You are currently viewing the stories for January, 2008

My Newman Farewell

by 01/27/2008
Neighborhood: Across the River, Multiple

I spent a good nine months of my life dedicated to Paul Newman. I wasn’t training to eat eggs, or living a strict Newman’s Own diet. I was developing and writing a screenplay that had roles for not only Paul, but his wife, Joanne Woodward, and long-time cohort, Robert Redford. It was a far-fetched idea […]

Paul Newman on Sixth Avenue

by 01/27/2008
Neighborhood: West Village

He kneels on the gray-black slate in front of the Jefferson Market, rendering blue eyes in pastels on the sidewalk, the magazine cover of Paul Newman under his left knee–only the eyes done after several hours. I had passed by at 10. He was just starting, no eyes yet, only the box of pastels dumped […]

A Brooklyn Summer

by 01/27/2008
Neighborhood: Across the River, Brooklyn

We always arrived at least a half hour early to the hot concrete schoolyard with its two sad hoops. There were loads of us, boys and girls from six to the teens, waiting for PS 154 vacation playground to open and its counselors to throw out the softballs and bats, the volleyballs and pink spaldeens […]

Floating on Air at the St. George Hotel

by 01/27/2008
Neighborhood: Brooklyn, Brooklyn Heights

The visible landscape of Brooklyn Heights is much the same as it was in my childhood, which is a large part of why I moved back to the neighborhood after almost twenty years. Every so often, someone stops me on Clark Street to ask directions to the subway station. It always takes me a second […]

Manhattan Elevators: They Have Their Ups and Downs

by 01/27/2008
Neighborhood: Upper East Side

I return from my break to hear Vince screaming in Maltese. It seems two women, a real estate broker and her client, had been getting a little impatient waiting for the elevator and gave the button several long pushes. This would infuriate the most mild-mannered of elevator operators. Vince is not mild-mannered. “Who the fuck […]

DISGUSTING!

by 01/27/2008
Neighborhood: Upper West Side

The Ansonia Hotel was not your usual hotel. But we were not your usual family. By the time I was born in 1945, the Ansonia had suffered years of neglect. The live seals that once frolicked in the lobby fountain were long gone. So was the fountain when I lived there as a child with […]

Squirrel in the Birdfeeder

by 01/19/2008
Neighborhood: Across the River, Long Island

There has always been something about the change in seasons, something that has stirred me to make changes in my life. I was married in winter and divorced in the spring, started a new job in fall and quit in the summer. That’s probably why it was in the beginning of winter when I decided […]

Washington Square Park Massacre

by 01/19/2008
Neighborhood: West Village

It was the first perfect day of spring; the air silky with warmth. People, like the daffodils, were blooming all over Washington Square Park: Bicyclists, street musicians, bag-lunchers, in-line skaters, mothers with strollers. Those who were just standing around, others who were walking—they flew into the air like handkerchiefs tossed by the breeze when the […]

Rules of Genius

by 01/19/2008
Neighborhood: West Village

In the hiatus between semesters during my years at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia, I often decamped to New York City, ostensibly to find a job during the break, but really an inducement to be somewhere—anywhere—else. One hot summer day while plodding along the sidewalk of MacDougal Street south of Bleecker, I […]

It Was Me (part 2)

by 01/13/2008
Neighborhood: All Over, Manhattan

After our engagement my family had decided that I would be allowed to talk to Fatmir on the phone. When my niece was engaged she had to make secret phone calls, but my family was modern. In anticipation for the phone call Asllan and Behare went out and took Sokol’s three boys. My Mom and […]

A Subway Hope

by 01/13/2008
Neighborhood: West Village

I am standing on the F train platform, my toes just over the yellow line. I lean toward the darkness of the train tunnel. In the distance I can see the faint, low-lit squares of train windows passing through the darkness. Then there is the hollow rumble of the F train approaching from in between […]

A Subway Grope

by 01/13/2008
Neighborhood: Lower Manhattan

Having grown up in the City my entire life, I should have had my guard on and my extra sixth sense alert for the criminally suspicious. But I had just come off an awkward date, and I was still reflecting on its minute details, and otherwise pondering the futility of finding love in this hard-worn […]