You are currently browsing the stories about the East Bronx neighborhood
Crotona Park
by Marissa Piesman 03/14/2021Neighborhood: East Bronx, West Bronx
Blanche, my mother, was past thirty, an old maid by the standards of the mid-twentieth century. She finally picked herself up and hauled herself off to a lefty resort in the Catskills, the kind of place where people were more likely to play Twenty Questions than tennis. There she met my father, Harold, who was […]
Paradise Lost in the East Bronx: Starlight Park
by Eugene Barron 07/14/2018Neighborhood: East Bronx
Of all the places in New York City during the 40’s, “paradise” could be found in the East Bronx. Adjoining the Bronx River, when it was clean and frisky, a magical park with a huge pool in the round, surrounded by beach sand. In a world where basketball was king, here was a lovely but […]
The 1977 Blackout Hits Co-op City
by Raanan Geberer 04/08/2009Neighborhood: Bronx, East Bronx
It was July 1977. I had gotten my master’s degree in journalism the year before, but I still hadn’t gotten a full-time job. Not that jobs in journalism were easy to find. At the present time, I was writing weekly news articles for the Eastside Courier, a neighborhood newspaper on the Upper East Side, and […]
After Dark
by Michele Carlo 06/14/2008Neighborhood: Bronx, East Bronx
“Nothing good ever happens after 2:00 am.” That’s what my mother told me when I tried to get my curfew raised. I was 19 and thought I had made the right choice by choosing to stay home and go to the School of Visual Arts instead of Art Center in California. I could get Latin […]
It Was One Hell of a Ride
by Thomas R. Ziegler 06/01/2008Neighborhood: Bronx, East Bronx
Fuck… you… fireman. I had never known such rage. There was no conscious thought to exiting the rig and beating each member of this group to death. Unguided, my hand found its way to the door handle. But try as I might, the door would not open. That’s when I started to climb out of […]
Kill Whitey Day
by Michele Carlo 04/27/2008Neighborhood: Bronx, East Bronx
I was standing in the basement of Macy’s Parkchester in The Bronx, in a line of what seemed like a thousand teenagers, smoking both cigarettes and weed, chanting and cheering and waiting for Ticketmaster to open. Adult shoppers were non-existent and salespeople had abandoned their posts either in foreknowledge or in fear, except the lone […]
A Force of Nature: Patrick O’Connell
by M. O’Connell 01/06/2008Neighborhood: Bronx, East Bronx
A few years ago in my father’s eighty-first year, my brother Patrick and I went to his house to spend Thanksgiving. My father lived in the Bronx at that time. We are the only children in the family still living in New York. Neither of us particularly wanted to spend the day in my father’s […]
Lobster Bisque on City Island
by Joseph Scalia 12/31/2006Neighborhood: Bronx, East Bronx
Listen to this story: I always stop whenever I see “Lobster Bisque” on the soup menu, and I smile. That isn’t because lobster bisque is a particular favorite of mine. I never had much interest in “lobster anything,” unlike the people who rave about lobsters and have to order them whatever the cost, even though […]
The Smell of Bologna (An Essay in Ten Parts)
by Patrick J. Sauer 12/31/2006Neighborhood: Bronx, East Bronx
[Patrick J. Sauer also has a website. –Ed.] The sense of smell is the most powerful reminder of past events. It’s the hardest sense to pin down, the hardest to define. A smell is never described as it is, only in simile form. It smells like burning leaves. You know, it smells wet, like…like…like a […]
Scenes from a Jewish Girlhood
by Alice Elman 07/19/2006Neighborhood: Bronx, East Bronx
On my corner of 167th Street and Grant Avenue in the Bronx was a small grocery that sold “Appetizers”—dairy foods, pickles, milk, eggs, and fresh tub butter and cheeses in large refrigerated glass cases. The owners were refugees. From the War, my mother said. I was twelve and that War had ended fifteen years ago. […]
The Stool Pigeon and the Indian Lake
by Irving Bronsky, M.D. 01/02/2001Neighborhood: Bronx, East Bronx
It never occurred to me that Norman would chicken out and become a stool pigeon. He was aggressive, a good athlete, a gambler, (for baseball cards and streetcar transfers), a veteran explorer of our neighborhood and Crotona Park. He was a very persuasive talker, a take-over guy and besides, he loved banana and mustard sandwiches. […]