You are currently browsing the stories about the Times Square neighborhood
The Paper That Covers Straws
by Tom Diriwachter 08/31/2007Neighborhood: Times Square
My new play, “Asterisk,” recently opened. It was workshopped at The Crucible of American Theater, which planned to produce it in their first season, but went bankrupt after their first production. I had a show fold at The American Theater of Actors, when the director’s wife asked for a divorce, and he lost his job, […]
Confetti Virgin (I Tossed It Away in Times Square)
by Nicole Galland 12/22/2006Neighborhood: Times Square
I had watched it dozens of times on TV. At midnight, on New Year’s Eve, the buildings spew out tons of confetti, littering the streets and crowds below, as if by magic, with no human interference, celebration spontaneously erupting from the city itself. Unbeknownst to me, there were people who chose to spend the night […]
The Girl on the Bus and the Irish Invader
by Adam Wade 06/08/2006Neighborhood: Times Square
I hit the same bus every morning, Monday to Friday. It comes at 7:03 am. It doesn’t matter whether I am running late or if I am ahead of schedule. I never miss this particular bus. To make it, I will sprint like my life depends on it; I will chase the bus two blocks […]
The Incident
by Alison Bull 03/31/2006Neighborhood: Times Square
When I walk through Midtown Manhattan, I think of The Jetsons. One episode in particular, where George and Co. bought a new apartment, and that apartment was taken up by a big space-age crane and placed in an empty hole in an apartment building, thus making it full and round. That’s how I think of […]
My First Casualty
by Mike Dressel 03/02/2006Neighborhood: Times Square
I had been living in New York for three years before I saw my first dead body. Sure, there were those moments of uncertainty all New Yorkers experience, when stepping into an empty train car and seeing a body splayed out, usually a poor homeless person who certainly smelled like death; but you were never […]
Cruising Times Square in the 1970’s
by Jill Dearman 12/07/2005Neighborhood: Times Square
I was still young enough to like am radio. I hadn’t been exposed to the much cooler fm stations yet. Sometimes, when we drove into the city, my father listened to Bernard Meltzer’s call-in advice show. It wasn’t so psychology-based, just heavy on common sense and consumer advice. Women could find out how to get […]
A Scene from Maiden Lane
by Marian Hailey-Moss 10/25/2005Neighborhood: Times Square
For some reason I was lonely, even though my dream of being a professional actress was coming true. He seemed lonely too. One day he was just there. He appeared in the lobby of the Maiden Lane Theatre on 44th Street. I was rehearsing my first New York City show, a revival of Under the […]
Fiberglass Dogs
by Griffin Hansbury 09/27/2005Neighborhood: Times Square
There was a while when it seemed like every year New York played host to a parade of hand-painted fiberglass animals. The cows were the most famous. The German shepherds were a lot less famous and they disappeared from the streets pretty quick. But, here and there, you’ll still see one, sitting guard outside the […]
Pregnant and Protesting The Lion King
by David Michaelson 09/01/2005Neighborhood: Times Square
I saw your ad for RNC experiences and thought I’d share mine with you. My wife and I participated daily in protests against the RNC and our organizing efforts were filmed by a documentary film crew from Spain’s CANAL+ network. When we first heard the Republicans were holding their convention in NYC, we were outraged. […]
Shooting Fitty
by Matthew Roberts 03/14/2005Neighborhood: Times Square
"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 […]
Mickey Cooks The Tenderloin
by Donald Dewey 02/24/2002Neighborhood: Times Square
Imagine a 20th-century history of the United States that omitted the 1900s, 1930s, 1950s, and 1960s. Something of the kind has attended the chronicling of Times Square’s latest identity as Disneytown, Goofyville, or Mickeymart. Most accounts of West 42nd Street’s conversion have been content to say that for decades the district was a magnet for […]
The Mestizas
by Debbie Nathan 01/03/2002Neighborhood: Times Square
This was late on a Saturday afternoon, in the half gloom of the subway station at Times Square. W and N and R trains were barreling through, and the girls stood on either side of the platform, each guarded by a patrolman, looking bored and despairing. They were just mestizas, the kind who were raised […]