You are currently browsing the stories about the “Gramercy Park” neighborhood.
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 city. I would wander idly [...]
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 imposing, and made me feel [...]
“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 plucked strings accord with [...]
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 the Brooklyn Bridge at three [...]
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 each other and racing our [...]
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 started having some problems, my [...]
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 basketball in their driveways and [...]
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 my destination, Beth Israel's Karpas [...]
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 common a faux-elitist notion that [...]
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, New York's wealth, and the [...]
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 in his eyes. And he [...]
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 he gave me a tour [...]
The pictures on this page are 360 panoramic images. If you do not have Quicktime (and you'll know if there are no pictures visible even after a minute), Download it here. These are not static pictures. You can move them left and right, up and down. To move the image: Hold down mouse button and drag mouse in desired direction. [...]
I was sitting on a green bench outside of a cafe on Irving Place, on a hot day with a blaring sun. I was in one of those moods where I was thinking of everything bad that had ever happened to me. I noticed a huge bagel on the edge of the sidewalk. It was one of those modern bagels [...]
It’s after five on Friday and I have pleasing, twenty-something plans for the evening. Judging from the look of Larry, a diminutive agent at the literary agency where I am director of operations, he does too. A tanned, old-school publishing guy, he’s a middle-aged romantic, known to still hold his handsome wife’s hand in public. We arrive at the elevator [...]
