You are currently browsing the stories about the Washington Heights neighborhood
Of Rooftops and Cadavers
by Max Lauring 12/06/2020Neighborhood: Washington Heights
I’m sitting on the rooftop of my 31-floor apartment building looking down on a laughing couple drinking White Claws. Looking on like a creep–or maybe like an ever-watching god. Is there a difference? On an adjacent rooftop, a man probably my age is smoking a cigarette and crushing a six-pack. He’s been […]
Interlude
by Jeanne Dickey 10/27/2019Neighborhood: Washington Heights
In the midst of a particularly grueling winter, I met Wren on OK Cupid. Unlike my slim, brown-skinned fiancé who had deserted me the week before Christmas, Wren was bulky, with a ruddy complexion and pale blue eyes like my father’s. The day after my third date with Wren, my father died of congestive heart […]
Riding the A
by Angel Eduardo 07/28/2019Neighborhood: Washington Heights
One way or another, everybody needs to get on the A train. I’m leaning against the back wall of the car, in that tiny corner beside the conductor’s compartment, still managing to read despite all the other people crammed in around me. It’s the afternoon rush hour and you don’t need a watch to tell. […]
The Therapist Who Was Always Late
by Raanan Geberer 09/24/2018Neighborhood: Bronx, Chelsea, Co-op City, Upper West Side, Washington Heights
As a young man in my mid-twenties in the late ‘70s, I was in a precarious state. I had just failed miserably at an attempt to work at a job on the west coast and was back with my parents in Co-op City. I was on the list for a civil service job at the […]
Homeward
by Angel Eduardo 03/12/2017Neighborhood: Manhattan, Washington Heights
“Lemuel,” my mother cried out to me. “No puedo ver.” I looked up. Her eyes were shut, her grip was tight around my hand, and she was telling me she couldn’t see. We had been walking home, enjoying the lull that comes over Washington Heights at the end of the day. I was six and […]
COFFEE, MY FAMILY
by Amauta Marston-Firmino 06/14/2014Neighborhood: Chelsea, Washington Heights
It had become a habit that week—reading Richard Rodriguez’s “Brown” on the A train, riding a gradient line between the ochre of Washington Heights and the powdered white walls of NYU. I reveled in holding the book upright, spine stiff, and the bent paperback cover like a sail at full mast. It was a silent […]
Faces
by Phyllis Schieber 08/03/2012Neighborhood: Washington Heights
I shift from foot to foot as I wait in line to see the Mona Lisa. The line snakes around the corridor of the second floor of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. My mother and Aunt Regina insist that we must see this wonderful painting. Helen holds my hand and tells me that Leonardo da […]
My Friend, The Fire Chaplain
by Kathleen Crisci 09/11/2011Neighborhood: Chelsea, Uncategorized, Washington Heights
I met Mychal Judge in the spring of 1985 when my boyfriend, Javier, and I decided to get married. As a lapsed Catholic, estranged from the Church for over a decade, I was tormented with guilt and worry, yet I wanted to have a church wedding without having to account for prior errant ways—our daughter, […]
G-2183
by Phyllis Schieber 05/01/2011Neighborhood: Washington Heights
When Jeffrey and I argue, my mother always weeps. “Shame on you,” she says. “I wish my brother, Shmuel, was still here for me to argue with. Shame on you!” My brother and I hang our heads. We wait for her to leave the room, but she is not yet finished. “Is this what I […]
Trolling Whores for Coke: How to Get Started
by Kent 03/17/2010Neighborhood: Chelsea, Washington Heights
So you’ve got the wife and the kids. You’ve got and are just barely hanging onto, the co-op in the chic enclave, you’re so middle-aged. Some men, finding themselves adrift in a wood in their middle years, go to the gym: I troll whores for coke. After you’ve seen the horrors of Chelsea Pier’s ice […]
The Slow Death of Dan Dinnerstein
by Raanan Geberer 11/02/2008Neighborhood: Washington Heights
I met Dan Dinnerstein at a party in 1982, when we were young, single guys in our late twenties. We had a lot in common: we were both were products of the New York State University system, we both came from the same neighborhood in the Bronx (although we hadn’t known each other there), and, […]
Welcome to Washington Heights
by Kristen Bonardi Rapp 08/05/2008Neighborhood: Washington Heights
The day I moved to Washington Heights, a kid stood on the sidewalk and stared at me. And not a trying-not-to stare, either; a slack-jawed, wide-eyed, rooted-to-the-spot stare. It was sweltering that day—the first day of summer—and even though it wasn’t the most practical choice for moving day, I wore one of those tank tops […]