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Sliced Tomatoes
by Joseph Scalia 03/16/2014Neighborhood: Boro Park
In the Jewish neighborhoods he was “Morris, the Maven of Tomatoes.” The orthodox women hardly talked to him, except to call out their orders in Yiddish, enough of which he understood, or to haggle about his high prices or to complain about the accuracy of the scale that hung from the side of his wagon. […]
Flat Fixed
by Tom Diriwachter 02/13/2014Neighborhood: Staten Island
The strip of Bay Street that runs through Stapleton is an example of conspicuous gentrification. There’s a Spanish tapas bar, and a Japanese Bistro, and a Sri Lankan clay pots restaurant, all opened in the last few years. In counterpoint, the old Paramount Theater has failed at numerous incarnations, and a White Castle sits stripped […]
Pimping Trixie
by Nancy Stiefel 02/02/2014Neighborhood: Upper West Side
I won’t go into how our two-year old standard poodle got Lyme disease and died horribly, triggering a deep depression in my then 14 year old son, Jake. Lulu was smart and devilish and silly. She chewed a carved leg of our 120 year old Steinway, the molding on the walls, and anything she could […]
Will Probably Be Late to the Party
by Marta Troicka 01/21/2014Neighborhood: East Village
I am apologizing to Michelle because I’m crying and I don’t know why. I’m not sad or anything, I’m actually having a good time. This is one of the first times that Michelle and I are hanging out outside of class, and we don’t know each other well yet. But tears keep running down my […]
Just Another Night
by peter nolan smith 01/12/2014Neighborhood: Fort Greene
Last night was New Year’s Eve. My redheaded poetess friend Irene phoned to invite me to a 20-something party in Bushwick. “You’ll be the oldest man there.” Irene was going solo. “Almost three times older.” We were just friends. “I think of you as 16.” She had seen me being silly on more than one […]
My Neighbor Cries a Chain Link Fence
by Abigail Frankfurt 12/31/2013Neighborhood: Astoria
To the young beautiful woman with tears in her eyes who lives above me: now I know why you run in the apartment for hours backandforth backandforth. I know why you don’t talk in the hallway. I know because the building is old and my ceiling is thin. I heard the furniture thunder last night […]
The Dress
by Sharon Watts 06/18/2013Neighborhood: All Over, Greenwich Village, SoHo, West Village
For thirty-five years its posture has been folded into a deep curtsy, dormant over a hanger, as if waiting for a curtain call. After that one moment in the spotlight, it’s never been worn again. Unless we consider fleeting fantasies of varying scenarios I’ve had over the decades that flash-forwarded to, well, the age I […]
Dreams of Taylor
by peter nolan smith 06/18/2013Neighborhood: Midtown
The term ‘generation gap’ was coined during the tumultuous Post WWII years, as the focus of the American media swung from the conquerors of the Axis Powers to their spawn, the Baby Boomers. Bing Crosby gave way to Elvis and the King was deposed by the Beatles, as each succeeding wave of teenagers attempted to […]
Below 14th
by Jacob Margolies 05/30/2013Neighborhood: East Village, Lower East Side
In the summer of 1984, I sublet an apartment on East 3rd Street between Avenue A and B, about one hundred yards from the building in which I had spent the first 18 years of my life. I’d been away for six years—the first four at a small college in the midwest followed by two […]
Body English
by Tom Diriwachter 05/25/2013Neighborhood: Clifton, Staten Island
In the summer of ’77, I met Mark Roth in Pathmark on Hylan Boulevard. Heading home from a Sunday drive, my parents stopped to pick up groceries for dinner, and waiting in the Express Lane, he got behind us with a bottle of Mott’s Apple Juice. I was sure it was him, but then, what […]
What’s in a Name
by liz dolan 05/06/2013Neighborhood: Bronx, Midtown
Sitting in the second row of the balcony at the New York City Center ballet, I, sixteen, entranced by the melodies of Swan Lake, watched a tall, muscular sun-god pirouetting and jeteing on the stage. As he soared, I gasped at the height of his jumps and his sure-footed landings. But I had not come […]
Playing Hide and Seek in the Bronx
by Jackie Minghinelli 04/25/2013Neighborhood: Bronx
Decades ago, when my brother was about ten and I around fourteen, he began to spend an extraordinary amount of time in his room. We lived in an apartment in a sketchy neighborhood in the Bronx. There were muggings, petty and not so petty thefts, and a few cases of violent crimes. Still, we played […]