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Detours Through Dreams and Nightmares

by 09/08/2019
Neighborhood: Lower East Side

Twenty New York blocks gets you a mile. Back in “our time,” a motley crew of urban youth crossed the Manhattan landscape with that formula in our heads. We understood distance. We got time. We lived the algebraic formula of Time x Speed = Distance. If we started peddling our bikes at the top of the […]

Rejoice for the Winter that Was

by 03/28/2014
Neighborhood: All Over, Brighton Beach, Central Park, Union Square

Long lines at Whole Foods in Union Square again. It feels like the Russian bread lines, but no, it’s another snowstorm shopping spree. I’m not the only one anxious about running out of food—even though the streets are always plowed before my stomach growls uncomfortably. Everyone is complaining. Too cold, windy, snowy, sleety, Too much […]

You Go

by 08/30/2012
Neighborhood: Upper West Side

I have two photos of my daughter Lili on my desk, one taken in front of the the Brownstone School on West 80th Street in New York City in September 1996, the other taken at Ithaca College just a few days ago. I also have one of those acrylic, etched pieces she gave me for […]

My Father’s Father’s Coney Island Costume Jewelry Shop

by 07/19/2011
Neighborhood: Coney Island

“It was 1958,” my father says, “the year my dad opened Marcelle’s Jewelry Store on Mermaid Avenue in Coney Island. You should have seen this place. I wish there were pictures now, but who would have taken pictures of some shoddy storefront on Mermaid Avenue? Displayed in one window were all the pieces of costume […]