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I’m not the first nor will I be the last writer to wait tables. More illustrious authors in this category include Tennessee Williams, Michael Cunningham, who tended bar before he penned The Hours, and Cynthia Huntington (who was once told by her boss that she was the ‘best-educated barkeep in New York.’) While I don’t aspire to become what Anthony [...]
On our weekly descent into hell last night, we stopped at Nino’s for a slice. You can tell the New Yorkers from the By-Way-Of’s through a brief surveying of pizza eating technique; New Yorkers fold. You learn this at a young age. Hopefully, someone at some point in your upbringing takes you aside and shows you how. Or else you [...]
In 1978 I had the only blue record album in the Berkeley Townhouse apartment building, on 35th Avenue, and probably in all of Flushing. It was the age of disco and Cheryl and I, the founding—and only—members of the Funseekers Club, (co-presidents of the Queens headquarters) were about to outgrow the unruly, shag rug in my parents' living room, and [...]
Eventually everything is history - even one's own life. I once caught a glimpse of President John F. Kennedy in the flesh - and that image, so radiant and energizing - has stayed with me for over 40 years. I saw him when I was an actress playing in a comedy called Mary, Mary on Broadway. Next door to my [...]
I'm sitting in an upholstered armchair Jerry reserves for his clients, worrying the gray rubber brain from his collection of stress toys - the same ones I fiddle with while waiting to hear the size of my refund. But it's November - too early for my annual pre-April 15th appointment. In a few minutes, when Edward arrives, we'll discuss record [...]
I felt a little nostalgic as my W2 slips started arriving in the mail. For the first time in two decades I did not receive the form letter from Sheldon, my long term accountant. His annual reminder always opened with the awkward phrasing: "Winter is here and with it the knowledge that April 15 will soon be here." That stilted [...]
I sent a valentine to Richie but the mailman brought it back. I have sent valentines to Richie every year since 1985, but I knew this day eventually would come: the valentine would be there, but Richie would be gone. Richie ran the news and candy shop on Sullivan Street in SoHo, just a few steps south of Houston. [...]
A ten-foot painted head bobs down Grand Street, feet furiously shuffling from below the neck. Close on his heels are three metallic-haired 20-year-olds dressed in flimsy black sheets, cinched in a manner that make them look like punk Roman centurions. I can tell I’m getting close. Destination: Deitch Projects gallery in SoHo. A few days earlier I had RSVP’d for [...]
Ladies! Who are suffering from terrible and terrible hair days all the time. Who always get out of your house in such pissed off mood because your hair is not shaped the way you want. Who must get up earlier than others to calm your hair down and end up dozing off at work Who are just simply dissatisfied with [...]
It was the middle of a heavy, overcast day. I was eating lunch in Greenacre Park. Most of the patio chairs were leaning against the tables, draining off the earlier rainfall. Usually this vest-pocket park on 51st Street between Third and Second Avenues is Standing Room Only at lunchtime. But the weather had scared away the usual crowd. So there [...]
Living on the first floor of a tenement can have its advantages—no multiple flights to walk up at the end of a tiring day, or to stumble up after a long night. During the summer, the first floor always remains the coolest, so I don’t feel like I will die a broiling, stuffy death unless I install and run an [...]
October 23 is a cold, gray Saturday. I get off the train F train at Rockefeller Center and step out onto Sixth Avenue, underneath Radio City Music Hall. There is a film crew set up on the northwest corner of Sixth Avenue and 51st Street. A white light fills the corner. At the center of the light, a dark bearded [...]
"Different day, same shit, old mac, new clip Thirty two hollow tips, gloves, no rubber grip…" The reporter and I stand quietly in the underground garage. We don't want to look like we're interested in shooting anyone, in any sense of that word. Two minutes earlier the reporter received a call in the deli across the street. His desk told [...]
We are in Chinatown looking for a good price on a Zippo lighter. My son wants one with with no logo, no Elvis face, no Mets, no #1 Stunner in fancy script. Just plain silver, the size of a matchbox, when matchboxes were the size of matchboxes. He's fourteen and still looks nervous striking a match, like he's afraid it'll [...]
It was a muggy Manhattan afternoon in August, and I was between movies. Not because I didn’t have air conditioning, but because I needed to distract my angry, heartbroken self, and movies, carefully spaced, were my drug of choice. I had seen La Ultima Baci at the Sunshine on Houston Street and was on my way to whatever was playing [...]
Gooning / n. / the random beating of an unsuspecting victim, usually by a goon gang Usually when I cross the Williamsburg Bridge this late at night I'm thinking, “This would be the perfect place for a random act of violence.” But this particular time the thought didn't occur because I was engrossed in a cell phone conversation—that is, an [...]
This essay appears in the just released book, "Lost and Found: Stories From New York." 1. Rage Reacclimation: Waiting in line for a press credential At the southwest corner of "The Big Tent" in Bryant Park, a snaking, huddled mass of photographers gathers in the cold, waiting for access to the warm, partitioned press cell within. Fashion Week has arrived [...]
