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After almost three years of working on Mr. Beller's Neighborhood as Managing Editor, the time has come for me to pass the torch to the next in line. While I had intended to write some sort of grandiose proclamation to sound my departure and welcome their arrival, it has become quite evident that the best way to do nothing is [...]
For thirty-five years its posture has been folded into a deep curtsy, dormant over a hanger, as if waiting for a curtain call. After that one moment in the spotlight, it’s never been worn again. Unless we consider fleeting fantasies of varying scenarios I’ve had over the decades that flash-forwarded to, well, the age I am now. Sixty. I am [...]
She throws an envelope onto the kitchen table, vaguely in my direction. She has written my name on it, and underlined it twice. I know what’s in it: it’s my birthday and inside it there will be, as always, a check. I am only ten-years-old, and I do not exactly know what to do with money, and I wish my [...]
A woman once offered me her seat on a rush hour 3 train. New Yorkers only donate seats to the elderly, the injured, and the pregnant, so it was obvious what she thought. “Not pregnant – just fat,” I told her, matter-of-factly, compelled to set precedent before this woman’s so-called generosity spawned an outbreak of eating disorders in young, potbellied [...]
Okay, I admit it. I once wrote and recorded a full-length country album. I know, I know – it was a foolish thing to do, but it got me thinking about the nature of non-fiction. The album was arranged as timeline – a chronology of mental and emotional events that took place over a period of about six months. Because [...]
In the immediate wake of the storm nothing worked. Neither power nor light, neither running water nor heat, neither internet nor ATM, the fundamentals of middle class life, without which we don’t believe we can live happily nowadays. Fish and flesh rotted in the refrigerator. Dirty dishes piled up in the sink. Even your own body began to emit a [...]
Last week I officially let go of my faux-boyfriend. The moment of truth happened in a lavender room with a gray sofa and wooden lectern at the Office of the City Clerk on Worth Street. Jamie and Tomoko said, “I do,” and smiled. They kissed each other and thanked the clerk. I waited for something to feel different, but it [...]
"I have to get to New York" says the woman in front of me at the Portland, Oregon airport. "You don't understand, I have to get there." She repeats this urgently, in a slightly hysterical voice to a man in uniform behind a counter. I smile at her sympathetically. The flight to JFK has been indefinitely delayed due to snow. [...]
On the first Wednesday of every month for the past year, my walk east from Fourteenth Street and Seventh Avenue where I teach, to the corner of Eighteenth Street and First Avenue took about twenty minutes. There are intriguing neighborhood changes along the way but I was usually lost in thought. I would arrive at my destination, Beth Israel's Karpas [...]
When I was a kid, Campbell’s Tomato Soup almost tasted home-made, especially if milk was added as suggested by the directions. Everyone ate it in 1964. The rich, the poor, the in-between and twelve year-old boys like me, so I was pleased to read in LIFE Magazine that a New York artist had painted large portraits of the popular soup [...]
Hey Neighbors, You may have noticed that you can now Like your favorite stories on Facebook and Retweet them on Twitter by clicking the aptly labeled "Like" and "Retweet" buttons in the upper right corner where it lists the story's neighborhood. It's a fast and easy way to spread the word about some of New York's best writers and a [...]
In 1986 I became an international pop music recording sensation. I don’t mean that at the age of 15 I admired and tried to emulate Ad-Rock, a squeaky, strutting third of the fresh hip-hop phenomenon the Beastie Boys—I mean I was Ad-Rock. His band mates—Mike D and MCA—were my homeboys. Sure, there had previously been a Tintin phase and then [...]
For twenty-one years I walked the same beat on Manhattan’s Upper West Side – from my apt on West 86th Street to my office on West 64th. I have lived in the same apartment for thirty-two years and have worked in the same office for twenty-one. I am a person who likes security and whose roots run deep. Many days [...]
It was 5PM on a Friday evening and somehow I was the only person on the train. I may have put the “new” in “New Yorker,” but I was no stranger to the stuffy sardine cans that subway trains turn into during rush hour. I craned my neck to get a look into the adjoining cars and realized that they [...]
I recently read a fanciful article in which a literary East/West all-star basketball game is imagined and scouted. Dave Eggers and Stephen Elliott are the starting back court for the West. Ben Marcus is cast as the starting center for the East not on the grounds of basketball skill but because, according to the writer, he looks like Žydrūnas Ilgauskas. [...]
I was sitting on a bench on the Lower East Side, waiting for an appointment with my barber, when a homeless lady came shuffling by, dressed in black rags. These were particularly witchy rags, it seemed to me, like she’d bought them at a store as part of a Halloween costume. Like in addition to being homeless she was somehow [...]
In 2002 we published Before & After: Stories from New York; a collection of stories in two halves - the first taking place in the city before the 9/11 attacks, the second being comprised of testimonials from the day itself and its immediate aftermath. Recently, we asked for submissions for the site, to explore the evolution of emotions which surround [...]
It had always been an in-joke between us. I was the one who hailed the cab. “Let them see that big yellow head of yours,” Tiffany would say. We broke tradition only once, separating at a corner during a light summer rain in Greenwich Village. The ugly truth left me stunned and incensed. The cab, a canary yellow mini-van with [...]
