You are currently browsing the stories about the “Manhattan” neighborhood.
In the 60's, I lived with my brother and my parents in The Eldorado, an apartment house on Central Park West between 90th and 91st Street. My Dad was a Member of the New York Stock Exchange, My Mom was a Mom and my brother and I were in school (Bronx Science). It was and is a great old building, [...]
Our protagonist, Skunk, in action. Dan a.k.a Skunk and his girlfriend, Erin, pick me up on the corner of Broadway and 116th Street. Skunk briefly reminisces about his days at Columbia University: after a few years of "getting stoned and sitting on the couch" he dropped out and found what could be said to be his calling. Skunk aspires to [...]
I heard that Jack died. I take that back. I heard he was killed. I take that back too. I heard he was put to sleep. It was one of those pieces of information that had a hell of a lot more resonance for me than it did for the person who told me. In fact, the person who told [...]
Pictures by Josh Gilbert I dropped by the New York Academy of Art with my spiffy digital camera, feeling like an artist and ready to snap a few pics while I waited for my friend, Beag. Needless to say, it didn't take long for me to feel like a fraud. For one thing, my friend was taking an exam. An [...]
Esteban Vicente died in January, 2001, shortly before his 98th birthday. He was one of the last surviving members of the famed New York School of Abstract Expressionists. We visited him in his studio in 1993 and are proud to present him as the first our or "Studio Visit" series. Esteban Vicente arrived into the world in Turegano, Spain, in [...]
It was January 1st, 2001. New Years Day. The sky was exceptionally blue. Snow had fallen heavily two days earlier. It was still on the ground in drifts, white and pretty, but the air was balmy. My girlfriend and I were taking a long meandering stroll in search of a place to eat brunch. It was such a nice day [...]
Thomas Beller: Is the book you're writing now like your first two? Fran Lebowitz: No, it's a novel. It's called Exterior Signs of Wealth. I don't have quirks about discussing it, but there isn't enough of it to discuss at length. TB: How about in brief? FL: It's set mostly in New York. It starts in 1970 and goes up [...]
The next kid who tries to sell me M&Ms on the street is going to get his ass kicked. I’m agitated, not because these youngsters can be a little rough around the edges, and not because they sometimes stalk a hard-sell for a quarter block, whining, "Come on! Please! Please!" I’m even okay with the kid who put his arm [...]
Just east of Amsterdam Avenue, in a section of Harlem called Hamilton Heights, a newly poignant obsession of mine was given life. I had spent my week with the DVD of Wes Anderson’s third movie, The Royal Tenenbaums. I sang along with the quirky soundtrack songs (Nico, The Clash, Paul Simon); listened to the director’s commentary, amazed at his penchant [...]
Another September as bright as a dime. Another morning of clear air, another day of hearing shrieking jets and watching strangers acting strange in the streets. Another day of firefighters in their FDNY T-shirts and brotherhoods of policemen in their dress blues, this time like old war veterans dressed up for the parade, assuming a public identity that seemed to [...]
What follows are some stories about David Brown and his flower shop. But before I tell you about him, I have to explain why, whenever I look into the store window I now see, in addition to all the flowers, a face. For a period of several months David Brown was absent from his own store. He wasn't well. He's [...]
I am a skeptic when it comes to psychics like John Edward, the hunky television charlatan, who claims he is able to communicate with “The Other Side.” When I have a premonition I tend to deny it. I denied one in late August of last year when I was seven months pregnant. While organizing my wallet, I paused on two [...]
I am not a firefighter, police officer or paramedic, but when a nurse at the Red Cross barricade mistook me for one and asked, "Are you coming?" I said, "Yes." That was 8:45 P.M. on September 11th. What followed was a two-day odyssey at Ground Zero. I worked with many good-willed people on bucket brigades and setting up triages. I [...]
As the country endures its day of paranoid scuffling, maudlin wallowing, and commercial 9/11 reality-tv overdose next week, I will be manning the phones at a major newspaper conglomerate. Because I’m the temp. Looking for work post 9/11 has been an utter joy – armed with not one but two Masters degrees and skills, as one of my “counselors” describes [...]
I electrocuted a rat early this morning. It was approximately 2:20 am. There were no eyewitnesses. I heard the electrical noise. It was a sustained bug-zapping sound that went on for a good thirty seconds. I knew immediately what was happening when I was startled awake. I just listened, victorious, with a great feeling that my vigilante justice had been [...]
There is usually classical music playing on the radio. Arty stands patiently behind his counter at the back of the store, his hands resting on the top of the counter like a dealer at a blackjack table that is momentarily devoid of players. Old cameras in glass cases. Old super Eight movie cameras. And new cameras, too. A photographer's paradise. [...]
I moved to New York City, a naïve T passenger from Boston, in October 2000. In line with its puritanical ways, the Boston subway system, better known as the T, was all color-coded simplicity. The subway map could be masterfully replicated by any seven-year old armed with four crayons-red, orange, blue, and green, each line appropriately named by its respective [...]
We found the doll right there on 16th Street in Brooklyn, outside the Baptist church (now, don’t get too excited, they’re boring white Baptists--no big hats or electric guitars anywhere in sight). The doll was wrapped in a black plastic garbage bag. Only its feet were showing, chubby little feet in high-button boots. The church folk had been cleaning out [...]
