You are currently browsing the stories about the “Manhattan” neighborhood.
This is a story about my grandmother, who was young in Manhattan in the 1920s. Speakeasies, nightclubs, drop-waisted dresses, bobbed hair, cloche hats, waist-length strands of dime-store pearls. Even for a middle-class workaday office girl like Frances Thornton, those were heady times. She was among the first of the gals in her office to bob her hair, which caused Chub, [...]
Everyone on the scene thought operating an after-hours club on top of a 14th Street theater was a good idea and Arthur Weinstein opened the Jefferson on New Year's Eve 1980. During the week the loft was home to Arthur, his wife, daughter, and best friend, Scottie. On the weekend hundreds of revelers unwilling to call it a night crowded [...]
For a long time I used to go down to Pearl Street at the bottom of Manhattan. It was around the time that I had started writing a book about the famous case of the man and the woman who had disappeared from Pearl Street in 1997. The book led to the street and, in time, I became very fond [...]
It was 1995. I was a junior in college, working full-time at a Fuddrucker’s restaurant on the Upper East Side. I wore a uniform three sizes too large, in custodial colors, bedecked with promotional buttons for mega-nacho platters and S.O.B. sundaes. (“Son of a bitch?” a customer asked me once, pointing quizzically at the pin over my left breast. “South [...]
An overweight middle-aged woman got on the F train somewhere in Midtown, and took the seat facing mine. She was wearing dirty clothes and was carrying two battered plastic bags, a combination that—two weeks in New York had already taught me—was not a good one. She immediately took a pack of Twinkies out of one bag, and instead of opening [...]
With Illustrations by Carlo Quispe I don’t go to Dr. Dave for check-ups, just when something goes wrong. And something is wrong today. I suck down the last hit of my cigarette and stub it beside a mural of spray-painted camouflage that covers part of Dr. Dave’s corner office on Clinton and Stanton. A sign—red cross inside a white circle—hovers [...]
One Sunday afternoon when my father suggested we go to his health club in the basement of the Ansonia Hotel, I said, “No, why would I wanna go there?” I made a face. “Come on,” he said, as we walked through the lobby and stood under the awning outside our apartment building on West 76th Street. “Ya neva was there. [...]
This weekend I went to see a film called The Wrestler. I am quite neurotic about going to the movies. Because in New York City, theaters, especially on weekends, tend to fill up and sell out quickly, I make it a point to show up about an hour early. I feel panicked when there are lines, and I really like [...]
Where East Village Meets West Village I’ve spent the last ten years of my life in the East Village of Manhattan, movin’ on up Avenue B. Quite literally: I first lived at 4th and B, then briefly moved to 6th between B and C, ending up on 13th and B. I lived in a shoebox of an apartment—sans a single [...]
Long Live Viva Pancho Viva Pancho is a Mexican restaurant in Times Square, on West 44th Street, just off Broadway. It’s verde awning reads, “Viva Pancho”/“Home Of the Sizzling Fajitas,” in chili pepper script. Neither quaint holdover from the old Times Square, nor modern day restaurant group vision, it could very well be situated in a New Jersey strip mall. [...]
The snow is beautiful and magical as it begins to come down in light flakes in the early morning hours of late February. The roads and sidewalks are still manageable, the seagulls playfully carving the air a few blocks away from the Hudson, children throwing snowballs, people out walking their dogs. As the hours pass the snow continues to fall [...]
At the 96th Street subway station, a Hispanic man with a graying beard hopped on the train. He immediately launched into a barrage of loud, incoherent ranting, which made me wonder if he was freshly sprung from the Bellevue psych ward. After several minutes of rambling in English and Spanish, he finally hit upon a phrase he liked: “It is [...]
I’m holding the door open for Mr. 11A and his dog, but when he sees the Medical Examiner’s van and the police car parked in front of the building, he stops, leans in close to me, and asks in a stage whisper, “Do they suspect foul play?” I tell him that the police had only been waiting for someone from [...]
It was one of those perfect early spring evenings. The kind when the breeze just brushes your face so softly, when boyfriends drape their arms around their girlfriends’ shoulders as they stroll along, and the young moms and dads let the little ones run a bit ahead, giggling, happy to be liberated from coats and boots and mittens. One of [...]
I was almost killed the other night. Really. That’s not so unusual because for the last number of years I’ve been riding my motor scooter all over New York. This has made me fair game for the city’s automobile drivers. Each trip I take turns into a mortality tale. I love riding my scooter. I’m thrilled with the feeling of [...]
I had seen psychics in the past, but I was watching my budget. I needed some guidance but my usual clairvoyant’s fee of $150 was too steep. So when Mia suggested an angel reading at $40, it was just the check-in I could afford. Mia was an early adopter of different healing modalities. She’d vet the experience first, report back, [...]
On Friday night of Valentine’s Day weekend, I found myself on the exact same block where Slim and I saw a lesbian couples counselor for several months in 1995. What a weird déjà vu to be thrown back here alone, not for therapy but for a Speed Shrinking book party tossed by my straight colleague. Now instead of being preoccupied [...]
Kids in America are supposed to like guns. Our movie heroes majestically wield weapons on the silver screen and TV cops dance through primetime gun ballets. Armed with air rifles and plastic weapons my friends and I played WAR in the woods behind my house. Imaginary bullets tore holes through the make-believe Nazis and Japs. None of us ever died [...]
