You are currently browsing the stories about the “Across the River” neighborhood.
Luck was on my side. The "Q" train pulled into the 34th Street station headed to Brooklyn. I was relieved, not just because I would be whisked home by the air conditioned subway train. It meant that I wouldn't have to stand on one of the hottest subway platforms in the city, forced to breathe a particular stench that I [...]
There's a small pocket in Brooklyn east of Williamsburg, west of Bushwick, known by its residents as Flushwick. In this small pocket, mattress fires attract drum circles. Catalpa trees burst from the shattered windshields of bulldozers. Pedigrees with silk bandanas growl behind fences crowned with razor wire. It's hard to get a fix on this neighborhood. Trust fund or trust [...]
Allie once told me that if two people meet on a bridge, they will almost always fall in love. "I read it in my psychology textbook," she said. "They have to meet on a bridge." I glanced across the river at the orange lights of the Williamsburg Bridge and imagined myself flagging down the next available bike messenger as he [...]
We crossed the Delaware River, made a tremendous 270 degree turn under the bridge and dropped down in to the city streets. The plan: stay at Alison’s parents house in Philly that night, wake up early, pick up the two vans from Hertz, proceed to a designated church in the suburban township of Devon for an organizational meeting with members [...]
In early December, 2003, several people involved in the production of Mel Gibson's "The Passion," arrived in Rome. The mission was to get the Vatican to endorse the movie's version of the last hours of Jesus Christ's life. The film was shot in Rome, at the Cinecitta studios, and the Gibson delegation apparently had some contacts. I was in Rome [...]
Our Asheville, North Carolina, correspondent went down to witness the hearing of Eric Rudolph, suspected of bombing abortion clinics and the Atlanta Olympics, who was finally caught after being on the FBI's most wanted list for five years. This is what he saw. The courhouse building was light granite, grey. The scene was dominated by media and security. About 40 [...]
The following article was reported and written in the winter and spring of 2002. This article deals, in part, with the fact that Jason Kidd's childhood was formed in part by his chores caring for horses. ** It was a cold winter night, and the Knicks were playing the Nets. I took the bus from Port authority. No sooner does [...]
I was a fat, strange kid for whome Forts were very important. My parents used to drive from our upstate New York home to the Big Apple twice a year. For my parents those visits meant fine dining and Broadway shows . For me however, those visits meant Forts. Yes. Forts. I was interested in anything “military,” but especially those [...]
The beers cost seven dollars and the DJ had A.D.D. He kept stopping the tracks midway through, throwing the girls off. There were two rooms, and opposite the bar in each room was a stage. The stage in the front room had a baby-blue wooden banister cordoning it off from the bar, and a sign in magic marker on poster [...]
We were natives. We were cool, urban sophisticates who would never admit to being otherwise. If anyone asked, we were from New York City, even though we’d been raised in the suburban sprawl—my cousin was from Jersey and I was from the Island. He and I had legitimized ourselves as New Yorkers by boasting we’d never been to any tourist [...]
Angela and I stopped to investigate the South Williamsburg street. We lived in Queens (not together, mind you – the sexual need between this former cheerleader and me had long since expired) and were exploring a new locale. Neighborhood pride and a grass-isn't-greener mentality often create a chasm between boroughs, but we'd scoured most of our Greek neighborhood and craved [...]
This story ends with a blind Chinese Bibliophile. But it begins in a moment of weakness, when I capitulated to the temptations at hand and called a realtor who specialized in barnes and farm houses and asked to look at a few. The rolling hills and open skies of Western New York had me in their spell, and I, in [...]
I've disliked living on Long Island for about as long as I can remember. Now I hate it. It started as child, thrust into a culture that coddled me. My friends never understood why I, as a music student, craved visits to the city. To them, Long Island offered everything Manhattan did with added bonuses: sprawling houses, trees, yacht clubs, [...]
I need to walk. I walk and walk and end up at Silver Lake Park and when I turn around to take in my favorite view of the skyline, up high on the hill looking straight down Victory Boulevard, I half expect the towers to be there. I swear I can still see a faint outline of where they used [...]
Outside a Fresh Fields market in Manhasset, there is a parking lot large enough to hold one hundred cars. Now, there are only to be found seven Mercedes Benz SUVs, four Range Rovers, two of the BMW convertibles that the new James Bond drives, one Hummer, three Audio A8s, a smattering of Inifitis, Acuras, and Lexuses, five different kinds of [...]
As soon as Alicia Keys and her band arrive at the front gate of Prince’s house it is apparent to all that there is no paisley in Paisley Park. Prince’s compound looks, from the outside, like the athletic facility of a state University, a big boxy building with gates around it that gives no hint of what lies inside. “You [...]
When I left the Lower East Side of Manhattan in 1996, the stores on either side of my building included a bodega that sold heroin out the back and an empty, bombed-out hole. Today, a "funky" bridal shop and a tattoo parlor stand in their places. When a tattoo parlor is a sign of urban renewal, you know the neighborhood [...]
Bewitched by the Charm of Looks (II chorus) "Good morrow!" Leonardo DiCaprio calls out as he arrives on the set of Romeo and Juliet. "Good morrow!" reply a several burly crew members who are struggling with a large piece of equipment--their biceps strain to lift it, but their smiles are easy. Their glance in Leonardo's direction is, I think, somewhat [...]
1.The Crystal Ballroom Stephen Malkmus stands in the back. The dark club is packed packed, and he peers beneath bangs, shoulders slouched, a hint of atheleticism to them. He is a tall, slender figure with high cheekbones, checking out the crowd like a secret service agent, or a local hero about to make a cameo. Jackpot, a local record store, [...]
I first went to the northernmost point in Brooklyn after reading an article in The New Yorker about the oil spill there – 17 million gallons, half again as big as the Exxon Valdez – which at a geologic pace, made its way from a long gone Standard Oil holding tank in the eastern part of Greenpoint, to the aquifer [...]
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