You are currently viewing the stories for “April 2010.”
“It all started in 1974, when a longshoreman spotted an egret with a twig,” said EJ McAdams of the discovery of nesting birds along a heavily trafficked—and polluted—Arthur Kill waterway in the heart of New York harbor. We were speeding south on the New Jersey Turnpike, and it was a sunny day in early June 2004. McAdams, then the director [...]
My first apartment in New York was on the second floor of a seven-story walk-up on MacDougal Street, between West Third and Bleecker. It was a three-hundred-square-foot one-bedroom with a view of a chain-linked pen where the building kept the trash, always bags and bags of it. I was twenty-five and feeling very lucky. I could hardly believe I was [...]
The dark interior smells of leather, glue and shoe polish. It looks as if Jim’s Shoe Repair hasn't had a fresh coat of paint since it opened. In 1932 when Vito “Jim” Rocco walked across the threshold of his shop on East 59th Street between Park and Madison Avenues in Manhattan, it was one of 50,424 throughout the United States. [...]
"Hey Dad, who were you just talking to down at the end of the bar?" "Oh, that's Al Dorow, the quarterback for the New York Titans." It was fall 1961, Dad and I were in Loftus Tavern after throwing the ball around outside on York Avenue. My two teams, the New York Giants, football, and the Yankees, baseball, were playing [...]
Walking toward the Staten Island Ferry on my way to work, I noticed a boat departing, when it should have been arriving. Being in the exact spot it would normally be, but headed in the wrong direction, it was, at first, disorienting. I checked my watch: 2:53. “This is not good,” I thought. Making my way down the ramp, I [...]
“Citi Field,” the New York Mets new home, is a misnomer. Someone needs to coin a word to describe a venue that is part amusement park, food court, a Brooklyn Dodger mini-museum, sports specialty shop, tourist trap, and that by the way, also happens to contain a poorly designed baseball playing field. My first visit prompts this assessment. Arriving on [...]
