You are currently viewing the stories for “September 2025.”
The other day I went to Sonbob’s—the long name is Sonnie’s Bits & Bobs—a little neighborhood café on 28th Avenue between 33rd and 34 Streets in Astoria, Queens. It’s my older brother’s favorite spot. I brought him in a wheelchair, because he was tired and it was hot. Sonnie, the owner, pronounced saw-nee, is a Korean woman of 60. She’s [...]
I took the train to school alone. My Brooklyn friends didn’t live along the 2 or 3 lines, plus I’m somewhat hostile within the first hour of waking up. The commute was like a prolonged orchestral swell. The first leg of my trip, sprawled across a few of those '70s sunset-toned seats, the sounds of the subway – muted by [...]
Look at me! I bolt through Battery Park City. The air is sharp in my chest, piercing wind stinging my skin. I listen to the leaves crackling beneath my feet and watch them swirling around me, caught in the wind. My cheeks are burning red, cold sweat runs down the side of my face. I am 11 years-old and am [...]
City owned buildings in the Tremont section of the Bronx. All photos by Larry Racioppo. --- In the summer of 1988, I applied for a job at the New York City Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD). For the two years prior, I had been managing low-income properties in the Bronx and Manhattan for a management company and also [...]
After roaming through decades and neighborhoods on my journey across the site, I wanted to end my stroll with five stories that capture the city in all its chaotic glory—frustrations, intimacies, absurdities, and joys alike. Together, they suggest something larger than New York itself: how we live with imperfection, how we carve meaning from fleeting moments, and how joy manages [...]
