You are currently browsing the stories about the “All Over” neighborhood.
After our engagement my family had decided that I would be allowed to talk to Fatmir on the phone. When my niece was engaged she had to make secret phone calls, but my family was modern. In anticipation for the phone call Asllan and Behare went out and took Sokol’s three boys. My Mom and Sokol’s wife were at their [...]
It was me, the girl standing in front of the Krusq, the wedding party, wearing a wedding dress. How did it happen? What went wrong? I had asked God to change things. I didn’t like the man I was going to marry -- but I had no choice. “On the day you were born God wrote on your forehead who [...]
My subway epiphany came when I moved back to New York after a seven-year absence in the early 1990s. In the time I had been away, the subways had been vastly improved, and were no longer a place of thoroughgoing menace. The interior surfaces of the well-ventilated car I rode in were gleaming and graffiti-free – nothing at all like [...]
This is a love letter to you, New York, because I have been gone for four months and won’t be coming back for yet another one but I am counting the days, I am crossing off boxes on my calendar (wildlife scenes, pretty pictures of nature, which is what I am living in now and it is beautiful and harsh [...]
As a survivor of a tragic event, I remember it like it was yesterday and yet, it seems like a dream. The first five weeks were surreal. I don’t know how I got through it. My friends helped. Everyone said I was strong--I wasn’t. I wanted to die. I almost did but I held on bc I figured Jon would [...]
It's 1978, the annual “summer offensive” is well underway and chaos rules the streets. The ghettoes are burning and there are more fires than there are units to fight them. If TV stars and politicians resided here, you could bet we would be operating with a full second alarm assignment but here in Hunts Point we will be lucky to [...]
The campus of my public school building in New York City is a fortress these days. Gazing through the mesh caging of any stairway window, I can spot faculty deans, campus security (a branch of the NYPD with arresting powers), as well as regular NYPD uniformed officers patrolling the grounds like medieval sentries. As I move through the halls of [...]
In the past decade, many attempts have been made to assist women in our efforts to meet a significant other. Self-help books with titles like The Rules or He’s Just Not That Into You proliferated, but instead of providing a sense of relief or assurance, they seemed only to add to the mass hysteria. Well, now we can all wipe [...]
I was riding in our friend’s red, rattling car. The car that had been filled with balloons to celebrate my last birthday—the time we traveled to visit Mom. Now my wife and I were going to inform my forty-five year old brother of her death. To inform, support, and console my kid brother—the brother who relied so heavily on Mom [...]
When I was seven years old my mother, ignoring my protests, packed me into the station wagon and drove downtown to the Detroit Institute of Art where I proceeded to vomit on the marble floor. I blamed my sick stomach on a sculpture, but it was more likely the stack of pancakes she fed me for breakfast. I tried to [...]
Today I had perhaps the most unique experience that I have ever had in my lifetime. I began walking the streets of New Orleans and speaking to people on a one on one basis. This may seem odd to you, and perhaps it is, but I canvassed New Orleans today not as a citizen but as a candidate for Mayor. [...]
On this warm, wet Christmas, I ambled without purpose somewhere in America. I prefer the inevitable disappointment of a sodden Christmas--the remains of an earlier December snowfall dribbling down storm drains, the exiled smokers unshivering, unbothering with jackets, exhalations elongated in the humidity, the theatrical coziness of houses all the more fake against temperatures well above freezing. Through the neighborhood [...]
[Mr. Beller's Neighborhood is proud to share the following, a chapter of a new book from Soft Skull Press called "America's Mayor: The Hidden History of Rudy Giuliani's New York" edited by Robert Polner and with a preface by Jimmy Breslin. The book is an anthology that includes reminiscences and critical dissections of the Giuliani Administration by a variety of [...]
"And three weeks later I found him dead in his apartment," I overhear an old man say to his friend as I pass them on a street in the West Village. It's all I get--the one, disembodied line. Another day, another street. I pass a man and a woman, and at that instant the man says: "I LIKE eating raw [...]
THE GOD OF HIGH SCHOOL by Rachel Cline ON THE ANNIVERSARY OF NOT SEEING HER AGAIN by Alex Jablonski CHRISTINA by Snooder Greenberg WEDDING PROPOSAL AT CAFE LOUP by Meghan Daum and Thomas Beller MAKING IT by Kendra Hurley THE KEPT BOY by John Epperson SEGWAY SIGHTINGS by Maud Newton BUTCH & NANCY by Jenni Olson THE JEWISH HOLLY-GO-LIGHTLY by [...]
It didn’t matter that I had been awarded scholarships to three universities – my parents needed money to send to their families in war-torn West Germany and Austria. The last day of high school coincided with the start of work in the mailroom at J. Walter Thompson advertising agency, the next day. “You’re a smart kid. You can go to [...]
To the woman on craigslist who wanted to know the difference between ‘booty call’ and ‘fuck buddy.’ (I figured she must be foreign so I addressed her as ‘Madame.’) Madame: In Re: the difference between ‘booty call’ and ‘fuck buddy,’ despite the alliterative pairing and their shared concern with fucking, the two phrases are ontologically different, the main distinction being [...]
--July, 2001 It’s a dark and stormy night. The gothic spire of Riverside Church, on the Western Edge of Harlem, is hidden in mist. Throngs of acolytes huddle around the church doors as though awaiting entrance to the gates of a Medieval city. They are Bjork fans. At noon that day a special one-off show in the church’s chapel had [...]
