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This morning, before I was able to take my coat off, my #1 Work Wife, Brianna, confronted me about my conduct at an after-work affair, last Friday. She scolded me for leaving her sitting unattended and drink-less at the affair. One might ask: how does one find oneself in such a predicament? I’d have to admit, it’s the result of [...]
Born and raised on the eastside of Detroit in the 1960's I had grown accustomed to shopping downtown, taking the boat to BobLo Island, the downtown ethnic festivals, the Detroit Art Institute…and the derision from people outside the city. OK, the riots and the murder rate did not help the image of the city. But tourists still visit Germany, and [...]
[The following was originally published in "Piece From Life's Crazy Quilt," a collection of personal essays about growing up in Detroit in the 1920's, 30s, and 40s by Marvin V. Arnett. The collection first appeared in 2000, as part of the University of Nebraska Press's "American Lives" series (Series Editor: Tobias Wolff), and the University of Nebraska Press has shown [...]
I live and work in midtown Detroit in the area known as the "New Center." This area is in the midst of a new housing boom. Lofts and condominiums are springing up as fast as the land can be acquired. The area is recapturing the grandeur of the 60’s and 70’s, when it was the business hub of Detroit. The [...]
“Kneel. Sit. Stand. Kneel. Sit. Stand. Kneel. Sit. Stand!” Sister Mary Angelina bellows these words to a congregation of frightened eighth graders at St. Cecilia’s Catholic Church in southwest Detroit sometime in the mid-1980’s. Almost twenty years later, those angry commands from the most powerful nun known to the class of 1985 have not been forgotten. They are engraved into [...]
August 29, 2005: Update from BR -- 03:30 Several people attempted to reach me during the afternoon -- I apologise for being "in medias res" of the realm of chaos. I am unsure at this time what will be left of New Orleans when all is said and done, though, I do hold out some hope as I view the [...]
September 2, 2005: Rumors From the local paper: "Rumors of evacuees rioting and looting at Wal-Mart are false," it said. "Please do not assume that information heard is true unless it is from a law-enforcement officer or a release from the office of the Mayor-President." This statement is not exactly fact -- certainly the incident at Wal-Mart was not a [...]
She did not call him. She leaned back, listened to the music and examined the ceiling. slicing eyes. beauty and envy in one frame. "I'm here," she tossed. "Seriously?" "Yeah. In the Red Room." Her pink, dainty pumps wept silver jewels in the fronts. Her hair was maybe too big but it worked. The drive had been defined by the [...]
I pull on my brand new Calvin Klein white cashmere coat, wrap a cozy hand-knitted scarf around my neck, and then pull the matching mittens over my hands. I glance outside into the snowy night and curse because my hair will frizz in the snow. I scurry out the door of my apartment building and gasp when the frigid blast [...]
“Athens has got ruins, Rome has got ruins. Ours are bigger, but there’s no guidebook to them.” —Lowell Boileau Part collage, part museum, part mausoleum, and all constructed around a series of intricately conceived online “tours,” detroityes.com depicts Detroit’s past and present in a library containing thousands of vivid photographic images. For many, the centerpiece of the website is “The [...]
"Hey, can you spare some coin?" The guy sounded pleasant enough as he approached our car. Todd was tucking his spare keys into the ashtray and I was applying Mac lipstick (ooh baby) to the sounds of John Briggs (a local jazzy techno artist). We climbed out of Todd's shiny 1998 Pathfinder, we were summer-drunk and ready to hit the [...]
Cops. The left lane is for passing only, did you know that? I must have forgotten since driver’s ed class, like I’ve forgotten to take speed limits seriously. Even when you literally can’t afford not to, even in daylight. Which I can’t and which it is. But I’m going ninety in the left lane and ten minutes into my morning [...]
In a small Detroit suburb referred to as Ferndale is a bar known as "Como's." It sits just off Main Street, which is quiet, solemn. Streetlamps give off an orange glow over a trash-littered sidewalk. Empty storefront windows line the street. Faded signs stand out from the few businesses that struggle to remain open. Buildings are old, uncared for, withering. [...]
The first time I ever went to a rave it was in the old Packard Plant. I didn’t know the name of the Plant at the time, nor did I know where it stood in relation to the city at large. I was told that the event was “at Packard,” not realizing that this was shorthand for a historic auto [...]
For reasons that involve politics, religion and the pursuit of life's persistent questions, I found myself gardening in front of my Church one Sunday afternoon in June 2005. First Church is located in Detroit, on the side of Forest Avenue where students rarely park, lest their cars turn up missing when they return from class. The Church has been a [...]
** Hasn't Detroit suffered enough? Without being included in Mr. Beller's Neighborhood? To that, we provide the simple answer that the purpose of the new Detroit-themed section of the website is not to draw attention to the ways in which the city has suffered in recent decades, which are well known. Anyone who has seen such films as Paul Verhoeven's [...]
