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Michael Jackson’s Father
by Susan T. Landry 07/04/2020Neighborhood: Bowery
When my son and I moved to the Bowery in the late 1970s, we took our place alongside the slow-marching parade of men and women who moved through those streets like ghosts. Some were devoid of identity and shape and earthbound spirit; others were vivid and sublime. A black man, a vagabond who trolled the […]
Central Park Saves the Day, Again
by Christine Shaffer 06/14/2020Neighborhood: Central Park
I’ve been spending some jobless time in Central Park during the pandemic with other New Yorkers, where we are, seemingly, at times–aimless–roaming the park’s eight hundred and forty-three acres. What are we doing here, I often want to blurt out. We should be in our offices, attending boring meetings, typing away at our computers, picking […]
Dinner with Dad
by James Arnold Horowitz 05/31/2020Neighborhood: Upper East Side, West Village
“Hi Jim, it’s Dad, just touching base to see how everything is going and how you’re feeling and how everyone is today. Looks like the first day of spring, the weather is horrible, I’m sure you agree. Give me a ring, let me know how things are going?” My Dad, Bill, spoiled me for fine […]
Nostalgia for the Norm
by Peter Wortsman 05/10/2020Neighborhood: Greenwich Village
Observations in the Vale and Vector of the Virus It’s late. And again, I survey the silence, inverting wakefulness and sleep. Again, in place of dreaming, I listen to the refrigerator humming. The construction site that had been growing like a giant metal bean stalk outside my window, down the block, has suspended activity, its […]
Betta Fish Blues
by Audrey Deng 04/26/2020Neighborhood: Upper West Side
“Can you help me?” I said this to the young woman who was opening boxes in front of the aisle of fish tank decorations. “Sure,” said the woman. She pulled herself up from her squat by pushing off the edge of the box. “What can I help you with?” “I’d like to see your goldfish,” […]
In Praise of Rooftops
by Sara Krolewski 04/19/2020Neighborhood: East Village
I’m sitting on the roof of a walk-up on East 11th Street, staring into the large glass windows of a penthouse apartment across the street. It’s an early evening in August, the perfect time of night for idling: not late enough to make you worry that you’ve wasted the night, but since the sun’s gone […]
The Polaroid Photo
by Susan T. Landry 03/22/2020Neighborhood: Bowery
I have an old Polaroid of Dolores, Roni, and me. I was finally painting my kitchen, after not dealing with it for years. There’s a stepladder slanting diagonally across the snapshot and I am in the center, sitting on the bottom rung, a glass of wine in my hand. Dolores is vamping toward me from […]
A Breaking Point
by David Weiss 02/16/2020Neighborhood: Midtown East
Bellevue was a dark castle in my childhood imagination. In grade school, long before I knew that my own mother had once landed there, my classmates and I spoke of Bellevue in a chilled whisper, as the place you’d end up in if you lost your mind. A straitjacket and a padded cell would be […]
Super Poems
by Dan Hubbs 01/26/2020Neighborhood: Lower Manhattan, Tribeca
Waterbugs Before I was a super If you asked me what A waterbug was I’d of said One of those little things That kind of runs on the top Of ponds or quiet pools On the sides of streams But at 258 Broadway Down in the sub-basement where I had to make my way through […]
Spice World
by Amy Rigby 01/19/2020Neighborhood: Midtown, Theatre District
My daughter Hazel, after ten years of listening to what her parents wanted to hear and wanted her to hear, found music that neither her father or I could lay claim to, pop music designed for girls her age: Britney Spears, Jennifer Lopez, Christina Aguilera. We’d taken her to see Bob Dylan at Jones Beach […]
Home Decorating
by Nina Camp 01/12/2020Neighborhood: Yorkville
Was I a fool to think this relationship could be saved by an upholstered storage bench? I spent weeks in deep contemplation on my go-to furniture websites, activating coupons and letting them expire, looking at measurements, colors, prices, patterns. Jonathan and I had already discussed it in couples’ therapy. The plan, sanctioned by our therapist, […]
Dealers I Have Known
by Richard Dailey 12/15/2019Neighborhood: East Village, Lower East Side
I began using cannabis regularly in 1968, when I was about 14 years old, and since then have had innumerable encounters with dealers. The ones I will write about here are the dealers with whom I had long-term relationships. With cannabis becoming legal in so many places, there’s not much future left in the business […]