You are currently browsing the stories about the “Upper West Side” neighborhood.
I'm sitting in an upholstered armchair Jerry reserves for his clients, worrying the gray rubber brain from his collection of stress toys - the same ones I fiddle with while waiting to hear the size of my refund. But it's November - too early for my annual pre-April 15th appointment. In a few minutes, when Edward arrives, we'll discuss record [...]
The dark woman hated me because I listened to Wagner without guilt or regret. She said that she could never understand how I could enjoy the work of such a fierce anti-Semite. I told her that was not a problem; I had learned to separate the music from the composer, and, besides, Wagner pretty much hated everybody. She said that [...]
Two men on the 1/9 train, heading downtown at night. One of them has a head of wild brown curls that are pushed off his forehead by a headband. The look is part hoodlum, part Jean Michelle Basquiat. His eyes are bloodshot. His body, buried beneath a hugely puffy down jacket, radiates a tense poise. He sits with elbows on [...]
I was riding downtown on a 1 train after basketball with two of the players from the game, Nick and Tom. Tom and I are both 6-6 and had spent the previous ninety minutes beating the crap out of each other on the basketball court. We were much like the fox and the sheepdog in those great old Warner Brothers [...]
Dear Reader, With all that technology can do to separate the giver from the gift, I should not be surprised that I received the ultimate Christmas gesture—a call from a cell phone with no discernible person on the other end. Must be one of the magical moments of the season, I thought. But what did it mean? I had just [...]
They predicted rain, but the sun shone through hazy skies last Wednesday at the School of the Arts protest at Columbia University. I had never been to a protest before. I was angry—I am angry—at President Lee Bollinger for his utter lack of support of the School of the Arts despite his pledge at his inauguration to make us a [...]
Seven o’clock isn’t late, but already it is dark in New York City. On the corner of 111th and Broadway, two women meet; they stand in tune to the pull of wary strangers. The duo, a short Hmong girl and a thin white woman, stand beside a portable table. Kao Yang has on a long, black coat. Sabina, the tarot [...]
His hands were large. My resume lay flat on his desk. He had cleared a space amidst the clutter, and he ran one of those big, sensitive, but also violent looking hands over it again and again while he studied it, as though his hand was a scanner and would impart some key bit of information that reading never could. [...]
For three years, I lived with the blinds that came on the windows when I’d moved in: plastic, listing, motel-room-beige blinds. While barely scraping by on a teacher’s salary, purchasing window treatments isn't a high priority. When the blinds finally collapsed, the bare windows looked so tall and bright, so pleased to have been freed-up, that I didn’t have the [...]
My parents were due in at 6pm on Blackout Thursday. I see them but twice a year, when I travel to their home in Beverly Hills; but this time, for the first time, they were coming to me, to my new "adult apartment" uptown. I was looking forward to entertaining them, had a fridge full of gourmet food and chilled [...]
While studying piano in college in Mississippi in the mid-seventies, I discovered I could make money with my ability at the keyboard. I played the pipe organ at a church in Hazlehurst, where my parents still live, every Sunday morning. During the week I played the piano for singing lessons and ballet classes in Jackson where I went to a [...]
An old friend came to town not long ago and we met for a late lunch on the Upper West Side. Trilby ordered a burger, no bread, with brie; I ordered half a roasted chicken with mashed potatoes. The food was slow in coming but we had so much catching-up to do that we didn't care. My chicken, when it [...]
I got the call at 9:00 am. They wanted me to go to a Central Park West address, the home of Michael Douglas and Catherine Zeta Jones. The celebrity couple had just had their second child, a girl, two days earlier, and were expected back from the hospital at any moment. Rounding the corner in front of the address, I [...]
Photographs by Alexej Steinhardt and Thomas Beller Click here for more information about the 360 One VR When not in use however, the attachment comes with a plastic jar that screws over the mirror ball, to protect it. The plastic jar makes it look downright lethal, weird, and mad-scientistish, and I was a little concerned about wandering around the streets [...]
The staff of Murder Ink are always answering questions. People want book recomendations. They want to know when their favorite author has another title coming out. Sometimes they bring in a stack of books and ask how much money they can get for them. But the most frequently asked question, always over the phone, goes something like this: "Yo. Can [...]
Your books were a little bit strange, and that ended up working in your favor since none of us wanted them at first glance. Stuff about yoga and spiritual exercise, something about linguistics, and a medieval text. There were five of them in the bag, complete with your credit card receipt from the Barnes & Noble, with a couple of [...]
Paul Simon did not wear a tux. He sat by the fountain in the middle of Lincoln Center, a photographer by his side, and another guy, a journalist? Several people wandered up to him. He seemed very approachable, as though he wanted to chat in the pleasant evening light. He wore a tweed jacket and a blue baseball cap. His [...]
Evan Krasnik is a 59 year-old man who wakes up at 6 AM most mornings. He scuttles toward the shared bathroom in his pajamas and sandals and bangs on the door. “Jim, when are you going to get out of the bathroom? What if you never get out of the bathroom?” Afterwards, he eats a bowl of cereal, using a [...]
