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When U.S. soldiers came back from Vietnam they claimed to have been greeted at airports by hippies who spat at them and called them baby-killers. Recently historians have done research on this, the results of which have been: no evidence to support the spitting allegations, nothing, not one incident, zip. They forgot to talk to me. Not that I hunked [...]
Imagine a 20th-century history of the United States that omitted the 1900s, 1930s, 1950s, and 1960s. Something of the kind has attended the chronicling of Times Square's latest identity as Disneytown, Goofyville, or Mickeymart. Most accounts of West 42nd Street's conversion have been content to say that for decades the district was a magnet for penny- ante drug dealers, dollar-ante [...]
Mario is a white African of Portuguese descent. In New York some people tell him, "I didn’t know white people could be from Africa." When they say this, he shakes his head. "Americans are so ignorant!" he says. "They don’t know about anything outside their own country." Mario has come to New York from Mozambique, where I live now. We [...]
Part One Distinguishing true from harassing reports - some days, one in four - looms large for Emergency Children's Services (ECS), the city office that responds to child abuse and neglect throughout the five boroughs during the night, and on weekends and holidays. Fake reports are less of a problem for the weekday nine-to-fivers. But nights or weekends, people have [...]
Paul Williams considers it is a blessing that he was once a squeegee man. Not because he enjoyed the work -- he didn't -- but because it was only through being a squeegee man that he became a cardboard man, and on that he has built a life. Ten years ago, Paul was that familiar, slightly menacing fixture of the [...]
"Have you thought about what your Parks nickname should be?" Parks Commissioner Henry Stern asks me. He sits hunched over on a couch at his office inside a turret at the Arsenal, a red brick castle overlooking Central Park that for years was a military base and now serves as headquarters for the New York City Parks Dept. Dressed in [...]
She listens to me. She comforts me. She keeps all my secrets. She knows me inside out. She is not my mother. She is…my therapist. The note sat on top of the July issue of Vanity Fair in her waiting room: “I will be on vacation from July 27-September 5th.” “Where are you going?” I demanded as soon as our [...]
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