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The Laundromat
by Claire Viguerie 03/18/2023Neighborhood: East Village
It was quite an operation. Lookouts on walkie-talkies patrolled the roofline, and a scout on a bike pedaled up and down the block, combing 7th Street between Avenues B and C. A guy in a ski mask stood guard at an open window on one of the apartment building’s upper floors, ready to service the […]
Cocaine in the City
by Griffin Vrabeck 12/05/2021Neighborhood: West Village
I first tried cocaine off of a chessboard, while listening to Lou Reed in my West Village studio apartment with a girl named after the Central American country in which she was conceived. I remember thinking that for brief moments life really could be a movie if you made it one. The girl and I […]
If Dad Was A Doll
by Royal Young 04/09/2017Neighborhood: Coney Island
My father took me to the Coney Island Freak Show every summer growing up. My artist Dad seemed unfettered from his day job as a social worker, sketching subway riders on the hour train ride from the Lower East Side, where we lived surrounded by junkies and prostitutes wandering derelict streets. On the boardwalk, he […]
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 […]
Battered Carnations
by Eleanor Vigneault 08/31/2014Neighborhood: Chinatown
To say that I am not a morning person is both unimaginative and a gross understatement. Each day I try to avoid the morning, altogether. When I wake up in the afternoon, it takes me multiple cups of water and coffee as well as several scrolls through my Instagram feed to regain my pleasant disposition. […]
I Just Want to Stay In and Get High and Watch Netflix
by Alexandra Wuest 07/20/2014Neighborhood: Bushwick
I was not where I wanted to be. This was because I was out. I was out at a bar called the Narrows in Bushwick–or East Williamsburg if you’re a real estate broker. The bar is called the Narrows because the building is very narrow. But really every building in New York City is narrow. […]
Last Night at Mrs. C’s
by Jacob Margolies 04/16/2014Neighborhood: East Village
When we were kids, starting at about 15-years old, there was a bar we’d frequent on Fifth Street east of Avenue A, just past the Con Edison substation. It was called the Chic Choc, but we knew it either as Chic’s or Mrs. C’s. Customers addressed the woman behind the bar who owned the place […]
An Education on Avenue B
by Jacob Margolies 03/23/2014Neighborhood: East Village
In 1971, when I was 11 years old, my world was turned upside down when my parents decided to send me to a Jewish Day School on the Lower East Side. From grades 1 to 5, I’d gone to the Downtown Community School, or DCS as it was called, on East 11th Street. It […]
After the Graveyard Shift
by Coree Spencer 01/28/2014Neighborhood: East Village
Always wear a bag on your head if you don’t want people to bother you. I figure this out in 1989 while I’m working the midnight to 5am waitressing shift at 7A Cafe in the East Village. It is right across the street from Tompkins Square Park during the height of the riots. The park […]
Washington Square Park
by Jacob Margolies 01/26/2014Neighborhood: Greenwich Village
I have a friend. For the purposes of this story, let’s call him Monte. When I was a kid there were lots of guys in the neighborhood named Monte. Now I don’t know anyone with that name. From the time he was 13, just after his bar mitzvah when he first had a few bucks […]
Katya
by Eliza Berman 08/09/2013Neighborhood: East Village
Yellow police tape stretched across the doorframe of Apartment 5. I had walked past this door every day for the last two years, past its tortured wood, pockmarked like the cigarette-burned arms of its inhabitant. The door was so battered, a neighbor told me, from all the times Katya’s parents threw her out and all […]
Sally-Boy
by Susan T. Landry 07/28/2013Neighborhood: Astor Place
I stepped up into the crowded entryway of the loud and confusing room. A bald man with remarkable muscles was standing near the cash register and he yelled, “What d’ye want? Cut? Color? Women kill for hair that color already.” This was my second visit, so I knew enough to holler back, “I want the […]