Saturday, September 21, 2002 1100 Student Aide Dewey opens courts. On duty. Graffiti spotted on southern fencepost, third from Amsterdam Avenue. 1218 Supervisor Pavi visits, informed of graffiti. 1430 S/A Krauss relieves Dewey for meal break. 1531 S/A Dewy returns from meal, relieves Krauss. 1800 SA Dewey off duty. Courts close Sunday 22 2002 1106 S/A Dewey opens courts. On [...]
Department of Open Minds The William Alanson White Institute, founded in 1943 by Clara Thompson, among others, is known for its interpersonal approach to analysis. The interpersonal approach suggests that the patient is part of a complex social network that includes the therapist, and therefore the patient’s relationship to the analyst is less formal and more intimate than traditional approaches [...]
Photographs by Rachel Sherman Inside Miguel's Barbershop on 942 Amsterdam Avenue, Spanish speaking men sit in barber chairs facing the mirror. It is a sunny Friday in the early afternoon and the shop is busy. I ask a guy named Anthony, who is sitting in the back, about Miguel's. "This is a guy's place," he tells me. The barber working [...]
The first time I heard of the Tango Hotline, I laughed. The name was so apt. A hotline for the tangueros and milongueras who desperately need to find a "milonga" where they can dance. My tango obsession began after I had broken up with a long-time boyfriend. It was May. So I took ballroom dance lessons. At first there was [...]
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 [...]
Nearly every day the homeless men who hang around the front steps of St. John the Divine are keeping tradition alive. The tours they give of the cathedral’s western façade and the Peace Fountain are one part hallowed and one part hustle, and they’ve been going on, in one form or another, for ten years. At a world famous cathedral [...]
The Dakota. It’s not simply a brown building. On the northeast corner of 72nd and Central Park West, it stands like a fortress. It has the soothing color of earth. Near the entrance to the park, a hot dog vendor sells an abundance of meat and buns. Multicolored balloons hang from a tree. A guy with muscular legs skates south, [...]
On Broadway, between 84th and 85th Street, next door to Haagen Daas and Godiva, is the Origins cosmetics store. Outside the store sits the Origins gumball machine. Someone has scratched off the ‘e’ in “Peace of Mind,” so that the gumball machine now reads, “Pace of Mind.” The pace of the gumball is slow. Intended to evoke the purity of [...]
"You can tell when a person's just not ready," the young man in charge of birds at Petland Discounts told me as I pressed my face against the glass atrium to get a good look at the small animals so close to danger. "Have you ever had to say no to anybody?" "There have been occasions." "What have those people [...]
Ellen was our captain. When they started canceling step classes at Body Strength Fitness, a small, privately owned gym on 106th Street and Broadway, Ellen clandestinely circulated a petition for the reinstatement of high-energy aerobic courses. She solicited support before and after classes. She held impromptu meetings in the locker room. She kept the whole of the high-impact faction up [...]
Illustrations by Elisha Cooper I know I'm not alone. Off the top of my head I can think of two friends, single women, Upper West Siders living alone, who are experiencing a similar ordeal. "It's traumatic," I agreed when Nina called, frantic about the leak in her bathroom ceiling and the building's lack of a super. "You'll be okay," I [...]
"All my dishes are masterpieces ‘cause my customers deserve the best! They should lick their fingers to the bone," my Dad would say. "Nobody eats here just once unless he dies before the next time he plans to come in," my Dad said. He was always busy cooking and talking at the B-29, the restaurant so named because of the [...]
Thomas Beller: You once said that one of your roles, Nora of Doll's House, helped you find out where you stood as a woman today. What did you mean by that? Liv Ullman: I don't believe that one single play will teach you what you are. I think that every time you work on something, whether it is a play [...]
Just short of the 96th street station the kid next to me started to get really agitated. He was digging around frantically in his pockets for a pen, and since I was sitting next to him he kept pushing and bumping me with his shifting. He finally found his pen in his pocket, but he didn't have anything to write [...]
Hurrah's began as a nexus for disco (in the early days it was a rival of Studio 54 and Xenon), then moved over into what was still called "new wave." It was booked by Jim Fouratt, famous for coining the slogan "The Man Can't Bust Our Music" at Columbia Records in '68 and for being one of the leaders of [...]
I hadn't thought of Tiny Teeth in years. But there he was, invoked I guess, by my having told Tom (the manager of the small bookstore I own on the Upper West Side) about him earlier in the day. We don't really hire high school kids, but I'd taken Tiny Teeth on about 10 years ago as a favor to [...]
When I first heard the rumor several months ago, it seemed absurd. Someone in my neighborhood said she’d heard that Broadway Farm, the poor man’s Fairway that had been anchoring the southwest corner of 85th street for a decade, was going to shut down to make way for a Victoria’s Secret. How could this be? I’m as big a supporter [...]
French Roast has a gleaming pane glass window looking out onto Broadway, and a gleaming copper bar inside. From where I stand behind the bar, I see the city outside the window as a collection of lights, darknesses, and people who remain anonymous to me unless they decide to venture through the door of the restaurant. My shift, from 11:30pm [...]
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