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Inside the firehouse, sweeping floors, cooking meals and maintaining equipment are routine parts of the job. However when the doors go up and the rigs go out you have to be as flexible as Gumby, because you do not know what you are going to be faced with next. While responding to alarms, we always scan the sky for smoke [...]
Jimmy, the boss, and I are in the basement still mourning the passing of 16A, when the passenger car opens and a white envelope dances out of the elevator. The white rectangle shimmies and gyrates obscenely, beckoning us. We are powerless to resist. As we near the object of our desire, the envelope, and the hand to which it is [...]
The world of magazine publishing in New York is extremely competitive. No matter how talented one is an editor or a writer, one must have contacts in the industry to obtain that first, entry-level job. Mrs. Carpati, my landlady, happened to work at Cosmopolitan in ad sales, and she was glad to introduce me to Hearst Magazines. I got lucky [...]
If you are of the runty persuasion (for our purposes let’s say 5' 2" or shorter – ceiling-skimming 5' 3ers need not apply) you likely know the terror that is the general admission rock show. You may – as I did for years – swear off the concert hall forever, foregoing its unforgiving expanses for the more amenable terrain of [...]
On a summer evening in 2001, after work and after grilled cheese in the Greek diner on Amsterdam, Jeremy and I are walking through Verdi square, past the 72nd Street station on the 1 and 9, the most treacherously narrow subway platform in all of Manhattan, forever poised on the precipice of disaster. The streets are packed with nervous life [...]
She was an old lady and for a moment I wanted to kill her. We were at the grocer, and she was taking an inordinate amount of time paying. After a long time spent peering into her purse she handed over a few dollars, and a couple of quarters, and a dime and a nickel, and was now very carefully [...]
The old lady thrust her flabby arms toward me and yelled, “She’s a man!” I fixated on the waddle of skin beneath her chin. With her arms flapping and her waddle shaking, she looked like a turkey. “You’re sure Raven is a man?” Maury Povich cheerfully asked. I awaited gender judgment, posing in my seven-inch, black patent leather, come-fuck-me-but-please-don’t-make-me-walk-in-these heels, [...]
I met him in Starbucks while drinking a cup of coffee. He didn’t look like the kind of man that frequented Starbucks. He was reading a newspaper and I sat down at the table and chairs next to him. Even sitting down he seemed very tall; his hair was neatly shaved off his head, and he had a small graying [...]
I had been living in New York for three years before I saw my first dead body. Sure, there were those moments of uncertainty all New Yorkers experience, when stepping into an empty train car and seeing a body splayed out, usually a poor homeless person who certainly smelled like death; but you were never sure. I even played a [...]
In April, 1992, I was in Los Angeles preparing to go to the Academy awards as the date of someone who had been nominated for an Oscar--my mother. The Oscars are about Hollywood, about bright, ephemeral glamour, about surfaces that reflect. My mother is not about these things. Yet there we were, an unlikely pair, preparing for our big night. [...]
I’d dashed in about a half-hour before closing time. This little toy store in the Village, whose shelves cheerfully overflow with cute wooden toys in primary colors, funny stuffed monkeys and bright plastic puzzles. A friendly, crowded little place devoid of Gameboys and electronic pinging, the kind of place where you can reassure yourself you’re in the company of rational, [...]
A beaten body sat slumped on the back step of an anonymous pumper. We nearly walked right by Danny without recognizing him. Danny’s turnout coat was half open and covered with remnants of the building burning at the corner of Townsend Avenue and the Cross Bronx Expressway. His face and hands were black with soot. Steam seaped from his helmetless [...]
There is no commuter more unqualified to weigh in on the effects of the transit strike than a cyclist who lives and works in Manhattan - which is me. I have been riding a bicycle in the city for the last 12 years and have become so reliant (addicted might be a better word) on it as my means of [...]
Alma Mater, the massive, laurel wreath-sporting statue-woman who sits at the heart of the Columbia campus in Morningside Heights, strikes an ambiguous pose: her forearms raised, her palms open to the sky, her face blank. This gesture can be interpreted in all kinds of ways, but, on days like Tuesday, it was a shrug. Many students I talked to shrugged [...]
An "incident" had occurred at the group home where my younger brother lives with five other men and three women who all have mental retardation. His supervisor, more amused than upset, followed procedure by notifying me and beginning an investigation. Fred, a 103 pound, 5’2” 52-year-old man, was discovered standing with his roommate of two years in their tiny room [...]
Date: Feb 13, 2006 The staff at The Mermaid Inn are eager to meet your dining needs. Please tell us about your experience in the space below. Your opinions and suggestions provide invaluable insight into how we can continuously improve upon both our service and cuisine. Please visit us again, and soon! Name: Doug Maloney E-mail: dougerino@gmail.com Scallops were sort [...]
That morning I got up in the afternoon. My friend Micki came from 204th/Post Avenue, from her man's crib complaining about his small penis saying, "My baby brother's got a bigger dick than his!" And I had to get up and shower, leaving her in my room and I took the loofa with me because I scrub the dead skin [...]
