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“It is the city of mirrors, the city of mirages, at once solid and liquid, at once air and stone.” --Erica Jong I’ve started to go running at 6 am. I am not a competitive runner: I don’t run daily, I don’t clock mileage and I don’t sport special athletic duds. I am a runner for time. Well slept, [...]
A little before 2 a.m. on Saturday, December 1, 2001, I decided to check out the George Harrison memorial that fans were spontaneously holding at Strawberry Fields in Central Park. On my way I stopped by a deli on the southwest corner of 72nd and Broadway first for a coffee. Chun Kim, 43, a friendly balding man who'd emigrated from [...]
My buzzer rang. It was 4:30 in the afternoon on one of those eerie perfect blue sky 60 degree days--eerie partly because it was late January, and partly because in my neighborhood, Tribeca, those kind of days, for obvious reasons, never fail to trigger a deep foreboding. "Who is it?" I yelled into the intercom. I wasn't expecting anyone. "The [...]
I went straight for the headliners, Sylvester and Bellamy: two huge pieces of weatherproofed steel, each 16 feet high and a few inches thick curved into two distinct gigantic spirals about 50 feet in diameter. You can walk into both, in the spaces between the huge curves of steel, and you keep going until you the material runs out, at [...]
On September 11th, I stood at Washington and North Moore for six or seven hours, near a triage center, waiting for all the lined-up ambulances and fire engines to be given the all-clear to go in. We waited for the injured to come for care and comfort. All the ripped-open bandages, makeshift guerneys, stacks of IV's and sterile dressings, every [...]
On Friday September 28th, just after the sun had gone down, the remaining glow of the day was fighting the oncoming storm clouds moving in from the southwest over Jersey. The day had been gloomy and the light had been pearly gray throughout the afternoon. The air was cool and summer was clearly over. Coming over the Williamsburg Bridge from [...]
"The Burning Wall" is playing at Film Forum This documentary film is worth seeing on the grounds that: a) It's an intense, enthralling movie and I think you'll enjoy it. b) The story of a state becoming obsessed with the enemy within has some resonance in our current political climate. c) The film maker is my mother. "In much the [...]
Some South Jersey friends and I have a Christmas evening tradition of ditching our families and meeting for drinks in a dive near Atlantic City. There was a time when most of us lived in New York, but we’ve since scattered, some further afield and others, like my friend Paul, back to NJ. This year talk turned inevitably to September [...]
I often walk down the asphalt path that runs the length of Manhattan, on the shore of the Hudson River, hoping to see Diana. When I was with her things were not so pleasant. She smelled awful, and she sapped my energy, working me all night long and half the day. For the fourteen weeks we were together, I had [...]
Lately when I go for a walk I make a vow not to walk under any scaffolding, in protest of there being so much of it these days. Two minutes later I realize I'm walking under scaffolding. One day I stopped and looked at the scaffolding around the NYU tower at East 8th Street and Mercer and realized it had [...]
Part V. After I made a sandwich at my desk, Richie Boy grabbed a slice of salami. Our sharing more than food throughout our twenty-year friendship didn’t deter my protests against his poaching. "I see you have no shame in being a schnorrer!” "Only cause I learn from the best.” Richie Boy popped the peppery slice in his mouth and [...]
Paul Williams considers it is a blessing that he was once a squeegee man. Not because he enjoyed the work -- he didn't -- but because it was only through being a squeegee man that he became a cardboard man, and on that he has built a life. Ten years ago, Paul was that familiar, slightly menacing fixture of the [...]
First dates are about inventing a new language, minute by minute. Smoking is the first level of communication. The realm of intergender semaphore is entirely bottlenecked through nicotine. If there's no smoking then the glances, brushed hair, knuckle touching can reach comedy. Push the date even further and meet in a restaraunt in Nolita, the effective dmz for the new [...]
On September 12, I went back to work at Men’s Journal because the issue was gutted and redone for a tribute to the FDNY. The streets were empty, not only of people, but also of noise. There were no street peddlers, few taxis, no music, no screaming, and no horns honking, only the non-stop blare of sirens. The standard intrusion [...]
M. Gordon Novelty, Inc., at 933 Broadway, just south of 23rd Street, is a very tight operation. When things get really busy -- like during the last days before Halloween -- customers enter the showroom by twos or threes as other shoppers leave. The subsequent waiting period encourages customers to determine costume possibilities before they enter, transforming the shopping experience [...]
I saw summer turn to fall on the median of the West Side Highway where I stood waving my American flag, holding up hand made thank you signs, saluting the rescue and recovery workers. The crews, coming from long shifts, appreciate the support. When they pass in their various vehicles, (fire engines, police cars, ambulances, motorcycles, army trucks, heavy rigs, [...]
Two weeks after the shock of September 11th, I was sent to "ground zero" by the Parks Department Commissioner to make a quick evaluation of the damage to the plant life in the area. The Commissioner wanted to know what had survived, what plants would need to be replaced, how much it would all cost. He was eager to help [...]
Interviews and introduction by EDWARD HELMORE Fire Department of New York Firehouse 16-7. 234 East 29th Street, Manhattan. September 11, 2001. On the riding list of Engine 16 were Lieutenant Mickey Kross and firefighters Tim Marmion, Paul Lee, Pete Fallucca, and trainee firefighter Sean Brown. On the riding list of Tower Ladder 7: Lt. Vernon Richard, firefighters George Cain, Vincent [...]
