarms, we always […]
The Incident
by Alison Bull 03/31/2006Neighborhood: Times Square
When I walk through Midtown Manhattan, I think of The Jetsons. One episode in particular, where George and Co. bought a new apartment, and that apartment was taken up by a big space-age crane and placed in an empty hole in an apartment building, thus making it full and round. That’s how I think of […]
I know it sounds kind of cliché…
by Mickey & Kate 03/16/2006Neighborhood: Letter From Abroad
So I fell in love with this girl named Kate. And all that remains is this sordid little correspondence that I have left from the beginning our affair. I wish it included all the walks we took on the snowy streets of Detroit or the hours we spent laying in bed daydreaming about tomorrow. But […]
Philadelphia: Its Own Borough
by Denise Campbell 03/16/2006Neighborhood: Letter From Abroad
“Philadelphia is nobody’s sixth borough,” proclaimed the heading of a column in one of Philly’s daily newspapers. “Especially not New York’s,” the column went on to say. The writer was responding to a New York Times article chronicling the migration of New Yorkers to Philadelphia. It noted that Philadelphians themselves occasionally referred to their city […]
The Terrors of Tinytown
by Amy Shearn 03/16/2006Neighborhood: Midtown
If you are of the runty persuasion (for our purposes let’s say 5′ 2″ or shorter – ceiling-skimming 5′ 3ers need not apply) you likely know the terror that is the general admission rock show. You may – as I did for years – swear off the concert hall forever, foregoing its unforgiving expanses for […]
The Lost Collar
by Michelle Zaffino 03/16/2006Neighborhood: Midtown
The world of magazine publishing in New York is extremely competitive. No matter how talented one is an editor or a writer, one must have contacts in the industry to obtain that first, entry-level job. Mrs. Carpati, my landlady, happened to work at Cosmopolitan in ad sales, and she was glad to introduce me to […]
The Man’s Wallet
by Karen Miller 03/10/2006Neighborhood: Upper West Side
On a summer evening in 2001, after work and after grilled cheese in the Greek diner on Amsterdam, Jeremy and I are walking through Verdi square, past the 72nd Street station on the 1 and 9, the most treacherously narrow subway platform in all of Manhattan, forever poised on the precipice of disaster. The streets […]
Racing to Teach in Brooklyn
by Emily Horowitz 03/10/2006Neighborhood: Brooklyn, Brooklyn Heights
I teach race and ethnic relations at a college to a genuinely diverse (racially, ethnically, economically) student body in Brooklyn. I am particularly fortunate because the students I teach are more than comfortable about speaking out and sharing their own experiences. I enjoy seeing the dynamics between the different groups in the class; they self-divide […]
The Midtown Report: Metrosexual Occupational Forces Have Taken Over Downtown
by J. Paul Ghetto 03/10/2006Neighborhood: Letter From Abroad
At the beginning of February, the city was overrun by rabid sports fans. I went downtown about 9 days before the big foosball game. Streets were barricaded and blocked off. Downtown Detroit had a different type of buzz. Metro Detroiters were excited because so many people would be in town. Here in the Midwest, we […]
Tiny Inhuman Pauses
by Thomas Beller 03/04/2006Neighborhood: West Village
She was an old lady and for a moment I wanted to kill her. We were at the grocer, and she was taking an inordinate amount of time paying. After a long time spent peering into her purse she handed over a few dollars, and a couple of quarters, and a dime and a nickel, […]
Mother Goes To Hollywood
by Thomas Beller 03/02/2006Neighborhood: Upper West Side
In April, 1992, I was in Los Angeles preparing to go to the Academy awards as the date of someone who had been nominated for an Oscar–my mother. The Oscars are about Hollywood, about bright, ephemeral glamour, about surfaces that reflect. My mother is not about these things. Yet there we were, an unlikely pair, […]