I stepped into the crowded subway car and a little girl sitting next to the door yelled something at me. "Hey Mister..." I shot her a look that said: "I don't know if I'm going to pay attention to you, but at least let me claim my standing spot and my pole before I decide." But then my hand met [...]
In February 2004, when the New York City Council passed a non-binding resolution-by a 36-13 vote-denouncing certain provisions of the USA PATRIOT Act, what was more interesting to me than a symbolic defense of civil liberties was the fact that one of those 13 dissenters was Councilman Peter Vallone, Jr. Pete and I were friends years ago and even played [...]
In the song "New York, New York," Frank Sinatra claims that "if you can make it here, you can make it anywhere." Theoretically, this might be true, but practically speaking, I think it should read "anywhere [reachable by public transportation]," since New York is one of the only places in the United States where it’s possible to be a fully- [...]
Midway through The Warriors, a lesbian gang called The Lizzies lures a detachment of Warriors back to their party pad, treacherously plying them with music, dancing, and the promise of good loving. Waylaying the Warriors just as Circe waylaid Odysseus and his crew, these jaunty lesbians proceed to transform the street-tough Warrior boys into randy and helpless Sweathogs. That’s when [...]
A tugboat, wheezing wreaths of steam, Lunged past, with one galvanic blare stove up the River I counted the echoes assembling, one after another Searching, thumbing the midnight on the piers. Lights, coasting, left the oily tympanum of waters The blackness somewhere gouged glass on a sky And this thy harbor, O my City, I have driven under, Tossed from [...]
I had my Ipod on shuffle. All of a sudden strings welled up, sentimental and epic. Then Richard Ashcroft’s voice came on, sounding as though he had the ten commandments in his arms: “I wander lonely streets…” The song was “History,” off of The Verve’s “A Northern Soul.” That record preceded their one US hit, “Urban Hymns,” which contained “Bittersweet [...]
Distinct from other great cities of the world, Manhattan is almost pathologically averse to letting you wander to the river's edge and get close enough to touch the water. It has erected a prophylactic wall of fences and other physical barriers, which over-protectively stave off potential accidents, intentional harm and, most of all, liability suits. It was not always thus. [...]
Thursday morning was many different mornings, just as the night without lights had been many different nights. One woman, rising before the sun, stuck her head out of her bedroom window. Never before, she said, had the street been so quiet. Nor the sky—in Queens!—so full of stars. A twenty-two-year-old who hadn’t been to bed decided the best way to [...]
It is 7:00pm, and I look down at my vibrating phone. It’s from Mr. Cheese. Interesting. I had met him awhile back, and he seemed nice enough, so we exchanged numbers. But I rarely hear from him, and have never had more than a 5 minute conversation with the guy. Hm. I wonder what the occasion is. “Diedre? Hi, this [...]
Merchants and police had the first say, but in no time, countless others got into the fray. “They are jackals, that’s why,” said a city councilman who represented a heavily looted Brooklyn neighborhood. “Jackals who took advantages of the darkness to destroy our stores and services.” “Why do they do it?” asked an eighteen-year-old, as if the answer were obvious. [...]
On July 13, 1977, the power went out in New York City. What happened next depended on who and where you were. "This is the greatest," said a twenty-year-old in Rego Park. " People aren't afraid to come out of their houses. There are so many people on the street, nobody's getting mugged." "I want to go home," a Brooklyn [...]
Whether they are Hispanic, Black, Asian, Jewish, White or Latin, whether they are riding the A, C, D, 1, 2, or, 3, the men who sit with their legs spread wide open on the subway do so with a Cro-Magnum sense of entitlement. illustration by elishacooper.com I asked a bunch of them why, exactly, they are sitting like that. "In [...]
Periel / Central Park Vivi / Greenwich Village Jyllian / Soho Sophie / Little Italy Kate / Park Slope
We don't like them, and they don't like us. What follows are brief reports on encounters between civilians and Hummers (and their owners) in an urban environment. ANY urban environment. If you want to add your own, please go to the "Tell Mr. Beller A Story" button and send one in. (The most recent additions are at the top.) ** [...]
My devotion to fashion shows began with the designer Cynthia Rowley. About six years ago I inherited an invitation to her show when a fashion editor at the magazine where I worked couldn't attend. I still remember grabbing a cab at the last minute and scrambling in as the show was just beginning. Sly Stone's "If You Want Me to [...]
57th Street, 8th Avenue, midafternoon: I’m at the newsstand when the traffic light goes out. It has the same ominous, empty face a dark stoplight always has. Newsstand man looks up. His light went out too. We turn in tandem. The subway light is out. Now we look at each other. Not good. We shake our heads. Nothing like a [...]
My mass transit had misplaced its insanity. The B48 bus driver obeyed traffic signals. The one-legged beggar banking on his one-leggedness vanished. Even the angry accordion player took a sabbatical. My chunky-monkey commute was now old-fashioned vanilla. But vanilla was what I craved. It was another day answering phones for a tri-monikered firm. The job was painless when the company [...]
There’s this place on 57th between 8th and 9th called Dramatics for Hair. There are a few of them in the city. Dramatics has this thing going on where they give each of their employees a “dramatic” name, something like Flame or Lightning or Cognac. They are usually nouns but once in a while you meet an adjective. Naming the [...]
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