You are currently viewing the stories for “August 2021.”
I’m a 54-year-old New Yorker who lives three blocks from the Brooklyn row house I grew up in. The last 18 months have brought a lot of changes to my neighborhood. Storefronts on Carroll Garden's Smith Street are boarded up, the sidewalks are lined with restaurant lean-tos, and street parking is more unattainable than ever. There are a number of [...]
Cast of All My Children There are 1700 writers per square foot in New York City. I will be one of them. It’s going to be easy. First, I need to learn about the craft of writing. I peruse various catalogs and websites for classes. Nothing jumps out at me until I notice a class called “How To Write Funny.” [...]
Last month on the subway, somewhere near the Rockefeller Center / 47th-50th Street stop, I looked up from my phone and saw, across the aisle in the mirror seat of mine, a woman, maybe in her late 60s, whose style was startlingly close to my stepmother’s. She had the same short, tousled haircut—although her hair was grey, while my stepmother’s was [...]
Ebbets Field Dr. Schpahl looked like a Nazi out of central casting. A thin mensur crawled down his right cheek, across his pock-marked face, to below his mouth. He spoke in clipped, accented barks, most of which were expressions of severe disappointment. That he was a Hebrew teacher and not a camp commandant may have been a surprise to the [...]
February 1996 is bitter and icy and windy and numbing. My boyfriend Raz and I have been rendered homeless due to our depravity, immaturity, and stupidity. By day, we relax at the Lower East Side needle exchange, the Beth Israel methadone clinic, or our favorite diner, Leshko’s, on Avenue A. Nighttime is more problematic. We often sleep in the lobbies [...]
