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72nd Street subway station 2001 How many years since “needle park”? In the late 60’s, in the evening on the way to the 72nd St and Broadway subway station, I would make my pass through the park and see junkies nodding out and discarded needles on the pavement. The underbelly of con artists, thieves, prostitutes, and addicts, all lurking in the [...]
The Blues Brothers: Dan Akroyd and John Belushi It may be ever-present, this sense that we are teetering on the edge of apocalypse, but these days it seems the custodians of volatile and otherwise crazy behavior are on a whole new level. I won't pretend that when I was in my 30s and running around on weekend nights with my [...]
Chinatown Optical and Church of the Transfiguration (photo by the author) It is blazing hot at midday in Chinatown, June, 2022. The doors to the Church of the Transfiguration on Mott Street are open, so I decide to duck in to cool off. “Lord, give us eyes to see,” a young Asian priest recites the offertory prayers. The church is [...]
In the spring of 1967, a year after my parents’ separation, my older sister and I returned from an extended stay with family friends in California and moved into an apartment our mother had rented on the sixth floor of the Hotel Bolivar on Central Park West and 83rd Street. At the time, the decaying, 1920s era building was still [...]
Photo by Ajay Suresh (Wikipedia) Joel had told me his mother was in town for the week visiting, as parents often will when their children are going to expensive colleges in the heart of New York City. But I didn’t think his mother’s visit was going to be relevant to me, until he invited me to go to the MoMa [...]
Everything got worse in New York except my jump shot. Though I looked the part — white, six foot and fair featured, like some towhead from the Midwest — shooting was not my ticket on the court. In the small school league in Washington where I had starred, I got my points going to the hoop. When I did hit [...]
Lumière At the start of the third year of the pandemic, I stood in front of a small flat screen in a corner of a darkened gallery at the Metropolitan Museum with the strangest feeling: I was happy. I had relaxed completely, every part of me—muscles, sinews, organs, bones, if that’s possible. And even stranger, I suddenly had the feeling [...]
Cars and Crimes and Trains My wife (we weren’t yet married at the time) had a fairly new ’81 Toyota Starlet stolen in Brooklyn. We took a city bus to the police precinct to report it stolen (no over the phone reports back in those days). Halfway there, we insisted that the driver stop the bus, because there on the [...]
Ants by Aurélie Bernard Wortsman. Insects The following is a contemporary take on the medieval bestiary, featuring descriptions and characterizations of the actual and apocryphal creatures that share our constricted urban space. This second installment is devoted to insects. Stomped, smoked out, asphyxiated, and trampled underfoot, they elicit a degree of fear and disgust disproportionate to their size. Quietly going [...]
Around two years ago, I’m walking down Broadway and once again I encounter Mickey Mouse. (Not the actual Mickey—he’s either passed on to the rodent afterlife or is living in a fancy retirement resort on a golf course in Nevada). This version of Mickey I’m talking about (which disappeared during Covid) was a very large metal and plastic mouse serving [...]
Kate and Harold Shapinsky A little boy sits on the wood floor. In a small room with a rocking horse in the corner. A stuffed teddy bear is on his pillow. There is a small soft blanket, the one he holds at night, in a chair. The smell of the room is comforting. Twenty years later, standing in the middle [...]
“Lefty, what did you do with the hard boiled egg?” I worked the words out of the side of my mouth. I was Jimmy Cagney in “White Heat” and I wanted to take this place apart. “It’s in my pocket, and what’s with the Lefty crap?” John said. “Lefty, we’ll know more in a few minutes. Are you sure the [...]
Yesterday, there was a café and now, suddenly, there isn’t. Life disappears while we sleep. The homeless live on many corners. Shelby plants a mattress and pillowson the corner outside the nearby Duane Reade. Neighbors donate sheets, pillowcases, a woolen blanket and a warm winter coat to help Shelby, as she takes yet another night ride through vulnerability. “Better the [...]
I lived in Manhattan for most of my considerably long life, until moving to Queens four years ago. In my early adulthood, Manhattan was still affordable, so affordable that the people who worked the jobs that sustain city life—cops, teachers, garbage men, hospital and transit workers—could afford to live in certain areas of it. So could a 20-year old, who [...]
In the Manhattan telephone directory "white pages," there used to be a page that came just before alphabetical listings of names, addresses, and phone numbers. Along with a list of Post Office addresses and a map of City zip codes, it featured the Manhattan Address Locator. A simple looking table, it performed a kind of magic, allowing you to take [...]
The Literary Life: NYC 1982 I recall distinctly The famous author Standing over me As I scraped the plaster Off her bathroom floor Left behind by Workers renovating The building The first time I talked to her She called me up To express her Indignation About the bathroom I felt I’d done Something wrong Like I was in trouble With [...]
Last January, days before I was due to return to New Orleans from New York, a fire broke out in my parents’ apartment building on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. I had come to the city in the midst of the pandemic to repopulate my life, albeit temporarily: the first week belonged to my then-girlfriend, the second to my [...]
Out early yesterday morning after the big snowfall. The streets are being cleared. God, it’s been years since I did any of that.Now I have no car to dig out, no store to clear the street for; nothing special to worry about (save for not slipping on the ice and cracking my old bones). In my neighborhood there are a [...]
