You are currently browsing the stories about the “Upper West Side” neighborhood.
I heard the shots that killed John Lennon. Did you hear that?" My sister asked as she burst into my room after the five quick popping sounds had just drifted into my room. "Did you hear those gunshots?" I gave her a look. I told her they were firecrackers. It was late and she was bothering me. I was sixteen, [...]
The Upper East and the Upper West sides distinguish themselves relative to each other--their identities are based on slandering the attitudes on the "other side" of the Park. Today, however, they were connected by a giant rainbow that stretched to the ground on both sides. A six-year-old boy stared intently up at the larger-than-life rainbow, his mouth dropped open like [...]
On the day it happened we walked briskly to the hospital almost before our emotions had time to respond. Our eyes stung from the sun and our heads pounded from the hangovers which prompted us to remark that the blood we were about to donate might still have a good deal of alcohol in it. We were numb and we [...]
Since September, my family has experienced an unusual barrage of schizophrenic divisions on personal and global levels -- our kids’ schools, the subway series, the election, and Christmas/Hanukah overlap – each of which raised unique parenting dilemmas, the kind they don’t write about in those "What to Expect" books. Because our daughters are 3_ years apart, we are now in [...]
It was around 5 p.m. and I was on my way home. It was hot. I was tired. Feet hurt, and that's not all. Spent all day standing in a heated sardine can courtroom in Housing Court. My back hurt. And my ego - after dumbass judge beat up on me for something I had no control over - as [...]
Ê To members of the snoopy national media who still call to inquire, Brian Brown, a junior at Wesleyan University, insists, at articulate length, that he is no aspiring porno king. His favorite book is Vladimir Nabokov's "Pale Fire", and he is currently immersed in the films of avant-garde German directors like Werner Herzog, and Wim Wenders, part of a [...]
She listens to me. She comforts me. She keeps all my secrets. She knows me inside out. She is not my mother. She is…my therapist. The note sat on top of the July issue of Vanity Fair in her waiting room: “I will be on vacation from July 27-September 5th.” “Where are you going?” I demanded as soon as our [...]
This essay appears in "How To Be a Man: Scenes From A Protracted Boyhood." For more information about the book, click here. Illustrations by Elisha Cooper Books were stacked in piles around my new apartment, looming like weird stalagmites in a cave. They were encroaching from all directions. A bookcase was badly in need, and yet months slid by without [...]
Not until we took custody of Molly, seven years old more or less, more or less cocker spaniel, did I become aware how bountiful were the sidewalks of New York, at least along the several Upper West Side blocks Molly now calls home. It’s no surprise that New Yorkers litter the streets with their candy wrappers and matchbooks and newspapers, [...]
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 [...]
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