You are currently viewing the stories for May, 2008
At the Prospect Park Zoo, 1965
by Kenneth P. Nolan 05/25/2008Neighborhood: Brooklyn, Park Slope
Billy Hederman and Eddie Babicke started the migration. So I applied and with their tepid references, “He’s OK, Bob,” I was hired. I was now an official busboy in the Prospect Park zoo cafeteria. Others from my working class Catholic parish adjacent to the park signed up as well. Mo Maloney was assigned to the […]
You Look Nice Tonight, That’s All
by Shawn Vandor 05/25/2008Neighborhood: Brooklyn, Park Slope
A friend told me recently, at a small dinner party at her and her husband’s brownstone, that she’d once been throttled on the subway. The train car, she said, was packed. For balance, she raised both arms into the air and held onto the metal bar above. A man stood behind her, she said, and […]
Cats Are Prisoners
by Lesley Clark 05/25/2008Neighborhood: Upper East Side
Little yellow post-it sticky notes were posted all over the apartment. “Help yourself” was on the refrigerator, “coffee’s here” was posted on the silver Gevalia canister. In big red letters atop the post-it note was, “Warning- Caffeinated” and a postscript, “I know how you are on caffeine,” all this accompanied with a little bewildered looking […]
Graffiti
by Saïd Sayrafiezadeh 05/12/2008Neighborhood: Lower East Side
On Saturday night I walked from my apartment on the Lower East Side over to Housing Works in SoHo. It was a little after 8:00 at night and my intention was to spend a few pleasant hours drinking coffee and reading Grapes of Wrath. It was also a way to give my wife some time […]
Dawn
by Heidi Rain 05/12/2008Neighborhood: Across the River, Queens
It’s March 22nd again, Dawn Alfano’s birthday. I can’t figure out why every year for the past half-century I remember that, but somehow it’s always stuck in my mind. It’s not that Dawn and I were close or anything in third grade, but somehow the little we shared must have made an impression on me. […]
The Tombstone Read L.E.S.
by Royal Young 05/11/2008Neighborhood: Lower East Side
Recently, driving with my grandmother to meet family for dinner at a French restaurant on Lafayette, mouth watering in anticipation of filet mignon, I bemoaned the fate of the once urban wasteland, now over developed, over exposed Lower East Side we had both grown up in. As I ranted she nodded, indifferent to the hipsters […]
Madame Butterfly Goes Down
by Thomas R. Pryor 05/04/2008Neighborhood: All Over, Manhattan
Saturday night, I had smelly cheese, cashews, black bean dip, spooned Hellmann’s and three Coronas for dinner. I over-bought crap for company, it’s causing me stomach problems, but I have to finish the stuff. Sunday morning, I met a writing editor on Cathedral Parkway who took too much money to tell me too little about […]
The Puerto Rican Lockhorns Reunion
by Daniel Nester 05/04/2008Neighborhood: SoHo
I moved to New York City on Friday, August 19, 1994. After twenty-one years in South Jersey and four more in Philadelphia, a move to New York seemed to be the most momentous event of my life. As I hooked my gypsy rental van around the Turnpike to face the skyline, even the cars’ lights […]
We Kindly Ask That You Turn Off Your David Mamet
by Jean Paul Cativiela 05/03/2008Neighborhood: Upper East Side
At first one or two left, dignified and quiet, as if they had to get home to relieve the babysitter. Then coats started rustling, whispers became impolitely perceptible, and the audience grew ever more restless. The Kaufmann Auditorium in the 92nd Street Y was turning into an unhappy, however cultured, hubbub. But David Mamet droned […]