As my plane landed at JFK, the third day of Hanukkah gave way to the night before Christmas. Wise men and Maccabees, manger and menorah, holy night and holy light all merged on the taxi ride to Brooklyn for a winter holiday vacation visit with my sister Rivka. Fortunately, there was room at the inn; she had recently acquired a [...]
My mama told me, "You better shop around, (Shop, shop)Oh yeah, you better shop around" (Shop, shop around)— Smokey Robinson & Berry Gordy, Jr. The store on East 23rd was my favorite Salvation Army Thrift Store, although there were several I visited often. Most Saturdays I spent the whole day walking the streets of the city. I would wander idly [...]
During the summer of 1978 I worked as a Good Humor man. I would push a cart from the Good Humor depot, located at 3rd Street between 1st and 2nd Avenue, on the Lower East Side, to Exchange Place in the financial district of lower Manhattan, where I would sell the company’s offerings to traders, office workers, messengers, or anyone [...]
On April 7, 1972, New York mobster, Joey Gallo, was murdered while having a celebratory late night dinner at Umberto’s Clam House in Little Italy. It was his birthday. On July 13, 1977, three friends and myself made the trek from the Upper East Side down to Umberto’s. We all craved what was widely known as the best spaghetti and [...]
As the token reverberates in the machine and the creaking panel slowly begins to lift, we awake from our stupors, throw down our magazines, and thrust forward our best commercial assets. Desperation sets in as the panel creeps up to unveil the face of a homely, unwashed, acne-laden man. Why do so many of them look like this? My competition, [...]
I first tried cocaine off of a chessboard, while listening to Lou Reed in my West Village studio apartment with a girl named after the Central American country in which she was conceived. I remember thinking that for brief moments life really could be a movie if you made it one. The girl and I were in the same cosmology [...]
Group of Four Trees by Jean Dubuffet/photo by Elizabeth Benedict Near the southern tip of Manhattan are a modern masterpiece and a trove of public sculptures by major 20th century artists that are hiding in plain sight. The first one that came to my attention – and the one that has my heart – is 43 feet high and painted [...]
A few weeks ago, I took my car in for an annual servicing. The dealership where I bring my car is on the far West Side of Manhattan. It’s a desolate area, so the most sensible option is to wait while the servicing is done. The last time I had brought it in, I was back on the road in [...]
I arrive in New York City in 1970 right after graduating from Carnegie Mellon Drama Department. I pray I’ll hit the big time, but in between auditions I look for flexible jobs to supplement my income. I leaf through the phone book and come to a page titled “Child Care.” One ad stands out “Babysitter’s Guild—the oldest and most-trusted agency in [...]
I love Saks. It’s just like Bloomingdale’s, only bigger and the people don’t spray you as much; they just ignore you. There was an open book in the Saks window called Sample. I stood there looking at it. Two pages were filled with fashion sketches of models with the Polaroid of the actual model next to them. I thought that [...]
On the first of the month, I visit Benjamin Benowitz. Ben lives three blocks north and three avenues east from the apartment I rent. The lobby of Ben’s’s building reads like the lobbies I have seen in movies about New York old money; all ostentation with marble and central air. The walls in my own apartment are made of thick [...]
Cast of All My Children There are 1700 writers per square foot in New York City. I will be one of them. It’s going to be easy. First, I need to learn about the craft of writing. I peruse various catalogs and websites for classes. Nothing jumps out at me until I notice a class called “How To Write Funny.” [...]
Last month on the subway, somewhere near the Rockefeller Center / 47th-50th Street stop, I looked up from my phone and saw, across the aisle in the mirror seat of mine, a woman, maybe in her late 60s, whose style was startlingly close to my stepmother’s. She had the same short, tousled haircut—although her hair was grey, while my stepmother’s was [...]
February 1996 is bitter and icy and windy and numbing. My boyfriend Raz and I have been rendered homeless due to our depravity, immaturity, and stupidity. By day, we relax at the Lower East Side needle exchange, the Beth Israel methadone clinic, or our favorite diner, Leshko’s, on Avenue A. Nighttime is more problematic. We often sleep in the lobbies [...]
My father has worked in grocery stores in California for what seems like my entire life. Albertsons, El Super, Northgate Market, Smart and Final, and then Northgate Market again. After graduating high school, he worked his way up from Receiver to Assistant Manager to Grocery Manager and Front End Manager. Sometimes when he started at a new store, he had [...]
I want to be in New York because Sophia is in New York. This leads me from my home in the Jersey suburbs to the waiting room of a doctor’s office, an alumni who will interview me for a prestigious New York college. I sit and wait, squirming, and think about that tired joke about patients and patience. I read [...]
The late afternoon, graying quickly, was sweet with surprising warmth. Days such as this wouldn't come again for at least a month. A reward, it seemed, for surviving another dank and joyless February in New York City. My birthday was in March, and even at my age, I looked forward to the day with a childlike sense of hope, as [...]
Early 1960s, Yorkville. My block, 81st street between 1st and York avenues. During my early years, I witnessed a predominantly working-class immigrant neighborhood of Irish, Germans, and Hungarians being replaced by new wealthier residents. The transition started with the construction of high-rise apartment buildings on the avenues. These characterless buildings were replacing the five-story walk-ups and their mom and pop [...]
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