On the first day of the New York City transit strike of 2005 I went to talk to Rosa Gutgold. She sells pearls, and is usually good for a few pearls of wisdom. But Rosa did not come to work on the first day of the strike. Nor the second. On the third day the tiny kiosk she normally occupies [...]
I was recently musing about my time as a trainer at Manhattan's most prestigious 1980's gym: The Vertical Club. The place was loaded with the beautiful people and the celebrities they yearned to be. A regular in the weight room was one Bruce Cutler, the late John Gotti's lawyer. The barrel chested Cutler was a popular figure in the trendy [...]
A psychic stopped me on the street today after having accidentally looked into my soul. “I see something in you,” she told me. “Something in your past!” “Be careful looking back,” I told her, concerned. “. . . Should you turn into a pillar of salt.” “I want to talk to you.” I felt compelled to stop. “There is something [...]
I have an idea for a new diet book. Dress up as a cartoon character for an hour. It is guaranteed to take off at least five pounds. At the behest of my friend Dawn, who works for the non-profit PBS affiliate Channel 13/WNET, I answered an ad for volunteers for a function sponsored by her station. They were seeking [...]
Autumn has arrived and the cooler air has dampened but not ended the fires of this years "Summer Offensive." Somewhere the trees are changing color but here in Hunts Point it has been one of those days. We've already caught more work on this day tour than any company outside the ghetto will see in six months and the smoke [...]
It took me a while to realize that Kenny was missing. I had been out of town for the holidays, visiting family in California. After almost a week without seeing him since my return, I began to grow concerned. I live on the Upper East Side in an area that used to be, in the ‘60s and ‘70s, a thriving [...]
“If you want to tell a story – start telling it. It might come out OK. It might not. At least you tried – better than leaving it in the fridge of memory. Sooner or later, like all man-made things, fridge will stop working and all goods will rot.” --Some guy on the steps near Ganga in Varanasi, India 1. [...]
Heath Avenue. I recognized the building right away. Public housing always stands out from all other domiciles. It looms, and, like a tall man, commands your attention. But when you look up, expecting to see his face, you see a blank outline, no distinguishing features. No nose. No mouth. No eyes. We parked on the side street around the corner. [...]
After my boyfriend and I broke up, I was lonely so I put an ad on Craigslist. What is it about a man that makes him think sending a picture of his private parts is going to turn a woman on? A little mystery and anticipation is a great thing. I put the ad under "women seeking men." Hoping to [...]
Oh man, he's going to die! I live 100 feet from Interstate 95 and from my living room window have an unobstructed view of this sea of vehicles. Having lived here many years the sounds of impending trouble are familiar. So when the horns started blaring it was a cue to look out the window and I did so, just [...]
It’s weird, how often you’ll find in out-of-the-way urban areas—below an overpass, next to a river or stream, next to railroad tracks—a pair of jeans, a pair of shoes, unmatching dirty socks, filthy underwear, cast off as if these places were just other rooms, were the private dressing quarters of the damned. I’ve always wondered at this: “These goddamned jeans [...]
I looked out the window and saw a woman come walking up the street eating a cupcake. She was blonde, in sneakers, alone. The cupcake’s icing was white. The woman’s timing was perfect— I had begun reading on the computer at dusk; by the time it ran out of power, and the screen went suddenly black, the sky had become [...]
1. If one peers through the storefront windows of the National Jewelers Exchange on West 47th Street, past the hundred or so feet of bustling merchants and shoppers and side-by-side display cases filled with gold and silver, all under the harsh track lighting suspended on cables from the 20-foot ceiling, one can just make out two old-fashioned words painted onto [...]
You would think that everyone would know about the New York City Transit Strike, with its coverage in newspapers and television around the clock. On the 2nd day of the strike, I discovered I was wrong. After meeting with a friend at a Starbucks in Morningside Heights, I faced the prospect of either walking to my apartment on 23rd St. [...]
Christ Zig, what did you do? Whenever I'm asked if the fire department had an effect on my personal life, those six words explode into my brain. It's a beautiful summer Sunday afternoon in 1977 at the Bronx zoo with my wife and three kids. The kids are riding a camel and shouting what all exicited kids shout, "Look at [...]
The public school kids of New York City learned that they could go to school 2 hours late during the strike. At least for the kids who live within walking distance of the school, and didn’t have to take a car service or walk miles in the cold, this was fun and exciting. When I went to pick up my [...]
Tale of the Tiger #1: Three weeks ago. One of my best friends from growing up in Billings, MT, stand-up comic Auggie Smith, moved to New York after years of occasional visits and constant prodding on my part. We go out to celebrate and hit the Blind Tiger on a Sunday night. We settle in, get a beer and Auggie [...]
Because I’m Jewish, my Christmas decorating habit started small. Creating yards of silver sparkle, I drizzled hundreds of tinsel strips on hanging plants spanning my living room window, which overlooks 77th Street near First Avenue. I clustered evergreens in vases too. Although my husband David came from a more observant family than mine, he didn’t mind the white poinsettias I [...]
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