You are currently browsing the stories about the “Manhattan” neighborhood.
Twice weekly, we ride the ferry across the East River from the India Avenue landing in the Greenpoint section of Brooklyn to 34th Street on the Island of Manhattan. Two hours later, we make the return trip. Each time we come aboard, the pilot, the bill of his cap pulled low on his brow, greets us with a taciturn nod. [...]
It’s not that you have to wait in line it’s how you spend your time waiting. At first I planned for a Netbook to do my writing on the go. Keyboard, long battery life and reasonable price were the enticing factors. I checked out a Netbook on display inside the Staples store on 6th Avenue and 42nd Street in Manhattan. [...]
My good friend’s elderly grandmother was always losing her handbag – leaving it in restaurants, bank lobbies, once in a Times Square movie theatre. One morning the old woman awoke and could not remember what her handbag was for; and so, within weeks her family moved her to a nursing home where her senility rapidly progressed. When she finally passed [...]
In a small basement theatre on West 50th Street and 8th Avenue I once photographed Scarlett Johansson accepting the Theatre World Award for her performance in "A View From The Bridge." When she got to the part in her acceptance speech where she thanked Arthur Miller, the shutter speed on my new Nikon mysteriously slowed and I was unable to snap [...]
I was late to the 79th Street Boat Basin, which meant I had missed the introductions of name and sailing experience. Convenient, since of the two, I had only a name. My new boss was telling us our mooring was at NW2. I scanned the orientation packet: bowline, jib, vang. I had thought the position was boat bartending. Halyard, stanchion, [...]
Back in the 1970’s, my girlfriends and I decided to spend a Saturday night without boys at a restaurant in midtown called Jacques. Long gone now, Jacques was a cool, elegant white table-cloth place that stayed open late and served delicious Hungarian food. We looked lovely walking in, in our pretty summer dresses and soft shampooed hair. While the maitre [...]
I love this train station. 125th St. The 1 is sentimental, alluring. It’s Ice T’s shadow in the credits of Law and Order SVU, It’s an isolated and spectacular scene that rises from below at 125th street, and Harlem is unfolded from panoramic elevation. I stood on 125th street, listening the rumble above me as the train rolled into the ground. [...]
When I moved to Little Italy in the fall of ’82, my ground floor studio on Mott Street was directly next door to the Café Espresso. This did not appear to be a fact that bore much significance, as the café was a broken down mess of a place, with faded gold letters peeling off a window crusted with dirt [...]
MR. BELLER’S NEIGHBORHOOD READING SERIES HAPPY ENDING in the Lower East Side Friday, September 23, 8:00 PM A Free Evening of Non-Fiction In The Lower East Side. Reading on September 23 will be: Rob Williams - Bear Patrol Lily Shen - It Is Easy To Speak Chinese Kenneth P. Nolan - Farrell’s Nathaniel Page - Spanked The host is Connor Gaudet - Hung Out About The Readers... Lily Shen [...]
I stumbled bleary-eyed out of my building still hours before the sun would rise over the East River. Allen Street was black and still. The bars were closed and the morning rush hadn’t yet begun. The homeless slept soundly in the street-median park. Waiting in her car in front of my building was Maggie, 40ish with a bowl cut and [...]
I’d just spent a month back in Kentucky, trying it on like an old outfit to see if it still fit. I was unemployed, unattached, poor, frustrated, and I wanted to make sure living in the most complicated, and challenging, city in the world was still worth it. I contemplated this as the plane bisected the isle of Manhattan. For [...]
In 2002 we published Before & After: Stories from New York; a collection of stories in two halves - the first taking place in the city before the 9/11 attacks, the second being comprised of testimonials from the day itself and its immediate aftermath. Recently, we asked for submissions for the site, to explore the evolution of emotions which surround [...]
September 10th, 2001. 6:30 PM. The corner of 11th Street and Fifth Avenue. The weather is glorious. The air is crisp. The sky, tranquil. I am walking downtown en route to a trendy West Village bistro. As I approach the corner of East 10th Street I come to an abrupt stop ... “I never realized how clearly you can see [...]
September 2010 Dear Jon, They want to build a mosque where you were murdered. I want to do the right thing. So I’m having a debate in my head taking on the two sides. What would you want I wonder. See, that’s the hard thing. I’d think after knowing you for such a long time, it would be easy to [...]
I met Mychal Judge in the spring of 1985 when my boyfriend, Javier, and I decided to get married. As a lapsed Catholic, estranged from the Church for over a decade, I was tormented with guilt and worry, yet I wanted to have a church wedding without having to account for prior errant ways—our daughter, for example—or making any commitments [...]
When I got the email from Sir Beller about revisiting 9/11, my thought was to delete it. After double-checking, I can say I'm proud of the piece I wrote, “October 2001,” only because I just reported what I saw and didn’t try to make sense of it. Had I gone the “this is how I experienced it,” route like so [...]
I was born in Manhattan, have lived there most of my life, but my last look at the twin towers of the World Trade Center was from the front deck of a Staten Island ferry moving through the dark waters after a Staten Island Yankees night game, July, 2001. I’d boarded the boat alone, was somehow all alone on the [...]
