You are currently browsing the stories about the Gramercy Park neighborhood

Shop Around

by 01/09/2022
Neighborhood: Gramercy Park

My mama told me, “You better shop around, (Shop, shop)Oh yeah, you better shop around” (Shop, shop around)— Smokey Robinson & Berry Gordy, Jr. The store on East 23rd was my favorite Salvation Army Thrift Store, although there were several I visited often.  Most Saturdays I spent the whole day walking the streets of the […]

Dog Day Afternoons

by 12/13/2020
Neighborhood: Flatiron District, Gramercy Park, Manhattan, Upper East Side

Pablo’s father was a handsome, French pianist in his forties. His apartment was immaculate and minimalistic. He was usually absent when I came to retrieve Pablo for his 90-minute walk, but sometimes I would turn my key in the lock and hear him playing the grand piano in the living room. It sounded beautiful, but […]

Never Mind the Notes

by 09/27/2020
Neighborhood: Gramercy Park, Murray Hill

“If you have to ask what jazz is, you’ll never know.” – Louis Armstrong At the time I fancied myself a budding talent, though I’d have been hard pressed to say at what. Singer-songwriter was my latest label, only I sang mostly in the shower and once toweled dry  could never quite manage to make […]

The Brownie Caper

by 06/19/2014
Neighborhood: Gramercy Park, Manhattan

I once took the New York City police exam on a whim. In the suburbs of Long Island where I grew up, a large portion of high school buddies already had badges and guns by their early twenties. “Dude,” an acquaintance would say from the stool of a local tavern, “I shot my gun off […]

Disappointment Smothered in Honey

by 05/04/2014
Neighborhood: Gramercy Park, Uncategorized

Thomas and I are sitting in my empty dorm. We’re attacking two slices of french toast smothered in honey with our forks like cavemen with spears. Every now and then I make sure to lick my honey-covered fingers seductively. They taste as sweet as this moment feels. Thomas and I are taking turns staring at […]

When the Therapist Lost Her Mind

by 10/03/2012
Neighborhood: Gramercy Park, Stuyvesant Town

My wife Sarah and I had been seeing our therapist, Brenda, for years – both separately and as a couple. When I met Sarah, she was already seeing Brenda, who was then in training to be a psychiatric social worker after a long career as a high school social worker and Spanish teacher. After we […]

Look Homeward, Brooklyn

by 09/07/2012
Neighborhood: Brighton Beach, Gramercy Park, Long Island

We move the summer before ninth grade from our four-room apartment in Brighton Beach, Brooklyn, to a four-bedroom Colonial house with a two-car garage on the south shore of Long Island. A town where every street is a drive or a place or a court. A place where kids play softball in the street and […]

Facing The Day

by 06/25/2012
Neighborhood: All Over, Chelsea, Gramercy Park, West Village

On the first Wednesday of every month for the past year, my walk east from Fourteenth Street and Seventh Avenue where I teach, to the corner of Eighteenth Street and First Avenue took about twenty minutes. There are intriguing neighborhood changes along the way but I was usually lost in thought. I would arrive at […]

The Gramercy Park Litmus Test

by 09/14/2009
Neighborhood: Gramercy Park

I moved into Gramercy Park through sheer dumb luck. I didn’t discover Eden with my own bumpkin nose; I had help in the form a lanky, soft-spoken boy who was returning home after living as a piste-addicted ex-pat. I met him after some of my own colossally unproductive post-college years in Colorado. We had in […]

They’re behaving like animals

by 06/01/2007
Neighborhood: Gramercy Park

Madison Square Park confirms New York as civilized city. The park is a cultured green in Manhattan’s punishing grid: the Flatiron Building to its southwest, Broadway to the west, the century-old architecture, the clock tower to the east, buildings that house Credit Suisse First Boston and some of the globe’s most powerful corporations, America’s wealth, […]

The Super Down the Block: He Reads

by 12/08/2006
Neighborhood: Gramercy Park

Monday Night Football and the Greenwich Village Packer haunt, the Kettle of Fish, is heaving. There are orgasmic spurts of happiness as the Packers recover four interceptions in the first half. Seattle’s fair weather fans are distraught as the Pack dominates in the heavy snowfall. Brett wants this one. You can see the fire burning […]

Aging of Aquarius

by 12/01/2006
Neighborhood: Gramercy Park

The first time I was interviewed by a child was in the dotcom era. The spiky-haired, droopy-butted-jeans wearing creative director greeted me when I got off the elevator in the loft-like Chelsea space. “Great . . . Wow,” I said, feigning interest in the “hang out” room and basketball hoops he mumbled on about as […]