For the past several weekends, I’ve peeked through the homes of strangers when they weren’t there. I’ve tiptoed through brownstones, crept up the stairs of detached Victorians, and cased the backyards of garden unit condos. In Bay Ridge, I studied the diplomas that hung in a home office. In Prospect Lefferts Gardens, I thumbed a young couple’s bedside reading. In [...]
In graduate school, I dated a skinny fiction writer named Dan. It was a good relationship at the time, always having someone willing to read your draft of this or that, but when the time came to move from the Upper West Side to Brooklyn, I needed less brains, more brawn, and that’s exactly what the moving company sent. At [...]
“You from Long Island?” Danny, from Brownsville, Brooklyn, grilled. Before I could qualify myself, he turned to face the rest of the kids on our bus, and announced, “The skinny kid is loaded.” We had just left Chinatown and were cruising north, along the Hudson River, to sleep-away camp in upstate New York. My fellow 10-year-olds caught up with each [...]
An overweight middle-aged woman got on the F train somewhere in Midtown, and took the seat facing mine. She was wearing dirty clothes and was carrying two battered plastic bags, a combination that—two weeks in New York had already taught me—was not a good one. She immediately took a pack of Twinkies out of one bag, and instead of opening [...]
Connie was all for being a hooker, but Martin wasn’t. Connie wanted to be in the movie, Martin didn’t want her to be unless she played a nun, a Red Cross worker, or the head of the National Academy of Sciences. The trouble was, there were no parts for nuns, Red Cross workers, or heads of the National Academy of [...]
People tell me that being shit on by a pigeon is good luck but from my point of view it was simply the second annoying thing that had happened to me that day. The first was when I was told that my cushy, if slightly soul-crushing, freelance gig with a New York publishing company was coming to an abrupt end [...]
I was almost killed the other night. Really. That’s not so unusual because for the last number of years I’ve been riding my motor scooter all over New York. This has made me fair game for the city’s automobile drivers. Each trip I take turns into a mortality tale. I love riding my scooter. I’m thrilled with the feeling of [...]
Be afraid, they tell us. Be very afraid. I read the Timeses, the Newses, the AM New Yorks. I watch the Ernie Anostoses, listen to the Brian Lehrers, check out the NY1s, peruse the Gothamists, and call the 311s, only to end up hearing the same message, the ongoing drumbeat pounding in my brain in 12-8 time. THE-BED-BUGS-ARE-COM-ING! THE-BED-BUGS-ARE-COM-ING! I [...]
I drive a van for a restaurant. Actually it’s several restaurants but they are owned by the same people. They have three restaurant locations and two cafes, but only one location has a full kitchen and bakery. All the food is prepared at this main location and then sent to the other various restaurant and café locations around the city. [...]
This past 2nd of November, I walked two blocks from my apartment to 4th Ave in Brooklyn to watch the 38th running of the New York City Marathon. However, rather than being inspired, I immediately felt jealous. The cheering crowd shouting the runner’s names and shared nationalities as they ran by giving a quick nod in the direction of the [...]
The Craigslist murder of Julissa Brisman has left me wondering about my own choices as well as those close to me. Brisman’s murder by alleged killer Philip Markoff is a scary fact of what can happen when using the Internet for dating or other activities. I’ve been an avid fan of online dating for years and with much luck. I [...]
March 2009 will mark the ten-year anniversary of returning to New York City. The first year I lived here, in 1993-94 was a blur: an apartment in the Bronx, working with kids at a neighborhood center, $10 all-you-could-drink Saturday nights at Rockridge on Bleecker, 6 a.m. 4-train rides home, and smoking blunts with the janitor who also dealt crack and [...]
A couple Sundays ago my husband and I played pool, something I haven’t done in years. I’d been invited to an appreciation party for volunteers of the Old Town School of Folk Music, a Chicago institution that recently celebrated it’s 50th anniversary. I’ve never attended an OTSFM volunteer party, but this one took place about two blocks from my house, [...]
About a hundred of them went. They left their wives, children, friends and girlfriends. Some left school, others their jobs, to fly halfway across the world to fight in a war for, they say, their people, their identity and their independence. The independence, gained almost a decade later, came at a cost. For Florim Lajqi (pronounced Lie-chee), 30, of the [...]
It was the day after the August 15, 2003 blackout. Greenwich Village still didn’t have any electricity. It was roughly 107 degrees outside, so my wife, Kim, and I headed to the healing waters of our neighborhood pool. Strike one. The closest sanctuary -- Tony Dapolito pool on 7th & Clarkson -- was closed, so we made the executive decision [...]
I drove a stolen car from Boston to New York in 1976. It wasn’t really stolen. A Back Bay lawyer paid $300 for the disappearance of his Olds 88. I left the Detroit gas-guzzler by the Christopher Street pier. It was after midnight. I switched the plates and left the keys in the ignition. Within minutes the joy-riders drove off [...]
This winter I spent two months in Michigan working on a book. Halfway through my stay my girlfriend called and said her parents were visiting New York soon, coming from California to ride in the annual Five Boro Bike Tour. She said they wanted us to do it with them. I said I’d think about it, which really meant no. [...]
Saturday night, I had smelly cheese, cashews, black bean dip, spooned Hellmann’s and three Coronas for dinner. I over-bought crap for company, it’s causing me stomach problems, but I have to finish the stuff. Sunday morning, I met a writing editor on Cathedral Parkway who took too much money to tell me too little about my work. I left her [...]
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