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The Ohio Convention
by John Reidy 03/03/2019Neighborhood: Featured, Greenpoint, Port Authority, Woodside
I ran into Dad’s room after hearing my name called. “Take off your shoes,“ he said. I wondered what the heck was going to happen now. That morning my mom had told me that I would be going to Akron, Ohio with Dad to see the people who caused his nightmares and screaming. His war […]
Naked City
by Clifford Thompson 02/10/2019Neighborhood: Central Park, Cypress Hills, Manhattan
For a time in the late 1980s, a local TV station in New York City aired late-night reruns of Naked City. The show, a black-and-white police drama set in New York, had originally aired from 1958 to 1963, the year of my birth. Those years were a critical period in the civil rights movement, and, […]
Car Pool, 1994
by Amy Rigby 02/03/2019Neighborhood: Lower East Side, Williamsburg
Got to pick these kids up. Oh why did we start a stupid car pool? Maybe car pools made sense in the suburbs of 1972 but…in Williamsburg, 1994? Still, it beats trying to get four five year-olds from Brooklyn to Avenue D in Manhattan by subway and bus. One big problem is our car. I […]
What the World Can Do
by Steven Goldleaf 12/02/2018Neighborhood: Coney Island, East Village
In the summer of 1973, my younger brother and I shared a basement apartment on East 12th Street in Brooklyn off Avenue J, a nice middle-class sort of area. We had lost our parents to cancer and a stroke, ten months apart, a few years before this, when he was fourteen and I was sixteen. […]
Mom’s Fondest Dreams (A play in one act)
by Jeff Loeb 11/04/2018Neighborhood: Williamsburg
SETTING: The time is the present. The location is a small, trendy Williamsburg retail establishment located a tasteful distance off Bedford Avenue, just across from P.S. 84. The legend on the door reads simply “leif” (for the benighted or initiates, the title appears to be a multi-valanced mixture of archaism [adv. OE gladly], urban slang […]
A Trip to Aqueduct
by Bonnie J. Glover 10/21/2018Neighborhood: Aqueduct, East New York, South Ozone Park
The day after I turned ten, my mother took me to my first horse race at Aqueduct. Hitting the regular numbers didn’t pay as well as the horses, and sometimes when Mama had an itch to gamble she couldn’t wait on the numbers man, Mr. Sheyanne, to come around. Besides which, she whispered to me […]
My View of Sunset Park
by Thomas Maschio 10/14/2018Neighborhood: Papua New Guinea, Sunset Park
Fifth Avenue entrance to Sunset Park My five-year-old daughter Claudia loves to go up and down the hills of Sunset Park on her scooter. We put her little crash helmet on and push her up the park hills, but she loves to go down them herself, having become an expert braker and master of turns. […]
Carlisle the Violinist
by Stas Holodnak 09/16/2018Neighborhood: Brighton Beach, Coney Island
On the Saturday evening of Memorial Day weekend, I found myself seated at a snow-white draped table next to a card featuring my first and last name in italicized letters. The joyous occasion was the wedding of a childhood friend. It was no different from the other weddings I’ve attended, except for a violinist, who […]
The Grindstone
by Jasmin Sandelson 08/12/2018Neighborhood: Fort Greene, SoHo
I was two weeks old the night we met in SoHo and you showed me how the world works. Back then, I still couldn’t sleep through the night. I’d lie face-up on the bed I’d bought from the last roommate, listening to the traffic on the BQE a block away. The cars whooshed all night […]
Absolutely True Minutes from a Co-op Meeting
by Thomas Rayfiel 08/04/2018Neighborhood: Brooklyn, Park Slope
The evening kicked off with a lively discussion of garbage. Now that Harriet and Karl have settled into Apartment 1, they were encouraged to proceed in beautifying what has become, even by the building’s lax standards, the eyesore outside their front windows. Mary says she knows of a woman who has made concealing trash a […]
My Mother, My Hair
by paula katz 07/26/2018Neighborhood: Brooklyn, Lower East Side
Last night, I dreamed about my mother. She was floating over the threshold of my room, a sweet smile on her face.In her raspy voice with its crazy Brooklyn accent, she said, “It’s been so long since I’ve seen you, darling. Look how long your hair got.” Because even in death, Mom was all about […]
If Dad Was A Doll
by Royal Young 04/09/2017Neighborhood: Coney Island
My father took me to the Coney Island Freak Show every summer growing up. My artist Dad seemed unfettered from his day job as a social worker, sketching subway riders on the hour train ride from the Lower East Side, where we lived surrounded by junkies and prostitutes wandering derelict streets. On the boardwalk, he […]