You are currently browsing the stories about the “Williamsburg” neighborhood.
Before I came to a stop at Bedford and Broadway the workers were attempting to flag me down like I was piloting a rescue helicopter. I’d asked Rob to translate for me in order to get the best guy for the job. Two young men approached the passenger side with hopeful expressions. “You speak English?” Rob asked, forgoing the translation. [...]
I leap down the stairs, unlock and swing open the wrought iron gate. Priscilla, my best friend and playmate, is leaning against the fire hydrant, fidgeting with her treasured Elvis Pez dispenser. She runs to me, pulls on my sweater, and drags me to the corner of Madison Street. Speechless and excited, she nudges my shoulder and points once, twice [...]
Last August, on a brutally hot Sunday afternoon, after a debilitating outdoor 90-degree basketball game courtesy of The Word bookstore league, I was shuffling along the sidewalks from Greenpoint to the Bedford L stop trying to bring my core temperature below triple-digits. Needing a respite, I stopped to watch a softball game on a playground diamond across from McCarren Park [...]
A tree grows in Brooklyn, and snow falls. Both are scarce, as were friendships on Madison Street. My only friend was a girl my age whose single mother was a police officer. Only once was I invited to her house to play. It was a row house like mine with three long rooms: windows in the front and a fire [...]
The Diner in Williamsburg is a 21st century institution now, I guess (just celebrated its tenth anniversary)—you can get arugula there! And the rest of their food is good too. It’s pleasant at their sidewalk tables if the weather’s fine, though you have to watch your step if you don’t want to trip over two dozen artists. Me and Jean [...]
At the tender age of seventeen, I discovered that tigers were not in fact yellow and brown, but are rather orange and black. It never did much harm, my color deficiency, nor did it prevent me from getting my own way. It certainly never interfered with my love life. However, by no fault of my own, one opportune incident was [...]
I went out with my friend Dylan last night. We met in 2003 on the internet. Tried dating, but were better friends than anything. He was the first person I met when I moved back to New York and looking to date. I had left because my husband was killed in the World Trade Center. Dylan and I went out [...]
Cocaine did not ruin my life any more than video games or an overprotective mother ruined my life. Which is to say, not at all. Whether or not cocaine impaired my intellectual abilities (I am not a member of MENSA) is something I’ll never know but as for my physical development (I’m six foot nine) I’m pleased to report cocaine [...]
Last July, a friend of mine called to tip me off about an upcoming water gun assassination tournament. I was swamped at work when he called, crimping duvets for a big Neiman Marcus order—but seconds later I was on the tournament's website, reading the requirements for entry. By midnight I was in the back of a GMC Envoy, paying my [...]
It was 4 am. Maybe 4:30. The sun was just coming out, shading the city gorgeous cool oranges and blues and pinks and yellows. It was late spring, early summer. We had been up all night listening to Johnny Cash, smoking cigarettes and drinking whiskey. We were on Skillman Avenue, Brooklyn, in my canted railroad apartment that had big picture [...]
It’s January 2, 1997. I head out to the corner bodega to buy coffee and a New York Times. I wear a robe and slippers. I am still hung over from New Year’s Eve. It is the time of year when the frozen ground in Williamsburg forms an admixture of leftover snow and dog turd matter. I say this because [...]
They say she’s holed up like a squirrel, nuts to last the winter, glimpses of green bath- robe when she shuffles down the hill to her mailbox to collect more rejection. People start laying bets, perhaps she has a corpse hidden like, what’s her name, was it Emily? Maybe she’s taken a bad spell, some female kind of thing. No, [...]
9/3/05 7:51 PM Whenever I feel melancholy I like to find the nearest basketball court and play until I sweat and my knees buckle. I have kept up this habit for about three years, during which I have lived in five neighborhoods, playing in about as many courts. I played on a strip of black tar in Bushwick that lay [...]
Last August, I lived with my ex-boyfriend in my ex-neighborhood of Brooklyn, neither of which could I find my way around. Coming back from the city late one night -- I remember it being very hot and damp out -- I exited the G's Metropolitan stop around 2 a.m. and halted at the top of the steps, utterly baffled. I [...]
Phoebe’s is the local coffee shop, and it isn’t a bad place to be in the summer. The patio in the back hosts a leafy tree that sprawls between the fire escape above and the duplex behind, shading the tables and chairs and making it cool. A rusted watering can props open the screen door. There is a sink off [...]
The Segway first appeared in front of the B-61 bus stop on Bedford Avenue in Williamsburg about a month and a half ago. Riding it was a short, thin lad sporting an uneven bowl cut. He looked about fifteen, as though he might have torn himself away from a Dungeons & Dragons game, swung by the barber shop, picked up [...]
One American flag pin is not enough for the woman across the aisle from me on the L train to Brooklyn. She wears one on her lapel, one on her coat, one on the front of her Le Sportsac bag. All are bejeweled. Her eyes are closed; her head falls to the side. She has blonde hair, blonder highlights. She [...]
Several years ago, in the Spring of 2003, I endured one of those moderately shattering moments of identity crisis – a break-up – and resorted to drugs to ameliorate its effects. Included among the expected substances and liquids was the powerful drug of technology, specifically a new gadget, even more specifically a neat-o cool-o camera attachment that allowed you to [...]
I first came to Williamsburg in 1992 , to visit a painter friend’s studio. He would travel there every day from the Upper West Side, a long but worthwhile trip because the studio space was so cheap. Back then, the crowd of people that got off with us at the Bedford Avenue L stop disappeared quickly and mysteriously, and we [...]
I've been dating a Mid-western man for the past two months. Well, it's actually been one month that I've been dating him, and one month that he's been away in Florida "visiting his mother." This man happens to be the oldest I have ever dated--41--ten years my senior. Perfect, I thought. Older, more mature, has his act together, money in [...]
First came the mice. It was early winter when I heard them scratching their way across the long wall of my studio, setting up camp in the wall behind my bed. At first, I thought knocking for minutes at a time could scare them away. When that didn't work, I tried banging the wall with a hammer and later, blasting [...]
"S-s-s-s-h-h-h-t. I love that sound," says the second-generation seltzer man Barry Walpow. He's at the Seaview Diner in Canarsie, simulating the joyful noise of seltzer squirting from a glass siphon bottle, before heading off to make an end-of-the-day delivery in Williamsburg. The tall 51-year-old, wearing a battered black baseball hat and glasses as thick as the bottoms of the seltzer [...]
After 9/11, I stepped into the Williamsburg bodega that I've been going to for years. Some of the workers I know by name, others are just familiar faces. We've mentioned our Middle Eastern backgrounds to each other. "She's Egyptian," said the Palestinian woman behind the counter, gesturing towards me. But her co-worker already knew. "Don't say it too loud," I [...]
Another morning at the Bedford L stop, reluctant professionals line the platform waiting, not saying much. Several dozen yards into the crowd, you hear screaming -- a high-pitched, angry sound -- against the tinny sound of recorded music. People closer to the commotion direct their attention towards the center of the platform, next to the bench; typically, this is where [...]
New York City and the US Navy have a relationship that goes right back to the very beginning of the Navy. This is to be expected for a city that is this country's major Atlantic port. From 1801-1966, the principle site for the Navy-New York relationship was in Brooklyn, at the Brooklyn Navy Yard. Its three big piers show up [...]
On Friday September 28th, just after the sun had gone down, the remaining glow of the day was fighting the oncoming storm clouds moving in from the southwest over Jersey. The day had been gloomy and the light had been pearly gray throughout the afternoon. The air was cool and summer was clearly over. Coming over the Williamsburg Bridge from [...]
