You are currently browsing stories tagged with “Crime and Punishment.”
The first time I saw Billy Brooks he was riding around Ojo Sarco, a sparse village of yellow adobe huts and longhouses grouped on either side of a ravine. It was 1971. Billy was on a tall horse the color of city mud and surrounded by varmints waving rifles like the banditos in "Treasure of the Sierra Madre". Among them [...]
Illustrations by Elisha Cooper I recently spent an afternoon watching a guy entertaining three of New York's finest on the eastern parapet of the Brooklyn Bridge. He was wearing what looked like a green track suit. "Jumper!" the call went up in the office. The view here is extraordinary: the Brooklyn Bridge, the World Trade Towers, the financial district, the [...]
A glass came flying through the air and smashed against the wall behind me. It appeared to be aimed at the DJ. He was standing next to me at the end of the bar. The guy who threw it was part of a group of men, slightly foreign, drunk, eccentric, who I had imagined, because of their accents, to be [...]
illustrations: Steve Brodner; Since 1892 New Yorkers have been flocking to The Tenth Street Bath on 10th Street between First Avenue and Avenue A to shvitz, to sweat out the gunk that clogs the pores and clouds the spirit. In the city, we have a fine selection of toxins to choose from: subway juice (that mysterious thick liquid that seeps [...]
On the 4th of July my girlfriend and I took a friend visiting from Richmond, Virginia out to dinner in an area of the West Village that we refer to as Charm Central. We parked the car on West 4th, which is my favorite street of its kind in the city. It’s quiet, tree lined, narrow, and it, as well [...]
Like the homes of many New Yorkers these days, the Illera apartment in Flushing, Queens, has a small American flag taped to the door. Six-year-old Vanessa answers the knock, her hair held back with a stars-and-stripes headband. She walks inside, past the Colombian flag in the kitchen, into the living room. The walls of the Illera home are covered mostly [...]
This was late on a Saturday afternoon, in the half gloom of the subway station at Times Square. W and N and R trains were barreling through, and the girls stood on either side of the platform, each guarded by a patrolman, looking bored and despairing. They were just mestizas, the kind who were raised in their own big cities [...]
Illustrations by Elisha Cooper They're huddled in the far corner of the office, all of them peering out of the enormous window. They vibe is jittery. "Jumper?" I ask, throwing down my bag. "Yup!" All five exclaim in unison. Sure enough, here we are again. Our generous view has coughed up ringside seats for another round of human tragedy. Standing [...]
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