The dark woman hated me because I listened to Wagner without guilt or regret. She said that she could never understand how I could enjoy the work of such a fierce anti-Semite. I told her that was not a problem; I had learned to separate the music from the composer, and, besides, Wagner pretty much hated everybody. She said that [...]
Central Park exists because of two writers who cared about the well-being of New York City, including all its people: the poet William Cullen ("Thanatopsis") Bryant, who proposed his idea for the park when he was still studying at Yale and also editing a periodical called the "Evening Post," and to the landscaper and editor of "The Horticulturalist," Andrew Jackson [...]
The introduction to this column, and its first episode, can be read here. ** I am here less than an hour before I slice my finger with a box cutter while breaking down some boxes 8B left in the hallway—her weekly fix from the Home Shopping Network. I should probably put a bandage on it, but the boss is bellowing [...]
Two men on the 1/9 train, heading downtown at night. One of them has a head of wild brown curls that are pushed off his forehead by a headband. The look is part hoodlum, part Jean Michelle Basquiat. His eyes are bloodshot. His body, buried beneath a hugely puffy down jacket, radiates a tense poise. He sits with elbows on [...]
I was riding downtown on a 1 train after basketball with two of the players from the game, Nick and Tom. Tom and I are both 6-6 and had spent the previous ninety minutes beating the crap out of each other on the basketball court. We were much like the fox and the sheepdog in those great old Warner Brothers [...]
The introduction to this column, and its first episode, can be read here. ** Episode #2: I expected freaky racial—and class—‘episodes’, which are inevitably intertwined, when Brookti touched down. I knew the most common ones to expect and assumed I’d easily brush them off. What I didn’t expect: how intricate the race/class hiearchys are (I did expect the level of [...]
In a city that purportedly never sleeps (but does take frequent disco naps), there is a population of workers who must keep the place running while most inhabitants are in fact snoozing. Our commute begins as most are bedding down with Letterman or curling into a vodka-drenched stranger. We are the skeleton crew operating the machine while the rest of [...]
I decide to slip out of the office to see the sun set. I look at my watch. It is a ten minute walk from my office to the west side highway. My heels slip off my feet as I put on a pair of winter boots and fetch my coat and earmuffs from the employee closet. I am missing [...]
I knew I was in trouble when I had to walk through a taupe brocade curtain. The walls were freshly painted and textured, there was abstract art on the wall, a flat screen tv was showing a tennis match and there was a chaise lounge next to the hostess station. I was in the Kiev Diner? Ironically, I had just [...]
Brookti came from Ethiopia 8 months ago when she was around two. Initially I'd tried to adopt domestically, but it turns out that adopting in the U.S. as a single mother, aside from being a 21st century version of some kind of slave trade, (i.e. black/interracial children are 'a third of the price' of Hispanic children), and assuming you're not [...]
“It’s nice today,” says 15B as he enters the elevator, taking off his gloves and Dartmouth Alumni Association baseball hat. “Maybe a little chilly.” “Yeah, it’s nice,” I agree. I close the elevator door behind him. “Forty now, but they say forty five later on.” “Great.” We’ve reached his floor, but the retired cardiologist won’t get out until he’s [...]
It didn’t matter that I had been awarded scholarships to three universities – my parents needed money to send to their families in war-torn West Germany and Austria. The last day of high school coincided with the start of work in the mailroom at J. Walter Thompson advertising agency, the next day. “You’re a smart kid. You can go to [...]
Dear Reader, With all that technology can do to separate the giver from the gift, I should not be surprised that I received the ultimate Christmas gesture—a call from a cell phone with no discernible person on the other end. Must be one of the magical moments of the season, I thought. But what did it mean? I had just [...]
Photo: Lincoln Karim It looked like a crime scene. Yellow ticking cordoned off part of the sidewalk next to the awning of 927 Fifth Avenue, at 74th Street. Across the street a two-person camera crew stood shivering next to their tripod. They were journalists, it appeared from a distance; on closer inspection, they were journalism students from the graduate school [...]
Last week I was leaving my building when I saw my doorman Frank carrying two black guitar cases through the lobby. He was followed by a man who looked very similar to Elvis Costello. I live in the West Village in Manhattan, so every man looks like Elvis Costello. Later that evening I asked Mario, the other doorman, – was [...]
To the woman on craigslist who wanted to know the difference between ‘booty call’ and ‘fuck buddy.’ (I figured she must be foreign so I addressed her as ‘Madame.’) Madame: In Re: the difference between ‘booty call’ and ‘fuck buddy,’ despite the alliterative pairing and their shared concern with fucking, the two phrases are ontologically different, the main distinction being [...]
I had made a plan to meet some friends at a place that had opened just one week ago. The prior weekend, we ended up there at three in the morning, and the scene was good: under-populated, smooth, steel drum-like lounge music, a few good-looking peoples. I was impressed by the Mondrian-inspired decor, and the two women's restrooms that overpowered [...]
There is a Sinclair Group at 80 Broad Street that is not the Sinclair Broadcasting Group that has agitated so many people with their plans for anti-Kerry propaganda. The receptionist at the other Sinclair, Joanne, is getting barraged with calls from people like me. By the time I spoke with Joanne I had spent the afternoon making calls to various [...]
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