You are currently browsing the stories about the Uncategorized neighborhood
Literary Hair in New York and Pittsburgh
by lori jakiela 05/04/2017Neighborhood: Uncategorized
Literary Today a writer sends me a note that says she has a benefactress and the benefactress wants the writer to get a literary haircut. The writer has written to me for advice. She wants me to recommend a salon that specializes in literary haircuts. These are the words the writer uses. Benefactress. Literary. Haircut. The benefactress will […]
Escort Surgery
by Matthew Caprioli 06/17/2016Neighborhood: Columbus Circle, Uncategorized
I hated the cold walking west on 58th street, 1am on January 20th. The freezing currents had a way of trapezing down from steel cut condos, making the walls of my nostrils suddenly raw. My arms crossed themselves as I braced my way toward 10th Avenue. I had been in New York for several months, […]
You’re Out of the Night
by Beth Hahn 06/17/2016Neighborhood: Flushing, Lower East Side, Queens, Uncategorized
On Match.com, Ken’s moniker was “Dull.” He wrote that among his favorite things were office carpeting, spam, and waiting rooms. “I bet he lives in one of those storage units off the highway,” my friend Meg said as she read over my shoulder. My own profile was styled after Nancy Drew. Hair color? Titian. Hobbies? […]
My Damn Love Affair
by Gloria Zimmerman 01/18/2016Neighborhood: All Over, Uncategorized, Upper West Side
The New York of the 80’s was not a town that met you halfway. It stopped well short of that, just looking right through you. It really didn’t give a damn what happened to you, daring you to ride the subway late at night and then picking your pocket and laughing about it afterwards. It […]
Is My Arched Spine Still Pretty?
by Kit Zauhar 01/15/2016Neighborhood: East Village, Manhattan, Uncategorized, Union Square
1. I went into college with virtually no experience, so virginal I believed myself to smell of baby powder. Touching a boy daringly was grazing his shoulder. That was till I met him, a studio art student from England (a would-be dream for high school me). He pursued me in the somehow typical NYU way […]
Bed Bugs and Rolling Stones
by Duncan Birmingham 01/11/2016Neighborhood: Uncategorized, Upper West Side
Does anyone move to Manhattan with plans of anything but taking over the city? Imaging the opening credits of my life, I could practically feel the crane shot tracking me as my mother drove me over the Brooklyn Bridge. The camera pushing in closer and closer, past hundreds of passing cars, to find me, the […]
Panic at Beth Israel
by Ruth Merwin 11/08/2015Neighborhood: Uncategorized
I was on an evening Metro North train home from the Adirondacks. Catherine and I were taking turns sucking Merlot out of a plastic nozzle attached to a plastic sack. We were each lying down long ways across a row of seats, facing each other, passing the bag back and forth, lifting our heads only […]
Good Eye
by Neil Stein 02/20/2015Neighborhood: Uncategorized
It’s the middle of the season and my son won’t swing at the ball. Jesse is seven and this is his third year playing league baseball. For the entire season he hasn’t swung the bat. Since the pitchers on the other teams have little or no control, he is almost always assured of getting a […]
Smartphone
by Quilty 02/18/2015Neighborhood: Uncategorized
Martin Able had most people fooled. The 94-year-old retired history professor prided himself on owning the very latest smartphone. For the past five years he upgraded annually. His latest could shoot video in slow motion and download music with the touch of his thumbprint. The phone even included an app that could call the rescue […]
Al Pimsler: A Man’s Men’s Illustrator
by Sharon Watts 01/20/2015Neighborhood: Uncategorized
A dapper anomaly in those still shaggy post-Woodstock years, he walked with purpose and panache to the Saks Fifth Avenue offices where he took up residence at the drawing table. Handsome. Diminutive yet self-assured, debonaire, even–an outdated word, but it suited. With a full head of white hair waving back from a fulcrum of dark […]
The Last Winter Dance Party of America
by Pat Fenton 12/15/2014Neighborhood: Uncategorized
It’s 1957, and the three of us, Jacky,Vinnie from 19th Street, and me, are doing this Brooklyn strut sort of a walk down Eastern Parkway. Vinnie is a thief. He will steal anything he can get his hands on, doesn’t matter who owns it. That’s just the way he is. But there’s something cool and […]
Exhaustion, Faith, or Madness
by Nancy Agabian 12/12/2014Neighborhood: Jackson Heights, Queens, Uncategorized
A group of Asian teenage boys with shaved heads slows down in front of me. It is around 7 pm, not yet dusk, not really day, and we’re passing by a series of low brick row houses with bar-covered windows on 73rd Street in Jackson Heights. The boys look kind of tough, but they are polite as […]