You are currently viewing the stories for the year “2015.”
How many times do expect me to walk past West Side Judaica, right around the corner from us at Broadway and 89th, and not go in? I went in and met the owner, Yakov Saltzer. “So every time I drink a seltzer you get a royalty?” I asked. “Don’t I wish.” Yakov was born in 1958 and raised in the Williamsburg [...]
I was on an evening Metro North train home from the Adirondacks. Catherine and I were taking turns sucking Merlot out of a plastic nozzle attached to a plastic sack. We were each lying down long ways across a row of seats, facing each other, passing the bag back and forth, lifting our heads only to drink. We had, in [...]
The day before my birthday was beautiful. It was one of those clear summer days in New York that somehow evades the typical humidity and the sun’s unbearable heat. Instead of roasting everything beneath it, the sun proudly showcased New York’s beauty. The pink and purple flowers on the High Line unfurled themselves towards the sky in euphoria and their [...]
The red-smocked amNY guy smiled wide and with a proud, “Good morning, big bro!” extended a copy of the subway newspaper my way. I stood there grinning sheepishly, neither taking the paper nor brushing him off. This was a breach of the rules of our relationship, not unlike showing up unannounced at a new fling’s apartment, flowers in hand, just [...]
I am writing this on the laptop you stole from me. Remember? No of course you don’t. What an asshole you were! I had gone back to New York to visit my father at Mount Sinai Hospital’s Head Trauma Unit (he had fallen and bashed his brains in on the way to see Sondheim and I swore up and down [...]
The week before I pried myself away from New York and moved to Japan to teach English, the New Yorker carried a tourism advertisement for the rural island where I’d be heading: “For travelers who have seen and experienced Tokyo, Kyoto, and other hot spots in Japan, and who are inclined to venture off the beaten path, Shikoku should top [...]
Aunt Judy’s a teenager and my grandmother takes her shopping at Mays Department store in Downtown Brooklyn. Nana chooses the item she wants, then leans close to Judy. “Watch this.” Nana trumpets: “This is too expensive! I’m not paying this much!” A clerk says, “Ma’am, that’s the price.” “Oh, no! You’re not doing that to me!” Nana continues to bellow [...]
“That’s it. I’ve had it.” Staring at the dirt encrusted window I made up my mind to cheer myself up. After September 11, 2001, my job relocated from a building overlooking the World Trade Center to the industrial center of Long Island City - the old Bloomingdale’s Warehouse on a concrete hill overlooking the Long Island Railroad yards. I sat [...]
On weekends it’s a tossup, either my wife or I go on expedition for our Dunkin’ Donuts coffee and this was my turn. Because I knew the usual place on Queens Boulevard was closed for repairs I had to head down to the one on 61st in the Woodside valley. On the way back I noticed a modest Vietnam memorial [...]
I was dropped off in Hell’s Kitchen with my turquoise vinyl trunk, my art school scholarship, and the soundtrack to Midnight Cowboy sensurrounding my dreams. Everybody's talking at me I don't hear a word they're saying Only the echoes of my mind I was eighteen, and ready for the 1970s. On my own. My stepfather-to-be had driven my mom and [...]
It was one of those days where the sky was an azure sheet pulled taut against Heaven and the water was as flat and reflective as a mirror. This was the view of the Hudson from my then-boyfriend’s Battery Park apartment. We had both just graduated from college. I, with my bachelor’s, he with his phD. We were one of [...]
I was walking down Broadway near Lincoln Center at noon on a Thursday afternoon in May with my old friend Ruth Lopez when we came upon two people on the sidewalk, doing it. It was daytime, it was close to lunch even, and yet there they were in flagrante dilecto. The man was on top of the woman and they [...]
It’s the middle of the season and my son won’t swing at the ball. Jesse is seven and this is his third year playing league baseball. For the entire season he hasn’t swung the bat. Since the pitchers on the other teams have little or no control, he is almost always assured of getting a walk. A success of sorts. [...]
Martin Able had most people fooled. The 94-year-old retired history professor prided himself on owning the very latest smartphone. For the past five years he upgraded annually. His latest could shoot video in slow motion and download music with the touch of his thumbprint. The phone even included an app that could call the rescue squad if his blood pressure [...]
I've lived in the neighborhood practically forever, but to my girlfriend it's all new. She's always making some new discovery. Once she came home with a small box of Japanese chocolate wrapped inside a perfect silver bag and with a sleek packet of dry ice. I asked her where it came from and she told me, “right around the corner—it's [...]
A vintage piano stood alone on a deserted city street. Moments earlier, the piano had been saved from oblivion by a man named Oscar, who had stepped out of his apartment just as the workers of the New York City Sanitation Department had been struggling to lift the piano into the whining maw of their garbage truck. With the woodwindy [...]
A dapper anomaly in those still shaggy post-Woodstock years, he walked with purpose and panache to the Saks Fifth Avenue offices where he took up residence at the drawing table. Handsome. Diminutive yet self-assured, debonaire, even--an outdated word, but it suited. With a full head of white hair waving back from a fulcrum of dark eyebrows and an aura of [...]
Dad and I did four things together: play sports, attend sports, watch TV, and go to the movies. I liked movies the best; it’s much harder telling a kid what to do in the dark. You would have loved taking me to the movies when I was 6 years old. I was a cheap date, one box of Pom Poms [...]
