You are currently browsing stories tagged with “Money.”
I’ve been so harried and have brain fog from mold illness. For months I had been having neurological issues and going through medical tests, including multiple MRIs and a spinal tap. Finally, when my doctor asked if where I lived could possibly have mold, something clicked. The old HVACS were indeed moldy (from 1960). After testing both myself and my [...]
This morning I made Ramen noodles with extra veggies in it, and peanut butter and Korean bean paste. Then took a walk, crossed Grand Central on over to Queens Boulevard where an Asian woman walking a little dog caught my eye. She saw my eye was caught by her, so when she got up close, I said “Hmmph” as I [...]
Yesterday was a quiet day on 47th Street. A winter snow was having its way with New York City. Snow piled up on the street. The porters had a hard time clearing the sidewalk and I was having difficulty looking busy. There was nothing to do. No one came into the store. No dealers, no gypsies, and no customers. “I [...]
The scruff on the back of my neck was getting long, so I decided it was time to head over to Supercuts on 10th and University and get a trim. There’s nothing special about this specific Supercuts; I’m sure the hundreds or thousands of other Supercuts around the country provide the same mediocre haircut for the same standard price. But [...]
Ran into my neighbor Traubman, a regular Gary Shteyngart except much older, on the sidewalk outside our apartment building near Kings Highway, while headed to the B train to Manhattan and wondering how bad my sciatica would be that day. "Where've you been, I've been thinking about you," Traubman said. He was wearing shorts, scratching his social-security belly. "Why have [...]
I didn’t come to New York City to work for free forever. But as a chronic unpaid intern, this had been my experience for the better part of four years. The ability to do pretty much anything for little or no money is a precious skill for any intern, and I started honing this talent my freshman year at NYU. [...]
It was my second time on the NYU campus (I will pause here, long enough for some self-important student to roll his eyes: “We don’t have a campus,” as if the word is a smarmy, sordid curse); it was my first time there alone, and I wore the trademark face of an awed tourist. Open-mouthed. Wide-eyed. Forgetful of the impoliteness—even [...]
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 outside and often in the [...]
On a blustery December evening on my way to a friend’s dinner party, I stopped in front of a jumbo cardboard box on the steps of the church around the corner. “Jim?” I called out. A moment later a hand emerged and gave a little wave, followed by a head with tousled, graying hair. “Hi,” Jim said, extending his arm [...]
In the Greater Depression the employment opportunities for a man my age were limited in New York. No company wanted to pay my worth, for a younger man will do the job for a third the wage and his knowledge of labor resistance is zero. However my absolute willingness to work has overcome most obstacles as I labored on the [...]
The wailing woke me at 3:00 AM. I tried to ignore it. I had to get up for work in a few hours. A bus and two subways, my commute to Manhattan was substantial. At first, I thought it must be a dog crying in the cold winter’s night. But after a few seconds, I realized it was a woman [...]
Two days after the Occupy Oakland police raid, where an Iraq War vet was shot in the head with a police projectile and hundreds more were sprayed with tear gas while they were sleeping, I get a text from Denise as I’m wrapping up dinner with some friends at Teresa’s Diner in Brooklyn Heights: Show the police and the world [...]
I was running late for a new faculty meeting at NYU. "411 Lafayette," I said, jumping into a cab. The driver looked at me in the mirror with squinting, my-English-is-not-great eyes. "411 LA-FAY-ETTE," I said, raising my voice, hoping to hurry us along. I checked the time: If traffic was very light I might—might—make it within the reasonable fifteen minutes [...]
“You guys like comedy?” The young Armenian-looking couple stares straight ahead; their paces don’t slow as they walk past me. “No? Ok, no problem,” I mutter to myself before taking a quick drag of my American Spirit. I spot a 30-something white guy in a pressed suit; not my normal demographic but he’s walking slowly so I think I might [...]
It was after our third year in New York that my wife and I realized it was time to move. The deciding factor came when I’d picked up a stapler at a stationary store, looked at it in my hand, and thought, ‘Where am I going to put this?’ Our studio apartment was just that full. We’d built upwards. Alfa [...]
My mother turned twenty-one, voting age, in 1932, during the worst of the Depression. Franklin Delano Roosevelt was running for president for the first time, trying to unseat Herbert Hoover. My mother had no job, but she had a cousin who was, of all things, not just a Republican but an active Republican. A Jewish Republican in Brooklyn was almost [...]
There’s no real sorrow in this account. I wasn’t working the red light district, nor had I become a Mole Person. I wasn’t destitute or physically mistreated. I was a recent college graduate, holding an entry-level position as a paralegal at a personal injury firm in East Midtown, Manhattan. In fact, with everyone talking about the recession, I felt very [...]
My friend Flip didn’t read, he told me, because he was all about music. Slick, shiny, high-gloss music. Nothing got him more excited than discussing “production values.” He’d play dance remixes for me and practically conduct them as some new version of an awful song stomped and restomped its way through a cathedral-like reverb chamber for ten endless minutes, pointing [...]
