You are currently viewing the stories for “January 2013.”
I met a man at the corner bodega by my brownstone in Bedford-Stuyvesant on Friday. The conversation started like this. “Hey, man. What’s going on?” I said while heading to the beverage coolers. “Not much, how are you?” “Can’t complain. Just a lazy Friday. What do you think, Colt 45 or Olde English?” “Colt 45 is pretty good.” His name [...]
Last week my boss Manny hated me. The business was slow on 47th street. I had been hired part-time to help my replacement H-Love, but neither of us had made a sale between Xmas and the New Year. “I feel like I’m running a charity ward. The two of you are about as useful as a broom.” Manny stated in [...]
I went to the Bob Dylan concert at the Barclay's Center around Thanksgiving. We are contemporaries. I love his recent work and I thought it was about time I went to one of his live performances. I got a ticket, took the subway from the Upper West Side to the newly-christened Atlantic Ave.-Barclays Center stop. And, somehow, when I got [...]
My apartment building, across from the ferry, in the St. George neighborhood of Staten Island, fared well against Sandy. From my window, I saw the water rise above the seawall, and swallow the municipal parking lot, but situated on the hill, I never felt threatened. When the power went out, I was watching a DVD of Martin Scorsese's "New York, [...]
Three days after a storm that could have easily been called Gidget or Bob in keeping with the unintended frivolity of its real name – Sandy, two people are sitting on a bench in a dark chaotic lobby of an artists’ residence on the west side of Manhattan. One, a sculptor, is waiting for her son to pick her up. [...]
It was like the prom. Only it wasn’t the prom. It was Hurricane Sandy. All the anxious preparation, the heart slightly aflutter, the pure angst and nervous excitement all at once. What to buy in advance, who to spend the night with, hell, even what to wear. It was Monday afternoon on the Lower East Side six hours before the [...]