You are currently viewing the stories for “June 2025.”
The following series traces the shifting face of downtown New York City—a place of ghosts and grit, memory and reinvention. Born and raised in downtown Manhattan, artist-illustrator Aurélie Bernard Wortsman renders the city she calls home with quiet intensity, her delicate drawings capturing the rhythms of streets both remembered and imagined. Some scenes emerge from lived experience—lingering with friends outside [...]
Some stories are about place. Others are about time. But every so often, I come across stories that feel like they’re trying to catch something slippery inside a person—a moment of becoming that might also be a moment of unraveling. This week, my walk through Mr. Beller’s Neighborhood kept circling back to the same pulse: the uneasy work of figuring [...]
I first met Marina Gorodetsky when we worked for the City Planning Department. She was a clerk, and all the guys in my section were crazy about her. She had green eyes, blonde hair and a buxom figure. Although she was an immigrant from the Soviet Union, Marina spoke English with only a slight accent. In the Soviet Union she [...]
“Hey, girls!” Brandishing a lit cigarette, a guy in an army jacket beckoned my friend Robin and me. He was leaning against the wall of a warehouse near an elevated subway station in Queens, a few stops outside of Manhattan. Our new boss. I’d been hired over the phone the previous day, after answering an ad in The Village Voice. [...]
While exploring the archives of Mr. Beller’s Neighborhood, I stumbled upon three lovely stories all written before I was even conceived. In the first story, The Doormen Watching Over Me, the writer Meredith Boylan describes her relationship with her doormen in Tudor City. When I was younger and fantasized about one day living in New York, I had a specific [...]
It’s 8:10 am, just north of Times Square, and soda cans, bottles, and discarded paper face masks are blowing around on the ground outside a grimy office building. The entrance is between a gentleman’s club and a boarded-up restaurant. I use a plastic key card to get inside the building and operate the elevator. Getting off on the ninth floor, [...]
My father and I emerge from the long green canopy and stand outside the Ansonia Hotel on Broadway where we live. It’s Sunday afternoon. 1949. Winter. A chill wind blows. I am four. My father wears his gray felt fedora at a jaunty angle, the shadow from the brim hiding one eye. That fedora with the grosgrain ribbon is my father. He’s [...]
Something feels special about this year’s Mets. With over a third of the season completed, there’s a spirit of joy and anticipation among fans, and the stellar performance of our team has been exhilarating. But one thing is missing: We need a 2025 Mets rallying cry. The need has lingered, as our ability to produce runs has remained low. Gone [...]
