You are currently browsing stories tagged with “Money.”
Here I am in Bergdorf Goodman, and not for the first time, holding up the left half of a pair of $900 boots with the kind of delicacy usually reserved for fine antiques and newborn babies. It’s an exercise in frustration, a form of self-inflicted torture: I barely have $900 in the bank, let alone the kind of expendable income [...]
Nicola is a lively twenty-year-old girl of Thai and Italian descent, born and raised on the Upper East Side. She has been my roommate on East 4th Street for four months, since I answered her apartment ad on Craigslist, and she works as a cocktail waitress at Thor—a fashionable nightclub in the Lower East Side—until 4:00 a.m. most nights. The [...]
Mohammad B. Miah is a small man. He stands about five feet tall with his red and white and black leather hi-top sneakers on. He lives in Astoria, Queens, and he wants to know whether I work for the city. He motions in the direction of City Hall. “You have a job?” he asks. “I’m a writer,” I say, waving [...]
(The original title "Time is Money" was shortened in the interest of saving both time and money.) "Time is money," my ex-wife used to say. Of course she said it mostly when she wanted me to go out and get a second job, and she said it usually from a reclining position on the couch or in the hammock while [...]
I have just taken over the passenger car from Roberto. There are three tenants in the elevator and they are discussing their vacation plans. 3A and her family will be hitting the slopes in Jackson Hole, Wyoming; 5C is going to work on his tan and try his luck at the blackjack tables in Aruba; and 12B and his girlfriend [...]
I was walking my boyfriend, Frank, to the Target near our house. We were out of paper towels and Diet Coke, and it was his turn to do the shopping. A few blocks away, he closed his eyes, and began breathing deeply, in and out. I grabbed his arm and steered him gently away from a stoop. “What are you [...]
I am sitting at my desk in my coop one day on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, paying my monthly expenses: coop mortgage; coop maintenance; coop insurance; four other kinds of insurance--health, for four people (I’ve got a stay-at-home wife and two kids); life, in case I die on them; disability, in case I collapse; and car, in case [...]
It's common practice for a bar/restaurant to save their first dollar and hang it on the wall. Sometimes it's framed. Other times it's taped. But it's up there for luck. Or at least celebration. A sort of diploma from the school of capitalism. Some businesses even save their first dollar bill, five dollar bill, ten dollar bill, and twenty dollar [...]
My name is David Zuva. I'm from Russia, from Odessa. I've been here twenty years. I'm a shoemaker. I repair shoes. This my profession. I worked in Russia in the same profession. I learned when I was small boy. My father teach me. All the family shoemakers--my whole family--my wife, me, my father, my brothers, my grandfather--all shoemakers. Zuva means [...]
A company called Viacom has recently purchased another company called Paramount for about ten billion dollars. This followed several months of intensive maneuvering between Viacom and another company called QVC. The competition held the businessmen and a large segment of the media in thrall. It was also good news for poets and the like. It's not often that what is [...]
The strange twinge that often comes when I leave work and head west on 56th Street is, oddly, much like the same thing that hit the center of my gut when, at 13, I rode a bike to a movie theater in South Jersey and, with my school buddies, went to see my first R-rated movie. It's as if, confronting [...]
It's 10:20 p.m. on a Tuesday, and the air is filled with the unmistakable sound of coins hitting metal. The multi-colored machine generating all the noise stands almost six feet tall and looks like a cross between an oversized Lego kit and something that toddlers would be crawling over at Playspace. The high tech liquid crystal display on the front [...]
What if books are the new crack? In the 80's, Bed-Stuy had crack. Now, we've got literature. The New York Times publishes plenty of articles on the fluctuations in Bed-Stuy's crime rate, and on the neighborhood's gentrification, but they are not reporting on this: literature. Perhaps it's not fit to print. I make my modest, recent-college-grad home in good old [...]
On a summer evening in 2001, after work and after grilled cheese in the Greek diner on Amsterdam, Jeremy and I are walking through Verdi square, past the 72nd Street station on the 1 and 9, the most treacherously narrow subway platform in all of Manhattan, forever poised on the precipice of disaster. The streets are packed with nervous life [...]
A psychic stopped me on the street today after having accidentally looked into my soul. “I see something in you,” she told me. “Something in your past!” “Be careful looking back,” I told her, concerned. “. . . Should you turn into a pillar of salt.” “I want to talk to you.” I felt compelled to stop. “There is something [...]
