You are currently browsing stories tagged with “Crime and Punishment.”
It was the third week of what was to become my first real job, at Irving Plaza, the club in Union Square. I was working three days a week after school, doing odd jobs around the venue. Basically whatever tedious tasks they needed me to do. I was a junior that year, and took the minimum amount of classes, so [...]
The fool of Abingdon Square Park entered the park in a huff. He marched up to the person speaking at the microphone, and tapped her on the shoulder with a rolled up newspaper. She was in the middle of reading from a work about being the mother of an adopted Ethiopian girl, and all the ways that this complicated the [...]
On Saturday night I walked from my apartment on the Lower East Side over to Housing Works in SoHo. It was a little after 8:00 at night and my intention was to spend a few pleasant hours drinking coffee and reading Grapes of Wrath. It was also a way to give my wife some time to herself in the apartment, [...]
My landlord George fled communist Armenia at a young age. Whenever I have occasion to talk with him in the hall he is infallibly cheerful and quick to offer words of encouragement. “How a you doing?” he asks me, “is beautiful day but must still be working, what can do.” He shrugs at the day’s obligations. “Yes, yes,” I agree, [...]
It was Tuesday and I held the door for a well-dressed black woman on my way into Starbucks at Mack and Woodward. She thanked me and I thought of my mother who had taught me to be a gentleman. I followed her up to the counter where four or five more people were waiting to get their badly needed morning [...]
There has always been something about the change in seasons, something that has stirred me to make changes in my life. I was married in winter and divorced in the spring, started a new job in fall and quit in the summer. That’s probably why it was in the beginning of winter when I decided that I had finally had [...]
One of the great, underrated things about living in New York is meeting all those people who come from everywhere else. Not that Gotham natives aren’t a barrel of monkeys, but it’s cool that someone always seems to have a different frame-of-reference, a different slice of life about where they came from, which is my way of explaining why I [...]
He began calling her everyday from Scotland. Once she heard his voice she couldn’t get enough. The first time she spoke to him she was working at home writing up a press release for one of her authors. She forgot all about work. He emailed her the day before from an online dating site saying that he was coming over [...]
It’s 1983; I’m on the job ten years and have received my first promotion. Yesterday as a firefighter I carried an axe and fought fires; today as a Fire Marshal I carry a gun and fight crime. In most departments around our country, the title Fire Marshal denotes a person who performs inspectional duties. In NYC, that title identifies an [...]
I have an intimate relationship with my bike lock. In fact, I dance with it. It is not, at first glance, an obvious dancing partner—a heavy chain swathed in a black nylon sleeve, but then there are many unlikely dance partners in our lives. Just as many people will do an unconscious two-step when they are opening the refrigerator, or [...]
It was 1978 and I was in sixth grade at public school I.S. 44 on the Upper West Side. A group of boys robbed me- daily. Tyrone, a mean little black kid in a blue down coat, which he wore regardless of whether it was summer or winter, grew up in the projects just a few blocks north of where [...]
The Joan of Arc Junior High school had just let out across the street and a crowd gathered right away. The man in the headlock, the captured man, was impossibly skinny, and wore faded jeans that were a bit too short, and sneakers. He had a beard and shaggy brown hair. He could have been a progressive librarian or mentally [...]
I call myself a security consultant because it sounds better than salesman but, essentially, I'm a salesman. I sell security products, primarily safes. My dad preceded me in this. He was with the Mosler Safe Company starting around 1948 and, quite frankly, as a kid, the work sounded very dull to me. I wanted to be a playboy of the [...]
My writing teacher Sue said getting published would change my life. But as I prepared to dart past the security guard at the library, a stolen copy of The New York Post hidden in my parka, I sensed this wasn't what she had in mind. Only a month ago, everything had seemed so promising. An editor from The Post had [...]
"The Case Of The Missing Pasta" I tried improving my second grade special education students' skills at addition by having them count pasta. I had them line up the brown and white rigatoni into two groups. Then all they had to do was add them. It worked well - my students were learning while enjoying what they were doing. Then [...]
12:15: Heading downtown in car for two o'clock appointment with lawyer. Half-listening to Leonard Lopate on WNYC. Callers telling stories of bizarre summonses for unfair parking tickets. Mentally pat self on back for six months ticket-free. Cop calls in. Defensive. Won't give name. Claims cops have no ticket "quotas" to meet, just "production goals." Claims he's "just following orders." Sounds [...]
There's a small pocket in Brooklyn east of Williamsburg, west of Bushwick, known by its residents as Flushwick. In this small pocket, mattress fires attract drum circles. Catalpa trees burst from the shattered windshields of bulldozers. Pedigrees with silk bandanas growl behind fences crowned with razor wire. It's hard to get a fix on this neighborhood. Trust fund or trust [...]
I woke up feeling cold this morning and the clouds were fighting their way in between the bedroom blinds that were left open in the middle of the night. I found my body naked and bent and I thought about Nicole Du Fresne and her star quality blonde hair and blue eyes and perfect teeth and I wondered how her [...]