In 1986 I became an international pop music recording sensation. I don’t mean that at the age of 15 I admired and tried to emulate Ad-Rock, a squeaky, strutting third of the fresh hip-hop phenomenon the Beastie Boys—I mean I was Ad-Rock. His band mates—Mike D and MCA—were my homeboys. Sure, there had previously been a Tintin phase and then [...]
He sat sprawled on the furthest side of the Q train, nose plumped with alcohol and ears flushed a chili-pepper red -- laughing so hard his breath left two giant spheres of fog on the window. The rest of us were bunched on the other side, in an attempt to escape the stench of human grime and drink. Outside, the [...]
All names in this story have been changed. It is not every day that one visits an Ashram for yoga and encounters a “retired” Mafia soldier, adrift there because of illness and poverty. From my end, I envisioned a documentary film covering his faded world; however, for his own security - though the events occurred many years ago - he wished [...]
My husband has figured out a way to play poker round the clock, save when he is at work, in the shower, reading a book or in bed sleeping. He plays it on his phone against other poker enthusiasts in round-the-clock online tournaments. It doesn’t bother me – he’s not the type to bet or lose a lot of [...]
“I was robbed in front of my apartment on Thursday night,” my ex told me the other day. “The guy said he had a gun.” “What?” I squawked, genuinely surprised. It was the week of Thanksgiving. We were meant to be discussing favorite trimmings alongside the turkey, not armed robbery. “So you've lost everything. Keys, wallet, phone, etc?” “No, he [...]
I was sitting on a bench on the Lower East Side, waiting for an appointment with my barber, when a homeless lady came shuffling by, dressed in black rags. These were particularly witchy rags, it seemed to me, like she’d bought them at a store as part of a Halloween costume. Like in addition to being homeless she was somehow [...]
A Barney's window display of Lady Gaga's work has legendary multi-media performance artist Colette's notorious creations written all over it. Colette, whose seminal performance art and multi-media installations originated out of New York City's vibrant art scene in the 1970's has traveled to museums and galleries all over the world; including the Guggenheim; MOMA; and The Whitney. Upon seeing Barney's [...]
I first visited Occupy Wall Street on a chilly evening in the middle of October. A few hundred people were gathered near the eastern steps of Zuccotti Park for the nightly meeting of the General Assembly. On the steps a young man was shrieking inaudibly. A few yards away, a jackhammer was being applied to a hole in the middle [...]
Every Spring, tennis players in New York City who want to play on the city courts have to buy a tennis permit. The Parks Department doubled the price this year to $200 for an adult permit. Seniors only pay $20 . If I can pass for 62, I’ll save $180. I'm unemployed. The first time I tired to pass as [...]
My first real job was in a recording studio on 8th Avenue and 44th Street, producing movie commercials for broadcast on the radio. I was the second engineer, which sounds a lot more impressive than it was. I set up microphones, recorded the talent, edited sound effects and music, layered the voice over the background sound. When the mix was [...]
It’s not that you have to wait in line it’s how you spend your time waiting. At first I planned for a Netbook to do my writing on the go. Keyboard, long battery life and reasonable price were the enticing factors. I checked out a Netbook on display inside the Staples store on 6th Avenue and 42nd Street in Manhattan. [...]
I support a poor kid whose name I don’t know in a country I don’t remember the name of, somewhere in South America, I think. This happened because I was stopped on the street on my way to meet a friend for dinner at a nice restaurant, singled out from the after-work stream of people flowing west on 34th to [...]
Having stayed in my apartment the better part of the last week or so, today I decided to hop on my bike and do some writing out of doors. It was a breezy 68 degrees and I wanted to enjoy the pleasant mildness of early fall before it became the cold old dreary, crappy, disgusting middle fall. I entered Prospect [...]
I celebrated my 60th birthday and my 25-year job anniversary the same year my employer accepted billions of TARP money. And then, on a bright July morning, I was laid off. I could pretend that it was because business was changing, as the notice letter said, or that there was a need to make more cuts, as my manager—I’ll call [...]
I’m Number 28 in line for rush tickets at the Metropolitan Opera. Today there was a ripple in the curvature of the space-time continuum: they moved the rush ticket waiting line upstairs. Ongoing construction forced everybody out of the usual spot. This means that instead of waiting in the hyperborean dungeon beneath the main level for $20 tickets, we are [...]
Hey man, do you have a cigarette?” A man asked me out of nowhere. I didn’t see him creeping up to me, usually I am aware of my surroundings but he was soundless in his approach. “Naw, sorry, I bummed this from someone.” Which was true, I did bum the smoke from my friend still in the diner. “Do you [...]
We went into Calypso, on Madison Avenue and 69th Street. The first thing I noticed upon entering the store was a young woman paying for something at the register while she distractedly texted. Then, as she texted, she got an actual phone call. She picked up and announced her coordinates and her purchase, “A gray cashmere sweater!” And then a [...]
In my downtown Brooklyn neighborhood were raised a breed of men who are check thieves. A rare breed of men who are slowly becoming extinct. Their turf is Court Street to Smith, Degraw Street to President. These are the sons of the older generation men, who would never let a woman pay for a check. And, who consider it right [...]
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