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See You in New York
by Olivia Sjostedt 03/19/2017Neighborhood: Central Park, Manhattan, World Trade Center
As the wheels hit the ground and the pilot stopped the airplane at Newark airport, I felt right at home. I was landing in the city that was going to be my new home, at least for a couple of years. People had always told me that I should live in New York once, but leave […]
Panic at Beth Israel
by Ruth Merwin 11/08/2015Neighborhood: Uncategorized
I was on an evening Metro North train home from the Adirondacks. Catherine and I were taking turns sucking Merlot out of a plastic nozzle attached to a plastic sack. We were each lying down long ways across a row of seats, facing each other, passing the bag back and forth, lifting our heads only […]
With You Without
by Abigail Frankfurt 07/08/2015Neighborhood: All Over
I am writing this on the laptop you stole from me. Remember? No of course you don’t. What an asshole you were! I had gone back to New York to visit my father at Mount Sinai Hospital’s Head Trauma Unit (he had fallen and bashed his brains in on the way to see Sondheim and […]
Smartphone
by Quilty 02/18/2015Neighborhood: Uncategorized
Martin Able had most people fooled. The 94-year-old retired history professor prided himself on owning the very latest smartphone. For the past five years he upgraded annually. His latest could shoot video in slow motion and download music with the touch of his thumbprint. The phone even included an app that could call the rescue […]
Respect for the Dead
by Claudette Bakhtiar 04/08/2013Neighborhood: Upper West Side
I was on the 2 Express uptown on my way home after work. It was about 6:30 pm. We straphangers who were standing were packed in like sardines. As the train pulled into the 79th Street station, there was a sound, a whooshing of air, a release. It felt as though the power had been […]
Crust, Mantle, Core
by Sara Lippmann 10/23/2012Neighborhood: Bay Ridge
A sinkhole is threatening to swallow up 79th Street in Bay Ridge. Police, fire, city workers are on the scene. Supposedly, the sewers had something to do with it.“The beginning of the end,” laments a longstanding neighborhood resident on local TV. He is wearing a trucker hat and gold chain and undershirt. Behind him, elders […]
Larry’s Bench
by Elizabeth S Titus 09/25/2012Neighborhood: Upper West Side
Larry Polshansky, dead. I cannot believe this. He wasn’t that much older than my husband, Gregory, who died of melanoma at age 56, five years ago. Larry chain-smoked, I remember. Maybe it was lung cancer that got him. I am walking my two dogs, Sophie, an eager-to-please golden retriever, and Henry Longfellow, a less-than-eager-to-please piebald […]
Facing The Day
by Judith Luongo 06/25/2012Neighborhood: All Over, Chelsea, Gramercy Park, West Village
On the first Wednesday of every month for the past year, my walk east from Fourteenth Street and Seventh Avenue where I teach, to the corner of Eighteenth Street and First Avenue took about twenty minutes. There are intriguing neighborhood changes along the way but I was usually lost in thought. I would arrive at […]
Old Enough To Die In Brooklyn: The Mortician’s Lament
by Chris Pomorski 05/10/2012Neighborhood: Cobble Hill
When the previous resident of my apartment, who was still living in it when my girlfriend and I viewed it for the first time, told us that the funeral home downstairs hardly ever held services, the effect on me was less than palliative. Jenna nodded thoughtfully in the way real estate shoppers are prone, apparently […]
Here Lies Jed
by Katie McDonough 05/22/2011Neighborhood: Prospect Park
We suspected it was illegal, but we had no choice. At the vet’s office in Park Slope, they told us cat cremation cost $125, and neither my boyfriend nor I had the money. Besides, cremation seemed too formal, too clinical, for Jed. He was always escaping out the window, taking self-guided tours of the neighborhood […]
Death Comes to The Fenwick Arms
by Mr. Murphy 12/31/2010Neighborhood: Upper East Side
I’m holding the door open for Mr. 11A and his dog, but when he sees the Medical Examiner’s van and the police car parked in front of the building, he stops, leans in close to me, and asks in a stage whisper, “Do they suspect foul play?” I tell him that the police had only […]
The Last Day
by Ken Nolan 06/03/2010Neighborhood: Windsor Terrace
I always woke up early the last day of school. My eyes would jump open and I’d sit up and look toward the windows in my parents’ bedroom to see if morning slid through the thick wooden blinds and thin white curtains. I’d jab the bottom of the bunk bed above where my older brother […]