You are currently viewing the stories for “March 2025.”
St. Patrick’s Day, March 17, 2009, promised to be another disaster for the Retail Collection of the Plaza Hotel. Hordes of green-clad spectators streamed down the escalator into the basement. Their eyes averted the luxury goods on offer, as their destination was the hotel’s public bathroom. Within the first hour, I had given directions to the toilet over a hundred times.“Why [...]
One day I sent a prayer from my terrace—Manhattan Plaza, 43rd and Tenth, 45th floor, facing the Hudson River, New Jersey, and the rest of the country—and aimed it roughly toward the object of, or subject of, the prayer, who was the one person in the world I should wish dead. His murder, I had planned for years. If your [...]
And now, Ferdinando’s has closed. Last month its owner Francesco “Frank” Buffa announced the immediate closing of the 121-year-old focacceria on Instagram. This is a real loss. There are many “old school” Italian restaurants in New York City, but few Sicilian ones. Between 1907 and 1910, my maternal grandparents came to American from small towns near Naples and settled in [...]
6:50 am Standing in a help-desk line at JFK airport seems as good a moment as any to analyze the catastrophe of my life. Everyone in this line is embarrassed to be here, and I’m no exception. We’re misfits, absent-minded millennials and oldsters who can’t get technology to work, and we have formed an instant community as airport rejects. Before [...]
The butterflies in my stomach had made their annual visit. It was the first day of school after a summer camping in New Jersey and the Bronx with my aunt and cousins. The oppression of a Catholic school education was always tough to return to after a summer spent outdoors. Like a Marine returning from extended leave, I would now [...]