She was my cousin, in that by-the-way, six times removed way that a lot of cousins seem to be in the Jamaican-American Seventh-day Adventist community. You find one another when you’re 12 or 14 because everyone migrates to the same part of New York, belongs to the same cluster of churches, drive upstate every spring for camp meeting; you run [...]
An Update to my April 2002 story, The Visit. For me, a native Manhattanite who has never in my 72 years been off the island for more than two consecutive months, normalcy has never returned since 9.11. There's a permanent emptiness in the skyline - the towers missing from the views from the Throgg's Neck Bridge, from Ellis Island and [...]
The thing that intrigues me about photographs is not the spontaneity in which they’re taken, nor the way they freeze time, but the fact that in the split second when the shutter snaps, one doesn’t know which moments will become meaningful until much later. Capturing chance moments and random events, we can’t know the value of an image until life [...]
It had always been an in-joke between us. I was the one who hailed the cab. “Let them see that big yellow head of yours,” Tiffany would say. We broke tradition only once, separating at a corner during a light summer rain in Greenwich Village. The ugly truth left me stunned and incensed. The cab, a canary yellow mini-van with [...]
In the spring of 1989 I rented an apartment on 75th St., between Columbus and Amsterdam. The apartment, if you can call it that, was approximately the size of your average fitting room at TJ Maxx, but not nearly as nice. Though I was thrilled to be paying next to nothing for this space (a mere ninety dollars a week), [...]
"Jeez, I hope he hurries." The doctor said to his nurse. "I don't want to miss my train." "Me, too. I've got to get my kid by 5:30pm." Her answer tinged with aggravation. Hearing this exchange through the bathroom door, my bladder shut down. I was on the 60th floor of the Woolworth Building, the world's tallest building from 1914 [...]
My sister Betty and I are in the HOV lane cruising east on the LIE toward her house in Suffolk County. She is in the front seat next to me in the The Silver Fox, my Subaru Forester, wrapped in a light blanket against the still cool April air. Bets is my older sister, ten years older than I am. [...]
My body fell victim to silence the minute I made impact with the ground that paved the intersection of 39th and 3rd. In the heart of Manhattan, time stood still. The everyday chatter of New York City; the yellow taxis squawking at pedestrians and the orchestra of shoes pounding the cement suddenly came to a screeching halt. Simon said, [...]
The painting of a luxury building marked one of the walls of Mars Bar. It was in grey and black and in dull city lights it looked like a building out of a Batman comic. Above the door a sign read “Thank you for the memories.” It was the Friday before Fourth of July weekend. The bar had been having [...]
The door to Karen’s office was open and I waved a little hello as I entered, indicating that I would only be a second. Karen was the creative director at the magazine publisher where I was freelancing as a copy editor. I thought there was something cozy about her, something very motherly, in a distracted kind of way. She and [...]
The voice on the phone is asking what I see, and since this is the third time we’ve spoken, I’m feeling a bit chummy. “Police cruisers,” I say, taking in the block. “A whole shit load.” We’ve been tracking each other since Penn Station, this voice and I, for precautionary reasons I’m told, and this is where it ends: Thin [...]
WHAP! The paddle hit my ass. The first time I recall getting spanked, I was four. I had stolen a box of matches and lit a fire behind my house. My father spanked me down the hall. The last time I recall getting spanked, I was 25. I was in Paddles, New York City’s main sadomasochist dungeon. Megan, my spanker, [...]
Before I came to a stop at Bedford and Broadway the workers were attempting to flag me down like I was piloting a rescue helicopter. I’d asked Rob to translate for me in order to get the best guy for the job. Two young men approached the passenger side with hopeful expressions. “You speak English?” Rob asked, forgoing the translation. [...]
The world was supposed to end on May 21, 2011. One man I spoke to at a bar was a little disappointed when Earth was still turning at 12:01 AM on the 22nd. I guess that’s what you would expect from someone who is sitting by himself. His face was ruddy with alcohol and he was chomping on some feathers from [...]
In the late-70s Fiorucci on East 60th Street was the style center for the disco world of New York. The windows boasted the latest flash fashion from Italy. These trendy threads guaranteed almost immediate entrance into Studio 54 or any exclusive disco in Manhattan. Joey Arias was the store manager in the summer of 1977 and the part-time singer featured [...]
She: I want to buy you a good book for your birthday. He: What would I do with a book? Buy me a new body! --Conversation overheard between a man and a woman. When I think of second-hand books, I think quite literally of anonymous fingers reaching out to me from beyond the grave. I can practically smell the stale [...]
In graduate school, I dated a skinny fiction writer named Dan. It was a good relationship at the time, always having someone willing to read your draft of this or that, but when the time came to move from the Upper West Side to Brooklyn, I needed less brains, more brawn, and that’s exactly what the moving company sent. At [...]
When I took a position at a legal research firm, I became a frequent rider of the subway, sometimes spending more time under than above ground. My new job had me traveling from office to office during the day giving presentations and training attorneys. I hate to drive, so I've never minded the subway. Usually I hold my book or [...]
I support a poor kid whose name I don’t know in a country I don’t remember the name of, somewhere in South America, I think. This happened because I was stopped on the street on my way to meet a friend for dinner at a nice restaurant, singled out from the after-work stream of people flowing west on 34th to [...]
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