Paul Lee I came in about 8:30 that morning, changed into my uniform, and then a few minutes later they announced plane had crashed into the World Trade Center. I was thinking to myself, is this real or is it just a fake or is it an accident, whatever it was. Just a few minutes later it was on the [...]
First came the hugging and the crying and the storytelling. We're all alive and it's groovy. Long live the marketing department! Long live the company! We'll rebuild! Then came the fatness. Working in an office, in a cubicle, is the surest way to obesity. You scorch your eyes looking at the Internet all day, sipping a mocha with whipped cream. [...]
I haven't dressed up in several Halloweens. I've been reluctant to do so since third grade when I came to school as Diane Keaton in "Annie Hall." I blew my wad that year. This year would see no disguise. The better part of the day would be spent with my friend Sabine killing time before our respective Halloween parties by [...]
For more than 100 days members of New York's Fire Department, along with thousands of contractors, have been working in 12 hour shifts in the recovery effort at World Trade Center. With the subterranean fires finally extinguished and the last skeletal wall bought down last week, the work has taken on a new complexion. About half of the twisted steel [...]
Growing up, there were certain inarguable rules Mom set forth to ensure her kids' safety: don't take candy from strangers, power tools are off-limits unless your Father is present, avoid the yellow snow, and never, under any circumstance, spend the night in Central Park. But over Labor Day weekend, my girlfriend, Kim, and I threw caution to the Ramble and [...]
In 1956, at the age of nineteen, Rosa Morrone was almost past the prime marrying age in her native town, Polla, south of Naples, Italy. Her father was beginning to seriously worry that she wouldn’t marry. At the same time, Gabriele Morrone, who had left Polla for New York City when he was 14, returned home to marry. But when [...]
“Spirit is Life. It flows thru the death of me endlessly like a river unafraid of becoming the sea”--Gregory Corso I ate my breakfast at a leisurely pace, mopping up the last traces of ketchup on the plate with my muffin. Glancing at the clock on the wall, I saw that it was eight forty five. A moment or two [...]
My cousins grew up in New York. I met them once in California, where I lived until I was seven. But when we moved to a Oxen Hill, suburb of Washington, DC, we began regular visits. This was in the late sixties. Thanksgiving in Manhattan followed by Christmas in Oxen Hill, or vice versa. My aunt and uncle rented or [...]
The following was written before September 11th, 2001 Like most New Yorkers, I can't afford those restaurants that garner plaudits in Zagat's. I've made some peace with that. After all, I'm less a foodie than a chowhound, scouting outer-borough ethnic eats on the weekends. At lunch, I usually brown-bag it or grab a $2.25 rice and beans from the nearest [...]
She arrived in the city ahead of me to work as an assistant to the producer of a movie, a pretty girl's job, a blonde's job, and soon, very soon, while I was still talking to her by phone from Seattle, making arrangements for my move to NYC, she began sleeping with the director. In the business these blondes are [...]
Anton sells photographs on Fifth Avenue and 81st Street in front of the museum. He arrives at his spot at nine o'clock in the morning six days a week - the Metropolitan Museum of Art is closed on Mondays and so the sidewalks are just too empty for business. The photographs come from the eye, camera and studio of Alex [...]
On a lazy hot August afternoon my parents and I emerged from the coolness of the Walter Reade theatre at Lincoln Center after seeing a movie from the sixties. It might have been Italian, maybe something by Visconti - my memory of it has been erased by subsequent events. We ran into my co-worker Jim who had also been in [...]
I like food, and I like books, but I'm not that into books about food. So when a friend of mine suggested we visit a great new store that sold old cookbooks, I was reluctant. Eventually, though, I got curious about the woman I saw sitting behind a busy desk in the window of Bonnie Slotnick Cookbooks, and went in. [...]
It was supposed to start with a mandated early-morning appointment with an "employment specialist" from the New York Department of Labor and end with me shaking my ass to minimal techno at Centro-Fly. Between these, I was going to vote in the primaries, work at the international DJ academy, and see Matthew Herbert, on of this year's best musicians, perform [...]
Sandwiched into the fourteen blocks north of Houston Street and south of 14th, Greenwich Village and the campus of New York University have formed a sort of demilitarized zone, patrolled by both civilian and military police. Below, access is restricted to officials and rescue workers. Above, New Yorkers move freely, and the city returns to some semblance of normality. Between, [...]
My grandfather, a Russian-Jewish émigré and New York painter named Raphael Soyer, used to say, in his wonderful old-world accent, “New York is my country.” The year 2001 finds me living in Boston in the eighteenth year of my self-imposed exile from the island of Manhattan, the village of my childhood. I am the only one in my family to [...]
It is Rosh Hashanah. Today I learned that my father was named for his grandfather, a pious Ocean Avenue Jew my father does not remember. Still, he carries the name: a mysterious, permanent burden attached to so many of the tribe. We are named only for the dead, never the living, so as not to risk confusing the angel of [...]
Recently, I was laid off from my job as a magazine editor. I cleared out my desk, carefully stashing pens and binder clips into a box. Anticipating having to write countless cover letters, I also took a ream of paper. I felt guilty about this and confided in a co-worker. "It’s okay, honey," she said, patting my shoulder. "When they [...]
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