You are currently viewing the stories for “April 2024.”
From 1964 to 1974, I lived in a brown-bricked apartment building near the corner of Palmetto Street and Cypress Avenue in Ridgewood, New York. The Mathews Brothers built 650 of these 6-unit buildings, sometimes known as Mathews Flats, early in the 20th century. I lived with my brother and sister and our parents on the second floor of a five-room [...]
Co-Op City Ever since I’d gotten the job as a reporter/assistant editor on a small trade paper called the Tri-State Grocer with the help of its secretary -- who happened to be the wife of one of my father’s friends -- I knew something was wrong. The pay was terrible -- not enough for me to move out of my [...]
It was 1982, and I was in junior high school. Beven was a new kid, and I didn’t know him besides seeing him in class. He seemed OK, but quirky. Like the way he carried himself, the stains on his clothes and — most notably — the odd, beat-up briefcase he had with him at all times. While the rest of us had basic [...]
Zapkus. His name was almost an onomatopoeia: its electric prod forcing me to sit up and pay attention. “Design Fundamentals” had to be, in theory, the most yawn-inducing chunk of time in the Parsons School of Design illustration curriculum for Spring 1972. I looked at the course card and envisioned the need to occasionally cut class and dip into the [...]
