You are currently browsing the stories about the East Village neighborhood
The 1936 Battle of Tompkins Square Park
by Harold Goldstein 06/03/2023Neighborhood: East Village
I once had an experience that answered for me the question that haunts many males of the species: am I tough enough to hold my head up with the great warriors in history – those who fought at Armageddon, Troy, Marathon, Lepanto, Austerlitz, Gettysburg, Stalingrad? This question was answered – at least to my satisfaction […]
Blue Velvet Redux
by Julie Metz 05/27/2023Neighborhood: East Village
I wondered if a movie could produce the same terror decades on, even if I’d worked hard to forget the plot and its disquieting images. Like the severed ear lying in a field—a waxy dead thing, crawling with ants. And Dennis Hopper, huffing into a mask. Isabella Rossellini’s red mouth in eerie close-up. Not to […]
Louie the Ex-Con
by Joan Hall 04/29/2023Neighborhood: East Village
I loved my fifth-floor tenement apartment on 6th Street in the East Village. At the time, I was in my early twenties and could fly up those stairs The railroad apartment had two fireplaces, one in the kitchen and one in the living room. In the winter, I couldn’t wait to get home to start a […]
The Laundromat
by Claire Viguerie 03/18/2023Neighborhood: East Village
It was quite an operation. Lookouts on walkie-talkies patrolled the roofline, and a scout on a bike pedaled up and down the block, combing 7th Street between Avenues B and C. A guy in a ski mask stood guard at an open window on one of the apartment building’s upper floors, ready to service the […]
Hua Tang’s Daughter Gets a Tattoo
by Linsey Liao 10/22/2022Neighborhood: East Village
23 minutes away from the East Village, Manhattan, and Hua Tang’s mascara has already snowballed beneath her lashes. I don’t look any better — glancing at my window reflection, I register, my resemblance to the racist portrayals of Chinese people in 19th-century American comics. My eyes are swollen to the point where my field of […]
Dead Weight
by Raphael Lasar 10/14/2022Neighborhood: East Village, Greenwich Village
When I was a teenager, during the second half of the 1970s, I pretty much lived in Washington Square Park during the summer. I sometimes joke that in some ways I was raised there. In some ways that is not so funny. Yippies, Jesus Freaks, drug addicts, tourists, and street performers were my friends and […]
It Takes a Village
by Coree Spencer 07/17/2022Neighborhood: East Village
They say it takes a village…to raise a drunken man out of the gutter. I discover this is true while crossing First Avenue at 6th street in the East Village. After throwing on an inside-out sweatshirt and flip-flops to visit the corner fruit stand, I see someone lying in the street near the curb by […]
The Terrycloth Bathrobe
by Susan T. Landry 06/13/2021Neighborhood: East Village, NoHo
The late afternoon, graying quickly, was sweet with surprising warmth. Days such as this wouldn’t come again for at least a month. A reward, it seemed, for surviving another dank and joyless February in New York City. My birthday was in March, and even at my age, I looked forward to the day with a […]
Lyrics for Songs that May Never be Written
by Andy Bragen 05/17/2020Neighborhood: East Village
I started writing these for my dear friend and frequent collaborator, the jazz saxophonist John Ellis. We both live in Village View, a Mitchell-Lama Housing Complex in the East Village, one building over from each other. When COVID hit, I started sending him material – “rough cuts” that we might eventually work on together to […]