You are currently browsing the stories about the “The Catskills” neighborhood.
In the summer of 1979, three friends and I rented a small house in Lanesville, New York. We spent weekends and our summer vacations there. Occasionally, we drove in to Woodstock, but we spent most of our time walking along the Ashokan Reservoir and swimming at North Lake. The best day of the summer happened by chance. We had spent [...]
Schenk's Paramount Hotel My home base in the 50s was Wyatt Street, essentially, a one-block middle class Jewish enclave in the East Bronx. Theirs was a few miles away, on Fox Street in the South Bronx, then a tough area of mostly poor Jews, Italians, Blacks and Puerto Ricans. Our paths were unlikely to have ever crossed, except for our [...]
I broke up with my first boyfriend one month, two weeks, and four days after I found out he was fucking his neighbor. I never told him that I’d overheard them. He never wanted to fight; he didn’t want us to be the couple who fought. It was important to him that we maintain a good reputation. He’d take me [...]
“You from Long Island?” Danny, from Brownsville, Brooklyn, grilled. Before I could qualify myself, he turned to face the rest of the kids on our bus, and announced, “The skinny kid is loaded.” We had just left Chinatown and were cruising north, along the Hudson River, to sleep-away camp in upstate New York. My fellow 10-year-olds caught up with each [...]
It’s dawn and I’m fighting with a bobcat. For a raccoon, I’m doing pretty well. The sun is burning through the misty clouds, slowly warming up the forest - the forest, my home, that I love so well. Small birds sing loudly from the branches of trees, their lungs filled with sweet yearning. Crows, who kind of piss me off, [...]
