You are currently browsing stories tagged with “City Life.”
The red-smocked amNY guy smiled wide and with a proud, “Good morning, big bro!” extended a copy of the subway newspaper my way. I stood there grinning sheepishly, neither taking the paper nor brushing him off. This was a breach of the rules of our relationship, not unlike showing up unannounced at a new fling’s apartment, flowers in hand, just [...]
I've lived in the neighborhood practically forever, but to my girlfriend it's all new. She's always making some new discovery. Once she came home with a small box of Japanese chocolate wrapped inside a perfect silver bag and with a sleek packet of dry ice. I asked her where it came from and she told me, “right around the corner—it's [...]
The rare April sun has sucked hundreds of New Yorkers from their homes and offices, spilling them across Sheep’s Meadow in various states of undress. At the north end of the field next to the fence and a small grove of spindly trees sits an observer. Her hair is a dusty sunset of pink and orange and peach, until you [...]
We were living in a tenement apartment building in the Bronx, and it was full of all things common to such. I was doing the breakfast dishes one Saturday morning when I felt something feathery run over my bare foot. Of course, I already knew what it was, but I screamed anyway. Ahhh!!!!!!!!!!!! My four-year-old daughter came rushing to my [...]
Learning to walk the streets of Manhattan means learning how to jaywalk. When we first moved here, several years ago, from California, I was amazed at others and then at myself for jaywalking even while under the gaze of police officers. Crossing the streets in New York means looking and betting on yourself to outrace the oncoming traffic. I am [...]
The next time your life coach tells you to reinvent yourself, think of this. During the years I worked on West 57th Street, I would sometimes browse in Daffy's, a discount department store. I grew to expect to see (and hear) a certain salesperson who roamed the women's shoe department, intoning, "Doctor Shoe here! Doctor Shoe is in the house! [...]
It was a muggy Manhattan afternoon in August, and I was between movies. Not because I didn’t have air conditioning, but because I needed to distract my angry, heartbroken self, and movies, carefully spaced, were my drug of choice. I had seen La Ultima Baci at the Sunshine on Houston Street and was on my way to whatever was playing [...]
