You are currently browsing the stories about the “Upper East Side” neighborhood.
The butterflies in my stomach had made their annual visit. It was the first day of school after a summer camping in New Jersey and the Bronx with my aunt and cousins. The oppression of a Catholic school education was always tough to return to after a summer spent outdoors. Like a Marine returning from extended leave, I would now [...]
I’ve been so harried and have brain fog from mold illness. For months I had been having neurological issues and going through medical tests, including multiple MRIs and a spinal tap. Finally, when my doctor asked if where I lived could possibly have mold, something clicked. The old HVACS were indeed moldy (from 1960). After testing both myself and my [...]
Not long after I moved to New York, my mother’s college friend Lois invited me to a concert at the Metropolitan Museum. After it ended, she suggested we go to the Nectar Diner for a cup of tea. I’d been hearing about Lois my whole life. To my mother, she represented a glamorous New York lifestyle that my mother not-so-secretly [...]
One of my first jobs in the city was as a hostess at Coco Pazzo, a very hot spot at the time on the Upper East Side. We had a famous clientele, and I truly loved when the A-listers would roll in. I would stand the whole night of my 8-hour shift behind a podium, usually in my black flats [...]
This is Part 3 of a three part story by Nina Camp. Read Part 1 and Part 2. The locksmith was a lean, twenty-something guy. He arrived on time and stood quietly outside our apartment door after I buzzed him into the building. Soft-spoken, with kind eyes, he brought a moment of problem-solving stability into my home. Alex was out. [...]
Phil Rosenthal This is Part 2 of a three part story by Nina Camp. Part 3 will appear on Thursday. Click here to read Part 1. I went into the theater, threw my coat across two seats to save them, went back out to the lobby and called Alex again. He was about to walk into his voice lesson on [...]
This is is Part I of a three part story by Nina Camp. Part II will run on Tuesday and Part III will appear on Thursday. The aim was to repair our wounded relationship. Nothing overcomplicated, our plan had just three elements. The first involved a man we’d come to think of as The Happiest Guy on Netflix. The second [...]
I’m headed to the elevator, working at my volunteer job in Lenox Hill Hospital, carrying patients’ EKG printouts, which I am supposed to distribute to various wards. Getting on at the basement level, I press the button for the 8th floor—the psych ward, which had been my temporary place of residence until I was discharged six months before. There are [...]
photo by ajay_suresh It felt glorious to look at Edward standing on the corner of Madison, knowing this would be the last time I’d have to look at him for a week. As he hugged me, the steam rising from the gutters around us seemed neither tawdry nor romantic, but ordinary. “I have a gift for you honey,” Edward said, [...]
I almost exclusively wear black no-show socks — mostly because I wear booties all winter or sneakers, neither of which warrant the obtrusive show of a sock. As such, I have ten pairs of basic black ones from Walmart, another four pairs of slightly different black ones from Duane Reade and one pair – my favorite – from a specialty [...]
I could never get over the thrill of walking into the Church of the Heavenly Rest through the side door on East 90th Street. The limestone turrets and stained-glass windows, reminiscent of Notre Dame, inspired a sense of awe It always took a few seconds for my eyes to adjust to the dim light and to get my bearings in [...]
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 [...]
“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 [...]
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 [...]
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.” [...]
Jeff Bergman and the group Part I. Project Runway She sauntered by at noon, shopping bags swinging from both arms, striding toward the infamous golden escalators. She was attractive with a flowing mane and long gait. Mostly, I noticed the grey raincoat she was wearing; it was a bright, summer day outside. Then she got swallowed up in the atrium’s [...]
One afternoon this summer I was on the subway. All was normal. Well, except that we are in a pandemic, which makes venturing down into NYC’s netherworld -- one with poor ventilation and tons of non-mask wearers – feel like I am putting my life in my overly sanitized hands. It all seemed surreal. The recent crime surge in New [...]
Pablo’s father was a handsome, French pianist in his forties. His apartment was immaculate and minimalistic. He was usually absent when I came to retrieve Pablo for his 90-minute walk, but sometimes I would turn my key in the lock and hear him playing the grand piano in the living room. It sounded beautiful, but imposing, and made me feel [...]
It’s silly really. It’s just this picture I took on the stairs outside my apartment building five years ago of a black Remington typewriter with a blazer and skirt below it, like a body. And coming out of the typewriter was a headshot of Woody Allen. Five o’clock. I was putting on my stockings. The skirt was not wrinkled, although [...]