Gooning / n. / the random beating of an unsuspecting victim, usually by a goon gang Usually when I cross the Williamsburg Bridge this late at night I'm thinking, “This would be the perfect place for a random act of violence.” But this particular time the thought didn't occur because I was engrossed in a cell phone conversation—that is, an [...]
THE GOD OF HIGH SCHOOL by Rachel Cline ON THE ANNIVERSARY OF NOT SEEING HER AGAIN by Alex Jablonski CHRISTINA by Snooder Greenberg WEDDING PROPOSAL AT CAFE LOUP by Meghan Daum and Thomas Beller MAKING IT by Kendra Hurley THE KEPT BOY by John Epperson SEGWAY SIGHTINGS by Maud Newton BUTCH & NANCY by Jenni Olson THE JEWISH HOLLY-GO-LIGHTLY by [...]
Throughout my life I have paid good money to see innumerable films that have dehumanized Muslims in the most overt and ingenious ways possible. I have also seen a great many television programs, books, newspaper articles and high-minded literary journals do the same. I have witnessed my father—-who is Muslim and who, in my imagination, is the actor playing the [...]
In early December, 2003, several people involved in the production of Mel Gibson's "The Passion," arrived in Rome. The mission was to get the Vatican to endorse the movie's version of the last hours of Jesus Christ's life. The film was shot in Rome, at the Cinecitta studios, and the Gibson delegation apparently had some contacts. I was in Rome [...]
A slightly built African-American man in a standard-issue beige trenchcoat murmured as we passed on the street. "Say, you wouldn't mind giving the time of day to a Black man?" "What can I do for you?" "Well, I'm just here at St. Luke's, you see, for the methadone program, and I have to get home, and the buses, they require [...]
Illustration by Elisha Cooper I was married and she was married and we probably shouldn't have been doing what we were doing, especially where we were doing it. But there we were, late winter, 2002, at 57th and Broadway, a spot that, at least to an out-of-towner like me, signified something important. I read once that that intersection was the [...]
Photos: Matthew Roberts They were boilermakers. They were blue collar guys in a labor union "local No. 5" in Queens and they had made a ton of cash by day trading on the market. These guys had done it all legally and legitimately, sort of, doing the same after market trading that Putnam Securities and other mutual funds are now [...]
It was a nice Saturday morning, sun shining bright and all. I woke up to get ready to go to my grandmother’s house to go shopping for her. It was about 11:00 a.m. as I got ready to go. I put on my sweatpants, my slippers, a wife beater, and a hoody. I did not have to travel far because [...]
One March afternoon, I was at my neighbor’s house on the balcony. I was excited because it was a nice sunny day, and there were a lot of people outside having fun and listening to music. At the time my neighbor and I were listening to Elvis Crespo, Suavemente, eating nice juicy mangos. She was making her own scene, by [...]
I can remember one Saturday evening, a nice and beautiful day in April. It was about 70 degrees and everyone was happy, showing smiling faces and enjoying the weather. I was at work on 125th Street between 7th & 8th Avenues at McDonalds and it was busy as usual. Then a maniac came inside the store and he began bothering [...]
Walking through the backyard to get to the basketball courts, to work out by myself at 6:00 a.m., like I do everyday. It was kind of misty outside and the grass was wet and the benches and ground were slippery. I had on basketball shorts, Orlando sweatshirt, and my ball kicks dribbling the rock through the backyard on the wet [...]
The street fight had happened on 122nd between 2nd and 3rd Avenue in front of a bar. That was not the first fight that had happened on the block. There are many fight on that block. That block is real bad. The big issue that makes the block even worse is all the drugs and gun shootings that go on [...]
Finally after eight years I can go back to where it used to be fun for me and other children to hang out at Wagner Project’s pool. It still looks the same but really doesn’t feel the same. The children are still splashing in the water, the babies are still in the baby pool with their parents, but it has [...]
When I was assigned to photograph the bank manager, something inside me gave a decisive nod. The bank manager was someone I could hate. The bank manager was someone I could hunt. Even though he had suffered this horrible experience the day before, I looked at the photographs of him flailing on the ground, attached to what he thought was [...]
Krea-Krac! Thick, guttural laugher floats up from the street into our bedroom. Krea-Krac! Krea-Krac! Blearily, I grope the nightstand for my glasses. The bedside clock tells me it's just past midnight. Krea-Krac! Krea-Krac! Krea-Krac! When I was a boy and it was time for bed, my father had a favorite ritual. He would stand up, a lumbering giant swaying over [...]
Illustrations by Elisha Cooper 1971. When I was still a student and first visited New York City, the couple at whose place I was staying suggested we take a walk to the piers near the entrance to the Holland Tunnel. While we were crossing the roadway there, where the signs clearly prohibit pedestrians from crossing, a policemen who saw us [...]
I arrived in New York during the summer of 2000 from somewhere else. It doesn't matter where because nowhere else is like New York. Like most newcomers I was awed by the spectacle. I stole glances at the sky from the sidewalk while I tried to keep pace with other pedestrians. I walked the streets as a stranger. I thought [...]
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 [...]
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