You are currently browsing the stories about the “All Over” neighborhood.
On September 12, I went back to work at Men’s Journal because the issue was gutted and redone for a tribute to the FDNY. The streets were empty, not only of people, but also of noise. There were no street peddlers, few taxis, no music, no screaming, and no horns honking, only the non-stop blare of sirens. The standard intrusion [...]
It was with a sense of being robbed that I watched, from a television set on Staten Island, the events that unfolded on September 11th. The smoke emanating from the two buildings as if they'd been sliced by some reckless cosmic lawnmower gone berserk, and the camera angle that made the bodies falling look like drifting pieces of paper, large [...]
I was attending a company meeting on that Tuesday. We had started at 8:00, a presentation on the company values and mission statement to the staff. Even though I had been at the previous presentation, I had decided to attend, as a show of support and solidarity. At approximately 9:10, my cell phone began vibrating, the caller id showing my [...]
I'm on a jam-packed rush hour 4 train headed to Brooklyn and am lucky enough to get a seat. I'm reading my book and the guy next to me says, "Is that your bag?" and points under the seats. I look down and see a large, square-shaped canvas bag. "No," I say. So he asks the lady next to him, [...]
The following was written before September 11th, 2001 Like most New Yorkers, I can't afford those restaurants that garner plaudits in Zagat's. I've made some peace with that. After all, I'm less a foodie than a chowhound, scouting outer-borough ethnic eats on the weekends. At lunch, I usually brown-bag it or grab a $2.25 rice and beans from the nearest [...]
She arrived in the city ahead of me to work as an assistant to the producer of a movie, a pretty girl's job, a blonde's job, and soon, very soon, while I was still talking to her by phone from Seattle, making arrangements for my move to NYC, she began sleeping with the director. In the business these blondes are [...]
I am not an American citizen and my only knowledge of New York City had been through TV series and movies. But three years ago I decided to save a few bucks and visit. From the moment I took the cab from JFK airport, I felt like I was coming back home. It was strange: the landscape seemed familiar. Friends [...]
Recently, I was laid off from my job as a magazine editor. I cleared out my desk, carefully stashing pens and binder clips into a box. Anticipating having to write countless cover letters, I also took a ream of paper. I felt guilty about this and confided in a co-worker. "It’s okay, honey," she said, patting my shoulder. "When they [...]
As the son of an Iranian father and a Jewish mother my sense of sorrow concerning the disaster of September 11 does not tend toward patriotism. In fact, I am repelled by it. I speak as a first-hand victim of American patriotism in 1979, the year 66 U.S. diplomats were taken hostage in Iran. The underbelly of American patriotism is [...]
Israel, Jordan, and the Sinai Peninsula suffered through a heat-wave during the summer of 2000. In countries where July temperatures normally venture into the 100's, a heat-wave may seem like a redundancy, but nevertheless that summer even the hardiest residents were miserable. By the end of July, Eilat, the southernmost city in Israel, was regularly recording temperatures upwards of 110 [...]
Stephanie Black does not want to talk about the September 11th World Trade Center attack in the context of her movie, "Life and Debt." "I'm still processing it, like everyone else," she said on the phone the other day, speaking from her apartment in downtown Manhattan. But her film, which is currently playing at the Cinema Village (12th Street and [...]
It is 8:30 p.m. on September 10th, the day before the World Trade Center attack. I am at therapy like I am every Monday night. "New York is killing me," I complain to my therapist. "At every turn, I am filled with a new contempt for New York. A garbage truck passes me and spews out thick exhaust in my [...]
9:30 AM It’s a slow morning like so many, in that I am running slow. I get into the bathtub, and turn on WCBS Newsradio. Downstairs I can hear my wife assuring our fifteenth month old that breakfast is fast approaching. And then I hear the unfamiliar sound of a plane about to fly into my house on Sullivan Street [...]
My neighbors don't have window shades. They are a man and woman in middle age, childless, quiet, and coping. At night, they shudder in the light of the TV which is always on in their bedroom, reruns of Kojak or The Lucy Show or Dick Van Dyke. Often, he's sprawled in bed, surfing the channels, while she's staring at some [...]
TWO MONTHS AGO I DECIDED TO VISIT NY WITH MY SON ROMAIN. NY HAS A SO BIG VITALITY AND A SO BEAUTIFUL COSMOPOLITAIN PEOPLE THAT I THINK IT IS A VERY GOOD EXAMPLE OF LIFE FOR MY SON. AND IT IS !!!! WE VISITED MANY PLACES OF NY AND OF COURSE THE TWINS. AT THE TOP A PHOTOGRAPHER IN A [...]
So it began at the dry cleaners, at five past nine, when someone said a plane had hit the World Trade Center, and Chris, the Jamaican tailor, turned from his sewing machine in the front window and said, "Two. Two planes have hit the towers. Both of them." The dry cleaner is Le Kang, an Asian name, and the woman [...]
And again they are dancing on the roof. And again they hand out candies in the street. And the level of their joy rises in proportion to the number of casualties reported. And the grandpa who dreamed about peace, I mean dreamed until yesterday, kisses his grandaughter during her sleep, in the hope that her dreams will come true. Didi [...]
When the car nipped at my bike tire it made a ‘zzzzow’ sound like a mosquito on uppers buzzing in my ear. The muscles in my arms and legs got tense at once and that’s probably why I didn’t tip over. City sounds sang out in a cacophony of car horns and screaming pedestrians. Potholes dropped the earth out from [...]
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