You are currently viewing the stories for “July 2010.”
I drive a van for a restaurant. Actually it’s several restaurants but they are owned by the same people. They have three restaurant locations and two cafes, but only one location has a full kitchen and bakery. All the food is prepared at this main location and then sent to the other various restaurant and café locations around the city. [...]
We bounded out the exit of the Municipal Building like two cowboys pushing through saloon doors. Kurt set the pace as he trotted to the VIP parking lot, where six black Lincoln Town Cars belonging to elected officials and agency commissioners rested during the dignitaries’ brief visits to their offices upstairs. He reached one of the cars and popped open [...]
It was midnight and Jay and I were walking out of Brook Park in the South Bronx. We had been in the Puerto Rican version of a sweat lodge. Years ago I had attended a Lakota Indian version of the same purification ritual in upstate New York. But this experience was far more spiritual and uplifting. I wasn’t sure but [...]
Young white man with large backpack, heavy French accent, and reasonably capable English: Excuse me, is there a local Number 2 train? It comes on this track? Middle-aged white New York woman with long, dangling earrings: No. This is the Number 1 track. Number 2 trains, they're all express. Over on that track. A Number 2 just pulled out. French [...]
Last week, I’m taking a shit and get this recovered memory. It’s like a life lesson: repetition is the soul of disaster. Because pilots make frequent landings, a special warning light is installed in many cockpits, this to remind pilots to lower the landing gear. Everyone makes mistakes that are the product of repetitive activity. Like twice a year, I [...]
Outside the shop where we'd just bought ice cream, my wife and I were sitting on a bench against the window, my wife with a cone and myself with a small cup. It was sunny. We'd just come over from Riverside Park, where we'd been leisurely biking, and where people were already starting to gather for the evening's fireworks. It [...]
Mr. Beller's Neighborhood Tenth Anniversary Mr. Beller's Neighborhood has been publishing for ten years. The light-bulb moment of its conception took place on a cold day in February outside 225 Lafayette Street, then a warren of old time offices with frosted glass doors. Feedmag.com was there. So was Open City, and a lot of film makers and music directors and [...]
