You are currently browsing the stories about the “Fort Greene” neighborhood.
Do you have anyone in New York City who you are worried about running into? I interviewed people and asked them who they least want to see. Courtney is a sometimes playwright and is in her 50s. She lives in Fort Greene. H: So, who is the person who you least want to run into in New York City, you [...]
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 and it sounded like the [...]
Last week I was walking home through a snowstorm. Turning the corner toward Fulton I called Cecil Taylor, who lived in the last unrenovated brownstone on that street. We knew each other from back in the 70s. The jazz pianist’s manager James Spicer had been a mutual friend, until the silver-haired impresario ripped off my unemployment checks. “Who’s this?” Cecil [...]
Last night was New Year’s Eve. My redheaded poetess friend Irene phoned to invite me to a 20-something party in Bushwick. “You’ll be the oldest man there.” Irene was going solo. “Almost three times older.” We were just friends. “I think of you as 16.” She had seen me being silly on more than one occasion. “I like to think [...]
It’s all taken on a certain familiarity. I unlock the door, turn on the light, drop my bag at the foot of the bed, and move towards the kitchen. With a flick of the light, there is the scurry of roaches and waterbugs across the tile and under the counter. Like clockwork, I begin to yell obscenities, “Fuck, fuck, fuck, [...]
I was walking my boyfriend, Frank, to the Target near our house. We were out of paper towels and Diet Coke, and it was his turn to do the shopping. A few blocks away, he closed his eyes, and began breathing deeply, in and out. I grabbed his arm and steered him gently away from a stoop. “What are you [...]
Sitting in my first floor apartment window, people watching, it hits me (hard) that three out of the last five people who had just passed by were white. "When did this happen?" my daughter who had been out of the country for over a year asked in astonishment. It was her second day back in the states and in Brooklyn. [...]
Heather stopped and pulled down her pants. Adam and I stood in the shadow of a large building on the still Brooklyn street, allowing no person to see. Urine trickled down the contaminated sidewalk as we left. The journey commenced, and on we walked to the worst place in New York to buy coke, Kokies. After being permitted to enter [...]
I had just completed my freshman year at Cornell University, where I was majoring in Functional Apparel Design. The program focused on designing clothes for people with specific needs. My degree would be nothing like those awarded to fashion design students at F.I.T. No, nothing frivolous for me. But what I didn’t realize when I began this course of study [...]