"Hi Jim, it's Dad, just touching base to see how everything is going and how you're feeling and how everyone is today. Looks like the first day of spring, the weather is horrible, I'm sure you agree. Give me a ring, let me know how things are going?” My Dad, Bill, spoiled me for fine dining out. He decides where [...]
In honor of the closing of iconic department store, Barneys, shuttering its doors, here is a tale of what happened to me there back in 2004. *** It was right after Thanksgiving. Christmastime. The streets had a distinct holiday chill to them; they were crowded with tired, overworked shoppers carrying store bags. My boyfriend Chris decided he would get me [...]
Together, Rory, 7, and I, 9, zoomed up 86th Street to Woolworth's 5 & 10 for our “start the weekend” ritual: carefully look over all the records in the store’s basement after our pizza dinner on Second Avenue. "I Want to Hold Your Hand," the Beatles first U.S. single came out the day after Christmas 1963, and the Lp "Meet [...]
Getting your two year old daughter into a bathing suit in a men’s changing room can be a bit like stuffing an eel into a pillowcase. For some reason I thought the smart move would be to undress myself first, get my trunks on, my flip-flops, grab my towel, then shed Hana down to her bathing self — coat, boots, [...]
September 2012 - In anticipation of an Occupy Wall Street march up Park Avenue, I am polishing the brass poles of the canopy and humming The Internationale. Although my employers, the bankers and traders who live in this elegant pre-war co-op, are hostile to OWS’s call for higher taxes on the rich, I am among the movement’s most enthusiastic supporters. No [...]
When I was fourteen, I auditioned for the School of American Ballet and was accepted. The school was too far from my home to travel back and forth everyday, so I lived in the dormitory at Lincoln Center during the week and travelled back to Long Island on the weekends. Every Sunday night, after a family dinner, my mother would [...]
I was running late for a new faculty meeting at NYU. "411 Lafayette," I said, jumping into a cab. The driver looked at me in the mirror with squinting, my-English-is-not-great eyes. "411 LA-FAY-ETTE," I said, raising my voice, hoping to hurry us along. I checked the time: If traffic was very light I might—might—make it within the reasonable fifteen minutes [...]
When I moved into my apartment going on four years ago, the building looked like a movie star fifty years past her prime. It was in such a condition that they were being ordered by the city to make capital improvements and were continually fined until they did so. I of course had loved its faded glory. Since then they've [...]
It was after our third year in New York that my wife and I realized it was time to move. The deciding factor came when I’d picked up a stapler at a stationary store, looked at it in my hand, and thought, ‘Where am I going to put this?’ Our studio apartment was just that full. We’d built upwards. Alfa [...]
In the mid ‘70s I, a lifelong New Yorker, eagerly departed the crazy hustle and bustle of New York City when I landed a job in Birmingham, Alabama. I didn’t expect to miss New York or anything about it. But a few weeks after I moved to Birmingham, suddenly and unexpectedly I began craving almost daily something I would never [...]
I’m holding the door open for Mr. 11A and his dog, but when he sees the Medical Examiner’s van and the police car parked in front of the building, he stops, leans in close to me, and asks in a stage whisper, “Do they suspect foul play?” I tell him that the police had only been waiting for someone from [...]
The dark interior smells of leather, glue and shoe polish. It looks as if Jim’s Shoe Repair hasn't had a fresh coat of paint since it opened. In 1932 when Vito “Jim” Rocco walked across the threshold of his shop on East 59th Street between Park and Madison Avenues in Manhattan, it was one of 50,424 throughout the United States. [...]
Walking the streets on St. Patrick’s Day in New York City is akin to walking into an insane asylum in which all the inmates have been starved for days, denied all their medications, punched about the head a few times, then painted green and released from their cells. Also, someone has pissed in all the corners. One memorably chaotic St. [...]
I have had a lot of trouble with my teeth, having been born with weak enamel in store in my childhood, a nutritional illness that almost killed me as an infant, and then a horribly incompetent dentist during my adolescence. Norbert Vaughan, who sadly encouraged his patients, even his teen-aged patients, to call him Norby. Norby's office was above an [...]
At 4 a.m. on a Saturday night in May, I was suddenly trapped in my own bedroom with no likely route to freedom. I had just turned out the light and pulled the covers when a strong draft slammed the bedroom door shut. This had happened before, but the door had never locked. The problem with my bedroom door (as [...]
Sometimes I sit in the lunchroom of the Guggenheim Museum and write. If I can, I sit at the rear wall, where there are many framed black and white photographs of the museum’s benefactors, artists, and scenes of the museum’s construction. A bearded Brancusi sits with his dog; they resemble one another, both smiling. Thomas Messer, the museum’s first director, [...]
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