You are currently browsing the stories about the Park Slope neighborhood
In a Pandemic, Reflecting on my Race with Mortality
by David Kalish 05/24/2020Neighborhood: Bay Ridge, Park Slope, Staten Island
Lately I’ve been working the elliptical hard, pumping the pedals like I have something to prove. As a cancer survivor, maybe I do. Staying strong could help protect me against COVID-19. Because of my condition, I make it my priority. Sometimes during my workout an old memory drifts up, of a time I had even […]
Not Sisters
by Aviva Goldstein 02/09/2020Neighborhood: Park Slope
Bobbi and Gerri first introduced themselves as sisters when we moved into an apartment one floor below them. But the headline above their picture in the Park Slope Patch nine years later reads, “Park Slope Couple First Same-Sex Couple to Wed in Brooklyn.” The picture caption reads, “After 48 years of coupledom, on Sunday morning […]
Still Standing
by Neil Stein 01/05/2020Neighborhood: Park Slope, Subway
It was not so long ago that I would ordinarily drive into Manhattan from my home in Park Slope. However, I had a rule that I wouldn’t take my car to anywhere above 23rd Street. About five years ago, because of an increase in traffic, I moved my boundary to 14th Street. But recently, things […]
Child as Parent
by Greg Gerke 11/17/2019Neighborhood: Park Slope
Isn’t it fitting to think of Wordsworth when raising a baby? “Surprised by joy—impatient as the Wind”—best to cut the poem there. He authored so many other polished pieces about childhood and how the mind changes when growing up and old, crowned by the great koan-like first line of The Immortality Ode, “The child is […]
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 […]
The Tape
by Martin Kleinman 04/26/2016Neighborhood: Brooklyn, Chelsea, Jackson Heights, Manhattan, Park Slope, Prospect Heights, Sunset Park
-1- Once upon a time, there existed a New York City economy where a young person fresh out of college could, with a straight face, think in terms of “building a career.” Imagine such optimism. The notion of “career” seems so trite now, forty-plus years on, so immaterial, in this age of downsizing, outsourcing, off-shoring. […]
Of Love and Real Estate
by Alba Brunetti 04/01/2013Neighborhood: Park Slope, Prospect Park, Windsor Terrace
Breaking up is hard. That’s true even if you’ve been thinking about it a long time – weighing the scales back and forth. Am I better staying in this thing or am I better getting out? Sometimes it can go on for years, like it did for me. Because parts of it were perfect and […]
Richie Two-Ax
by Donald Reilly 12/29/2011Neighborhood: Gowanus, Manhattan, Park Slope
When my father walked onto the construction site of the Western Electric Building on Broadway and Fulton, he asked a dark-skinned guy in hard hat where Richie Two-ax was. The construction worker eyed my father’s neatly pressed slacks and asked, “Who are you?” “I’m his friend? He told me to meet him here for lunch,” […]
Bear Patrol
by Rob Williams 07/19/2011Neighborhood: Midtown, Park Slope
The door to Karen’s office was open and I waved a little hello as I entered, indicating that I would only be a second. Karen was the creative director at the magazine publisher where I was freelancing as a copy editor. I thought there was something cozy about her, something very motherly, in a distracted […]
Hung Out
by Connor Gaudet 06/20/2011Neighborhood: Park Slope
Looking out my kitchen window, I see a clothesline. It hasn’t always been there. It’s a bit saggy perhaps, and a long length of excess rope is untrimmed and dangling from the knot. But still, I look at this clothesline and feel pride. For it was I who put it there. My girlfriend Victoria and […]
Undone. A Moving Story.
by Margot Kahn 05/22/2011Neighborhood: All Over, Park Slope, Upper West Side
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 […]
Low Point at High Point
by Rob Williams 04/03/2011Neighborhood: Park Slope, Uncategorized
As I walked past High Point Coffee on Fifth Avenue in Brooklyn, a heavy bag of groceries in each hand, I was surprised, even alarmed, to see that the windows were dim. It wasn’t even eight o’clock yet on a warm April evening. However, I reflected as I approached, I am High Point Coffee’s only […]