You are currently viewing the stories for “March 2011.”
In the spring of 1980 I was a cocky new teacher of English as a Second language, fresh from education grad school, with innovative pedagogy that I couldn’t wait to try out on students. My first job in New York was a gem: "Vocational ESL." It was funded by the feds and I'd gone to the French Quarter in New [...]
Nestled in the shadow of the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge, Dyker Park is renowned throughout New York City for its lush golf courses. Proud Brooklynites, always ready to boast about their home borough, might inform you that these Dyker courses spawned a legend: Tiger Woods’ father, Colonel Earl Woods, caught the golf bug there in 1972 while stationed at the nearby Fort [...]
Gabriella breezed into St. Stephen’s 6th grade as a new student, and left a battleship wake when she mysteriously disappeared after seventh grade. Gabriella was an adorable Hungarian immigrant with a low voice like Natasha on the Rocky and Bullwinkle Show. Her hair was cut short and bobbed to show off her huge dark almond-shaped eyes and rich lips. Drove [...]
My mother is watching the DON’T WALK sign blink on the corner of 6th Street and Avenue B. My twelve year old twin sister and I have been trekking with mother all over Alphabet City for what seems like hours. I am carrying a plastic bag filled with clothes that mother found a block away in a dumpster. When we [...]
In the packed playground of St. Patrick’s Old Cathedral School, the Friday night social chatter maintains a steady, low-level buzz, as cliquish tribes of girls and boys smoke cigarettes and drink red wine and imported beer from small, plastic cups. One girl wears a floppy, knit cap which, embroidered with a dizzying display of silver sequins, resembles a flaccid disco [...]
With amorous eyes I looked forward to the summer of 1976. Not long out of law school, I had just landed a job with a landlord/tenant law firm in lower Manhattan, and had rented a beach house on Fire Island for the season. I was dating a girl named Elizabeth, and though we had not discussed exclusivity, the times we [...]
I first passed under Grand Central Terminal’s Sky Ceiling in 1985 as a young actress new to Manhattan, on the way from my job as a Broadway theater bartender to visit my first serious boyfriend in Connecticut. Several times a week, I raced to catch the last New Haven-bound train at 11:20 pm. Winded as I hurried through the Vanderbilt [...]
In the basement of the Museum of American Indian there was a caretaker’s apartment. You got to it by walking down a side stairwell, beyond the main entrance of the museum, or by going past the work space beyond the gift shop, through a utility room, and then down a side hallway. The door was always locked and the space [...]
I wanted Yes To Carrots lotion. I’d seen it in a magazine – something like Self, or InStyle. I liked how the packaging looked, and I am not normally a sucker for packaging. The bright orange capital letters and font were pleasing on my eyes. And I love carrots. I love lotion. I love saying yes. I liked the concept. [...]
Tay Tay was my first friend in Bed Stuy. Yes, she stole my money, and yes, she nearly got me kicked out of my apartment, and yes, our relationship further alienated me from my neighbors, but she stuck around. Tay Tay, she was like glue. Let me explain. Crackheads are like seagulls: you feed one, and it comes back every [...]
