You are currently viewing the stories for “January 2011.”
An overweight middle-aged woman got on the F train somewhere in Midtown, and took the seat facing mine. She was wearing dirty clothes and was carrying two battered plastic bags, a combination that—two weeks in New York had already taught me—was not a good one. She immediately took a pack of Twinkies out of one bag, and instead of opening [...]
On the middle level of the ever moving station stop at Roosevelt Avenue, Jackson Heights, where the subway and the elevated meet in a shaky embrace and humanity flows on a non-stop escalator between heaven and earth, the melting pot boils over with new arrivals as trains disgorge their loads. Here reed-flute players from the Andes, Mariachi orchestras from Mexico, [...]
With Illustrations by Carlo Quispe I don’t go to Dr. Dave for check-ups, just when something goes wrong. And something is wrong today. I suck down the last hit of my cigarette and stub it beside a mural of spray-painted camouflage that covers part of Dr. Dave’s corner office on Clinton and Stanton. A sign—red cross inside a white circle—hovers [...]
One Sunday afternoon when my father suggested we go to his health club in the basement of the Ansonia Hotel, I said, “No, why would I wanna go there?” I made a face. “Come on,” he said, as we walked through the lobby and stood under the awning outside our apartment building on West 76th Street. “Ya neva was there. [...]
Connie was all for being a hooker, but Martin wasn’t. Connie wanted to be in the movie, Martin didn’t want her to be unless she played a nun, a Red Cross worker, or the head of the National Academy of Sciences. The trouble was, there were no parts for nuns, Red Cross workers, or heads of the National Academy of [...]
This weekend I went to see a film called The Wrestler. I am quite neurotic about going to the movies. Because in New York City, theaters, especially on weekends, tend to fill up and sell out quickly, I make it a point to show up about an hour early. I feel panicked when there are lines, and I really like [...]
Where East Village Meets West Village I’ve spent the last ten years of my life in the East Village of Manhattan, movin’ on up Avenue B. Quite literally: I first lived at 4th and B, then briefly moved to 6th between B and C, ending up on 13th and B. I lived in a shoebox of an apartment—sans a single [...]
Long Live Viva Pancho Viva Pancho is a Mexican restaurant in Times Square, on West 44th Street, just off Broadway. It’s verde awning reads, “Viva Pancho”/“Home Of the Sizzling Fajitas,” in chili pepper script. Neither quaint holdover from the old Times Square, nor modern day restaurant group vision, it could very well be situated in a New Jersey strip mall. [...]
People tell me that being shit on by a pigeon is good luck but from my point of view it was simply the second annoying thing that had happened to me that day. The first was when I was told that my cushy, if slightly soul-crushing, freelance gig with a New York publishing company was coming to an abrupt end [...]
Having stayed in my apartment the better part of the last week or so, today I decided to hop on my bike and do some writing out of doors. It was a breezy 68 degrees and I wanted to enjoy the pleasant mildness of early fall before it became the cold old dreary, crappy, disgusting middle fall. I entered Prospect [...]
The snow is beautiful and magical as it begins to come down in light flakes in the early morning hours of late February. The roads and sidewalks are still manageable, the seagulls playfully carving the air a few blocks away from the Hudson, children throwing snowballs, people out walking their dogs. As the hours pass the snow continues to fall [...]
At the 96th Street subway station, a Hispanic man with a graying beard hopped on the train. He immediately launched into a barrage of loud, incoherent ranting, which made me wonder if he was freshly sprung from the Bellevue psych ward. After several minutes of rambling in English and Spanish, he finally hit upon a phrase he liked: “It is [...]