The neighborhood is barren of niceties, wide cobbled streets separate low buildings of a century past, warehouses of animal flesh with racks for hooks hanging out over the freight doors where trucks deliver their carcass-cargoes. In the pale dead winter afternoon I stumble over ice and snow blocked gutters to a set of heavy glass double doors into a narrow [...]
There it was, in my Inbox, mocking me. Dragging me down to its oceanic depths. Instantly, drowning me in thoughts of that horrific day downtown in August of 2000 when I attempted to swim a mile in the Hudson River. The New York City Swims people e-mailed a friendly reminder to sign up for this summer's swim, 8/4/02, from the [...]
When I was a kid we visited New York once or twice a year. I usually went with one of my folks and one or two of my brothers but we almost never went as a complete family. Back then we lived in rural New England, so it was always a big thrill to board the series of buses and [...]
"American Vogue, please!" screeched the group of blond, stick-figure 16-year olds teetering on platform espadrilles, each one clawing to get a grip on the gleaming steel reception desk in front of them. "Who are you here to see?" said the straight-faced security guy, who was, clearly, over the model thing. From my vantage point behind them , these girls looked [...]
One of the other editors is looking at the Dow Jones or the stock market or something and whistling. “Wow!” He shakes his head. “You wouldn’t even believe how bad it is!” He sounds kind of merry. The staff reporter is reading aloud from a posting on a job search web page from a woman, a college graduate and a [...]
I was sitting in a bathroom stall in late June on the third or fourth floor of The New York Public Library, back past the Charles Addams drawings, and I began to think about my old schoolmate Derrick Foster. I ran into Derrick about 10 years ago, long after I had known him in grammar school, and we chatted about [...]
On the 4th of July my girlfriend and I took a friend visiting from Richmond, Virginia out to dinner in an area of the West Village that we refer to as Charm Central. We parked the car on West 4th, which is my favorite street of its kind in the city. It’s quiet, tree lined, narrow, and it, as well [...]
Ann Magnuson begins her new one-woman show, Rave Mom, standing in a hotel room in Las Vegas, high on ecstasy, staring at the radiantly naked form of a young, blonde man with "the body of a surfer." He reaches out to touch her, and though Magnuson refrains from describing what happens next, peals of another kind of ecstasy follow. She [...]
I step onto the 1 downtown train at 116th street every day and usually stand all the way down to Houston Street, where I get off for work. Sometimes I am able to balance and read a book as I hold on to a greasy pole. Other times, I am not so lucky; at five foot one, the long horizontal [...]
Le Parker Meridien on West 57th is not the type of hotel where my parents took my siblings and me when we weren't camping or staying with relatives. It wasn't in my budget during the winter of 2000 either. At the time I felt self-conscious of each cold step taken across the hard marble floors. I looked furtively at my [...]
Claude was smart and talented and I was beautiful but both of us were too boring to hang around with. That was what they thought at the Playhouse of the Ridiculous where we were each featured members of the chorus in a play called, "The Moke Eater" that ran most midnights at Max's Kansas City. I suppose we were boring [...]
Manhattan just doesn’t make for good redneck living. You can't bag a 12-point buck, park a Ford F250, get a gun permit, or buy a tin of Skol in this city. If you like Nascar racing, the N.R.A., Rush Limbaugh, and personalized bug-deflectors, finding like-minded friends won’t be any easier. Worst of all, as far as redneck bars go, the [...]
I was sitting on a green bench outside of a cafe on Irving Place, on a hot day with a blaring sun. I was in one of those moods where I was thinking of everything bad that had ever happened to me. I noticed a huge bagel on the edge of the sidewalk. It was one of those modern bagels [...]
Lisandra and I both graduated from the same college with writing degrees and hopes of being comedy writers, but after graduation, neither one of us had a job. When I met Lisandra, she was a grad student with a cushy part-time assistant job. She spent her days trolling for MP3s, making copies, and listening to her boss complain, which was [...]
Several summers ago, my central air conditioning let loose. A fast drip became a flood. My daughter discovered the problem during the eleven o’clock news, walking around in socks that became cold and wet. I called the doorman, requesting that the superintendent come immediately. Often surly, Ely intimidates many residents in the building, who naturally resent him. We live in [...]
The doorman doesn't ask , but he knows where we are going. The guy at the front desk seems wise to what floor two female twentysomethings are headed for. The buildings Super, who shares our elevator, is all too aware of why we pushed button #12 and me and my gal pal snicker in the awkward silence. The Super gets [...]
There were no rollerblades in those days. We wore our roller skates on our shoes. The skates had straps that buckled across the instep -- clamps, also referred to as "clams," that we tightened with the all-important skate key we wore on a string around our necks. The wheels themselves were ball bearings; in fact, we referred to our skates [...]
The Great London Terrace Rent Strike began in the Fall of 1992 over the swimming pool. Once billed as "the largest apartment complex in the world," London Terrace occupies an entire square city block on the north side of 23rd street between Ninth and 10th avenues. The "Great Briton in Manhattan" opened in 1929 with elegant dining rooms, stores, London [...]
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »
