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I was sitting in my 4th floor fire escape window on a hot summer afternoon, watching the sparse street life on 3rd St., a few people sitting around on our buildings stoop, a couple of guys had lawn chairs, a few guys standing outside the bodega...like that. Mine was a junky/hippie building, yeasty like the rest of the neighborhood, shit [...]
Junkies are ghost-slinking around the block, looking for their man, banging on window gates and ringing doorbells. I scan their eyes for some glimpse of what their lives are like, staring at their rumpled, smack-hunting clothes, matted hair and mottled skin. They only care about taking care of business, up their nose or in their arms, legs, eyes anywhere there's [...]
I was at the bar of Florent very late Sunday night. A snow storm was raging outside. Pastis, that seat of slutty mayhem, sat up the block. There are now tastefully bright lights all over the meat packing district, where there was once just meat and the people who packed it. It was strange to sit at Florent, whose entrance [...]
This story is part of the novel, The Sleep-Over Artist ** Arnold Gerstein often took friends to his father's club, the Harmonie, on 61st Street just off Fifth Avenue, where they could "use the facilities" (as Arnold's father put it) for free. They would shoot hoops on the small basketball court, whose wooden floor had taken on a yellow-orange patina [...]
I sometimes see a crowd gathered in front of a storefront on Broadway, between 88th and 89th Street, staring with rapt concentration into the window. Occasionally they break out in laughter. They are a random looking group--some in suits, some with groceries, some in shorts with baseball caps turned backwards--and they hardly ever look at each other. Most of [...]
If I didn't have the summer to look forward to, I might just cap myself. Think about the glory of planning a summer. The forward-looking nature of the enterprise is inherently optimistic. You're at the back end of a long winter and up ahead shining in the middle distance is the summer's three emotionally clustered months. They are so gentle [...]
"There is a certain shade of red brick--a dark, almost melodious red, somber and riddled with blue--that is my childhood in St. Louis," wrote Harold Brodkey in State of Grace. Well, there is a certain shade of red brick--somber and melodious--that is my neighborhood in the West Village, and Ferron Brown is the custodian of that color. Mr. Brown's material [...]
I once had a girlfriend who bought me clothes. At first this made me extremely happy, but then something changed, and these gifts, which had seemed such a pure expression of love, began to seem like little apologies. The first thing C. gave me was a blue T-shirt that she had embroidered, while on jury duty, with a little flower--a [...]
Lost And Found: Stories From New York, the latest anthology from Mr. Beller's Neighborhood, is now available at your friendly neighborhood independent bookstores and at the following online booksellers: Powells Amazon Barnes and Noble News and Notices: "Lost and Found can be jarring, making you feel happy at one turn, uncomfortable at the next. It is unsettling in places, serendipitous [...]
New York in the summer of 1981 was everything it wasn’t in the winter of 1979. Punk died instead of disco. The city was no longer bankrupt. Even the East Village showed signs of regeneration, since abandoned tenements can only be burned so many times before the ashes won’t catch fire. People had work. Mine was menial construction on an [...]
It is our enormous pleasure to announce that Sunday, Nov. 12 at 8:00pm, four of the many outstanding contributors to Mr. Beller's Neighborhood will be reading live at Mo Pitkin's House of Satisfaction in the East Village. This is the first in a monthly series of collaborations between the Neighborhood and Mo Pitkin's that will continue as long as possible. [...]
After conducting an extensive series of discussions with all of you, we have determined that Thursday, March 12 at 8:00 pm is the time that works best for all of our schedules. Friends of Mr. Beller's Neighborhood ELLEN SCHECTER, CAROLINE HENLEY, and PATRICK GALLAGHER will read at that time. As usual, the place is Happy Ending, 302 Broome St. @ [...]
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