Car Pool, 1994

Got to pick these kids up. Oh why did we start a stupid car pool? Maybe car pools made sense in the suburbs of 1972 but…in Williamsburg, 1994? Still, it beats trying to get four five year-olds from Brooklyn to Avenue D in Manhattan by subway and bus. One big problem is our car. I […]

In a galaxy far far away: The East Village Years

Some prescribe the medicine of looking forward not back; don’t dwell on the past they advise, move along. Usually a proponent of such sentiment, I found it diminished when my attention was redrawn to an almost forgotten tale that I’d penned about my early life in New York. A story of the kid fresh off the […]

One Wheel, Two Towers

  They say everything happens for a reason. Construction began on the World Trade Center in August of 1968. Some months before that when I was in the second grade, our teacher, Miss Spellman, handed out a Weekly Reader, an eight-page magazine with short articles designed to encourage the habit of reading in elementary school […]

My Mother, My Hair

Last night, I dreamed about my mother. She was floating over the threshold of my room, a sweet smile on her face.In her raspy voice with its crazy Brooklyn accent, she said, “It’s been so long since I’ve seen you, darling. Look how long your hair got.” Because even in death, Mom was all about […]

Street Beast: The Real Estate Ninja

I’d already seen the apartment several times– once with Joey and the other time with the two Jeffrey’s. The two Jeffreys were thinking about moving out of their apartment in the East Village and wanted “something more fun and interesting,” which is another way of saying “we’re going to fuck your schedule in the ass […]

You’re Out of the Night

On Match.com, Ken’s moniker was “Dull.” He wrote that among his favorite things were office carpeting, spam, and waiting rooms. “I bet he lives in one of those storage units off the highway,” my friend Meg said as she read over my shoulder. My own profile was styled after Nancy Drew. Hair color? Titian. Hobbies? […]

Jews Playing Basketball

New Yorkers of a certain age who dig hoops can tell you that there is a lot of Jewish DNA in the city game. Basketball was invented in 1891 by James Naismith, an instructor at a YMCA in Springfield, Massachusetts, but the game’s popularity really took off early in the 20th century in the settlement […]

Direction By Mercy

“Here, going? Here, here!” The woman says to the drive and points to the paper in her hand. “This bus is going to Rockaway Beach!” The bus driver looks at her and answers. The woman doesn’t seem to understand and starts to talk to the bus driver in Chinese. The bus driver looks puzzled and shakes […]

Good Humor

The week before my high school graduation, I wandered into the Good Humor ice cream garage on East 3rd Street between 1st and 2nd Avenue, just a block from my apartment. I was looking for a summer job. A friend of the family, a college kid named Keith, was working the books there, and he […]

Mr. Beller’s Neighborhood Reading Tonight!

Below 14th

In the summer of 1984, I sublet an apartment on East 3rd Street between Avenue A and B, about one hundred yards from the building in which I had spent the first 18 years of my life. I’d been away for six years—the first four at a small college in the midwest followed by two […]

A Comparative Analysis of the Heroic Exploits of Antarctic Explorer Ernest Shackleton and Downtown Resident Brent Shearer During The Five-Night “Sandy” Blackout

October 1915 – Shackleton’s ship the Endurance crushed by ice after drifting for nine months. October 28, 2012 – 7:30 pm: Shearer hikes two blocks from residence at 90 Hudson St., #6B, to Hudson River with stated goal of checking out storm surge and keeping feet dry. Forced to wade through three feet of water […]