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Hanging out in Tribeca in the 1970s
by Jack Szwergold 07/15/2023Neighborhood: Brighton Beach, Tribeca
If you want to call me a cool kid, please do. You see, back in 1975 when I was seven years old , I visited Tribeca for the first time…with my mom and dad. We didn’t go to the Mudd Club or Artists Space or anything like that; instead we went to a factory just south […]
Prospect Park, Q Train
by Penina Warren 03/05/2023Neighborhood: Prospect Park, Subway
At the Prospect Park station, I sit across from a Hasidic couple on a three-seater bench on the Q train. Parallel to them, in a wheel-locked stroller, is a toddler with unshorn blonde hair, dark eyes that reflect no light, and a suckling baby mouth. He has been dressed in a Canadian tuxedo of many […]
Needle Park/Verdi Square
by Eugene Barron 09/18/2022Neighborhood: Upper West Side
How many years since “needle park”? In the late 60’s, in the evening on the way to the 72nd St and Broadway subway station, I would make my pass through the park and see junkies nodding out and discarded needles on the pavement. The underbelly of con artists, thieves, prostitutes, and addicts, all lurking in the […]
Dr. Zizmor’s Big Idea
by Julian Tepper 07/31/2022Neighborhood: Subway
“So, when you’re not here at Barney Greengrass serving smoked fish, you’re a writer, eh? That’s interesting. Interesting. We should talk. I have a big idea. We’ve got to talk, yeah.” These weren’t the first words Dr. Jonathan Zizmor had ever spoken to me, but they marked a transition in our relationship from my simply […]
Subway Stories
by Paul Sheridan 05/22/2022Neighborhood: Downtown Brooklyn, Lower East Side, Prospect Heights
Cars and Crimes and Trains My wife (we weren’t yet married at the time) had a fairly new ’81 Toyota Starlet stolen in Brooklyn. We took a city bus to the police precinct to report it stolen (no over the phone reports back in those days). Halfway there, we insisted that the driver stop the […]
Moving to Queens
by Nancy Stiefel 03/06/2022Neighborhood: Morningside Heights, Sunnyside
I lived in Manhattan for most of my considerably long life, until moving to Queens four years ago. In my early adulthood, Manhattan was still affordable, so affordable that the people who worked the jobs that sustain city life—cops, teachers, garbage men, hospital and transit workers—could afford to live in certain areas of it. So […]
The Underground Poet Revisited
by Mickey Z. 02/06/2022Neighborhood: Subway
Before the interwebs, it required more ingenuity to get noticed. That’s why I conjured up my “underground poet” scheme in the early 90s. I was already a published poet by then, and at a huge art show at the Javits Center two of my framed one-liners were purchased by a French art dealer. When he […]
Selected Observations on Urban Fauna
by Peter Wortsman 01/23/2022Neighborhood: All Over
Illustrations by Aurélie Bernard Wortsman __________________________ A contemporary take on the medieval bestiary, featuring the actual and apocryphal creatures that share our constricted urban space. The following is the first installment in a series of observations on urban fauna, text and image gleaned from the lifelong perambulations on asphalt and cement by two native New […]
Next Stop the Twilight Zone
by Kelly Kreth 02/28/2021Neighborhood: Subway, Upper East Side
One afternoon this summer I was on the subway. All was normal. Well, except that we are in a pandemic, which makes venturing down into NYC’s netherworld — one with poor ventilation and tons of non-mask wearers – feel like I am putting my life in my overly sanitized hands. It all seemed surreal. The […]
Still Standing
by Neil Stein 01/05/2020Neighborhood: Park Slope, Subway
It was not so long ago that I would ordinarily drive into Manhattan from my home in Park Slope. However, I had a rule that I wouldn’t take my car to anywhere above 23rd Street. About five years ago, because of an increase in traffic, I moved my boundary to 14th Street. But recently, things […]
Random Encounters Underground
by Train Operator X 11/10/2019Neighborhood: Subway
Flushing Ave. on the M The train stops and the doors open, except one door panel is cut out (locked closed, to prevent it from opening). A tall, skinny, black dude on the platform tries to board the train and, wham! He walks right into the closed panel. He steps back and catches his breath. “Whoa…,” just […]
Bullet Train: Testimony and Confession
by Leland Pitts-Gonzalez 07/08/2018Neighborhood: Port Authority, Subway
On the evening of April 17, I was waiting for the train like always, far enough away from the edge—standing sideways to brace myself from that wildebeest who might push me onto the tracks. I waited and looked for the train to arrive, as if staring would make it come faster. It never works. We […]