I leap down the stairs, unlock and swing open the wrought iron gate. Priscilla, my best friend and playmate, is leaning against the fire hydrant, fidgeting with her treasured Elvis Pez dispenser. She runs to me, pulls on my sweater, and drags me to the corner of Madison Street. Speechless and excited, she nudges my shoulder and points once, twice [...]
So you want to be a Staircase. Not just any staircase, one simply doing its duty, getting the job done. No. Like narrow Incan footpaths terracing the open expanse of the Andes or the ancient, airless passageways descending into Pharaonic tombs, you want to serve in the tradition of Great Staircases that have come before you. You want to be [...]
For seven years, I worked at Energy Saver’s News, a trade magazine that reported on commercial and industrial energy conservation. Six of those years were at the old Fairchild Publications building on East 12th Street near Fifth Avenue. It was a great neighborhood to work in: We were near both Stromboli Pizza and Ray’s Pizza, Cinema Village, the Jefferson Market [...]
They often amuse me, the touchstones that have become the rituals of my life. Jiggling the doorknob to make sure the door is locked. Stacking my self-help books according to dysfunction. Making sure no one is watching when I enter my weight and age into the elliptical training machine at the gym. Checking for ear hairs. Stuff like that. I [...]
Thanksgiving morning, 1961, Mom woke me quietly and whispered, “Rory is sick. If you wake him up before you leave, you’re not going either.” I shook my head yes. I felt bad that my younger brother, Rory, wouldn’t see the parade, but I was happy to go with Dad alone. It was much easier having a good time with Dad [...]
This was the first year we had joined the Westchester Youth Soccer League, and the urban parents on our daughters’ travel team were business executives, academics, social workers, and creative directors—just like they were. Some of us had left our parents’ Westchester or Long Island suburbs to raise our children in the “inner” city of Greenwich Village. We’d heard stereotypes [...]
“Je m’a…,” I’d stuttered to Aristede Mezondes, the serious young man in a grey wool overcoat, standing before me with ramrod posture. “Je m’appelle Dr. Ofri.” There. I’d gotten it out. The language of Descartes, Voltaire, and Balzac had clearly vacated my cortex. Despite those years of French classes and one brief visit to Paris, “Je m’appelle” was the best [...]
As I am walking out of yoga class, an acquaintance asks, “How’s Rio ?” She is referring to the two pound poodle puppy I had mentioned I would be getting. At this point, I’ve had Rio a few days. “He’s great,” I say, “But it’s way more overwhelming than I thought it would be.” Her face instantly screws up in [...]
For the past several minutes, I've been watching Ellen DeGeneres drive a cab around Columbus Circle behind a camera crew. The cab is old fashioned, with a big square grill and black-and-white checkerboard sides. Businessmen rushing by don't notice her or don’t care if they do, and I stand with a few foreign tourists ready with their cameras. They know [...]
The other day I was walking down 11th Street in the West Village past the recently shut down St. Vincent's Hospital building when something in the alcove on the corner of 7th Avenue caught my eye: a pile of stuffed animals laying in a heap: a teddy bear massacre. St. Vincent's used to be a source of life, [...]
I don’t tell people about Jon very often. I want people to get to know me, not feel sorry for me. Last week I was at a friend's anniversary party and a man who must have been on speed or something like it, talked about the planes hitting the towers. He said that he could see them from his apartment. [...]
When you lose someone so important to you, who feels larger than life, sometimes you act a little crazy while going through the grief. Maybe it is to counter the silence and life's unfairness, but at the time, your actions can feel magically vibrant. This is one of those stories. The day was St. Patrick's Day 2002 and I drove [...]
The front of the White House wasn’t that bad. The reviews online had been awful but perhaps they’d been hasty. The doors were bright blue and no place with bright blue doors could be that bad. I heaved my suitcase over the step. At the train station, a frat boy had tried to help me with it. “Jesus Christ, how [...]
I celebrated my 60th birthday and my 25-year job anniversary the same year my employer accepted billions of TARP money. And then, on a bright July morning, I was laid off. I could pretend that it was because business was changing, as the notice letter said, or that there was a need to make more cuts, as my manager—I’ll call [...]
We bounded out the exit of the Municipal Building like two cowboys pushing through saloon doors. Kurt set the pace as he trotted to the VIP parking lot, where six black Lincoln Town Cars belonging to elected officials and agency commissioners rested during the dignitaries’ brief visits to their offices upstairs. He reached one of the cars and popped open [...]
Young white man with large backpack, heavy French accent, and reasonably capable English: Excuse me, is there a local Number 2 train? It comes on this track? Middle-aged white New York woman with long, dangling earrings: No. This is the Number 1 track. Number 2 trains, they're all express. Over on that track. A Number 2 just pulled out. French [...]
Outside the shop where we'd just bought ice cream, my wife and I were sitting on a bench against the window, my wife with a cone and myself with a small cup. It was sunny. We'd just come over from Riverside Park, where we'd been leisurely biking, and where people were already starting to gather for the evening's fireworks. It [...]
After work, my father usually went to the racetrack or played poker with his pals in the Ansonia Hotel, a few blocks from our pre-war apartment on West 76th Street, so my mother and I were surprised to see him home early one evening. It didn’t take him long to tell us why. “Turn on the television!” he said, excitedly, [...]
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