Today I had perhaps the most unique experience that I have ever had in my lifetime. I began walking the streets of New Orleans and speaking to people on a one on one basis. This may seem odd to you, and perhaps it is, but I canvassed New Orleans today not as a citizen but as a candidate for Mayor. [...]
I live and work in midtown Detroit in the area known as the "New Center." This area is in the midst of a new housing boom. Lofts and condominiums are springing up as fast as the land can be acquired. The area is recapturing the grandeur of the 60’s and 70’s, when it was the business hub of Detroit. The [...]
I'm sitting in an upholstered armchair Jerry reserves for his clients, worrying the gray rubber brain from his collection of stress toys - the same ones I fiddle with while waiting to hear the size of my refund. But it's November - too early for my annual pre-April 15th appointment. In a few minutes, when Edward arrives, we'll discuss record [...]
I felt a little nostalgic as my W2 slips started arriving in the mail. For the first time in two decades I did not receive the form letter from Sheldon, my long term accountant. His annual reminder always opened with the awkward phrasing: "Winter is here and with it the knowledge that April 15 will soon be here." That stilted [...]
They predicted rain, but the sun shone through hazy skies last Wednesday at the School of the Arts protest at Columbia University. I had never been to a protest before. I was angry—I am angry—at President Lee Bollinger for his utter lack of support of the School of the Arts despite his pledge at his inauguration to make us a [...]
Part III. Rough diamonds are mined from volcanic vents in Africa. They're separated into parcels for the London sight-holders who have the stones cut in Antwerp, Israel, or India. The finished products are divvied out to various diamond brokers and then brought over to New York. Over 80% of the diamonds sold in the USA pass through 47th Street, making [...]
If you live toward the southern tip of Manhattan, and you can't sleep, look to the northeast and try to locate the big Tudor building on East 42d Street. You might see a light on about half way up, and there's a decent chance that it's shining in my wonderful, cozy apartment. I'm not an insomniac, but, occasionally, I do [...]
In the autumn of 1991 I came to New York to take a fiction writing class. I was 23, fresh out of graduate school, with no savings and little work experience save for two summers clerking in a bookstore in the Maryland suburbs. I wanted to be close to the rarefied air of New York publishing. Inspired by movies like [...]
"Hello! If you would like a free internet website, plus a chance to make a lot of money, press one now."--Automated telephone sales pitch delivered on Easter Sunday My God, those heady months of January through April 13th, 2000, when every internet IPO went through the roof and Black Friday was a reference to a bad day in the market [...]
The next kid who tries to sell me M&Ms on the street is going to get his ass kicked. I’m agitated, not because these youngsters can be a little rough around the edges, and not because they sometimes stalk a hard-sell for a quarter block, whining, "Come on! Please! Please!" I’m even okay with the kid who put his arm [...]
There is usually classical music playing on the radio. Arty stands patiently behind his counter at the back of the store, his hands resting on the top of the counter like a dealer at a blackjack table that is momentarily devoid of players. Old cameras in glass cases. Old super Eight movie cameras. And new cameras, too. A photographer's paradise. [...]
When I was a kid we visited New York once or twice a year. I usually went with one of my folks and one or two of my brothers but we almost never went as a complete family. Back then we lived in rural New England, so it was always a big thrill to board the series of buses and [...]
One of the other editors is looking at the Dow Jones or the stock market or something and whistling. “Wow!” He shakes his head. “You wouldn’t even believe how bad it is!” He sounds kind of merry. The staff reporter is reading aloud from a posting on a job search web page from a woman, a college graduate and a [...]
Being a bohemian Communist without a mutual fund, a 401(k), or any valueless dot com stocks to add to the oil drum fires the homeless gather around, I don't often find myself in the Financial District. But when I do, I get the biggest kick out of seeing white brokers, lawyers and computer guys lining up for the three-card monte [...]
Part V. After I made a sandwich at my desk, Richie Boy grabbed a slice of salami. Our sharing more than food throughout our twenty-year friendship didn’t deter my protests against his poaching. "I see you have no shame in being a schnorrer!” "Only cause I learn from the best.” Richie Boy popped the peppery slice in his mouth and [...]
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