To the woman on Craigslist who wanted to know the difference between 'booty call' and 'F*ck Buddy.' by Vince Passaro The Local F*ck by A. Leigh French Kissing The Cab Driver by Maura Kelly Things We Say To Cops (Things Cops Say to Us) by Rick Rofihe
We found the doll right there on 16th Street in Brooklyn, outside the Baptist church (now, don’t get too excited, they’re boring white Baptists--no big hats or electric guitars anywhere in sight). The doll was wrapped in a black plastic garbage bag. Only its feet were showing, chubby little feet in high-button boots. The church folk had been cleaning out [...]
A friend of mine had a screaming fight with his father a couple of weeks before the election. The subject of the fight was politics. The father supported Bush. The son supported Kerry. The fight was heated, and eventually the son slammed down the receiver. He hung up on his father. Days passed. The phone rang at the son’s house. [...]
"Thank you for helping save democracy." That is what the woman at the Cincinnati headquarters of the Kerry campaign said at the end of our call, after I had made plans to come to that city and help. I didn't even know exactly what sort of help I could give, and when she said that line, "Thank you for helping [...]
"Is the publicist here?" said a woman. "These two kids just brought their pumpkin carved with John Kerry's face." Everyone at the table lifted their gaze to a young man in a blue T-shirt who stood there beside the woman. He looked a little bashful, and also eager, as though he had come to collect a prize. Everyone at the [...]
"Hi I'm calling..." "About the boycott," said the man's voice. He spoke with a honeyed southern accent and sounded both weary and sympathetic, like a man whose next-door neighbor's new puppy craps on his front door on a daily basis. "Well, yes," I said. "That is the reason for the call. Let me start by saying, 'I'm on your side!" [...]
Where is Peter Sellers when you need him? The man who played three characters in Dr. Strangelove would have a field day with the Smith brothers, whose family owns the Sinclair Broadcast Group. Their office complex is in a modern facility in suburban Maryland, but each brother sits in his own identical dark wood paneled office surrounded by paintings and [...]
All the Kerry-Edwards signs on Madburry Road in Dover, New Hampshire, got torn up on Friday night. The vandal left the signs for Democrats running in local races, but the national ticket was not so lucky. The next day people were resurrecting them. New Hampshire is a horse race right now, as it is elsewhere. The Kerry campaign headquarters in [...]
Throughout my life I have paid good money to see innumerable films that have dehumanized Muslims in the most overt and ingenious ways possible. I have also seen a great many television programs, books, newspaper articles and high-minded literary journals do the same. I have witnessed my father—-who is Muslim and who, in my imagination, is the actor playing the [...]
The Westchester Wildfire, a newly formed franchise of the United States Basketball League, held open try-outs the other day at their practice facility at Suny Purchase, and nearly eighty people showed up, in spite of the $150 dollar fee. A fair number were playground all-stars for whom the try out was a kind one day basketball fantasy camp, an opportunity [...]
Thursday, April 24, 2003, 7:30 p.m. JOHN EPPERSON: SHOW TRASH is moving up in the world! For one night only, the performance David Finkle of "Backstage" says is "a funny, often touching autobiographical revue," will play at the posh boite Joe's Pub in The Public Theater, 425 Lafayette Street in New York City. JOHN EPPERSON: SHOW TRASH musically and anecdotally [...]
As far back as seventh grade, when I got grounded for talking back to my dad and couldn't go to my best friend Kirsten's party--where her mom was going to give us a little champagne up front and her older brother was going to hide a bottle of vodka for us in the basement bathroom--New Year's Eve has sucked. (more…)
Neighborhood maps of Brooklyn have recently been added to this web site. If you visit them you will immediately notice a problem. The problem, I suppose, has to do with the ambition on the site, which is to have maps covered with red dots each linking to a story that relates in some way to that particular place on the [...]
Blind Accordion Player Guy Who Bumps into Poles on Purpose, Angry Mute Midget, Classical Opera Whistler Dude, Man Who Imitates The Sound of Closing Doors, and Dirty Shoeless Guy Dressed in Rags That Crawls on the Floor. Each of these beggars (should I say Entrepreneurs?) preys on different emotions. For Blind Accordion, it’s sympathy--he’s driven to play accordion to “try [...]
There are some songs that if heard in the right situation might push you to the brink of something horrid. Some of these situations are real, some are fiction. D.C. Berman: "Rain" by Blind Melon, through the ceiling of a Married Student Housing apartment while you're bidding for '70s cereal boxes on eBay against a guy named Ratbrain. Mike Fellows: [...]
Dear Readers, Like many roads and buildings during the summer months, Mr. Beller's Neighborhood has been undergoing renovations. The site is surrounded by scaffolding and there are banging and drilling sounds emanating from within. Like all renovations and road reconstruction, especially summer ones, and especially ones taking place in New York, there have been delays. People who were promised a [...]
It’s a friday night in July. Two women are sitting across from each other on a train bound for the Hamptons. About 30 minutes out of Penn Station, the women who has been doing most of the talking says to her less attractive friend; “I was talking about Sharon’s boyfriend and he said, ‘can I tell her you said that?’” [...]
From mid March to early June (and again from mid October to mid December), the New York City Parks Department plants approximately 7,500 trees on the sidewalks in front of people's homes, in front of businesses, and on street medians. This is no small thing. A little bit of nature is being transplanted on your block, a la your tax [...]
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February 4, 2002 ARTS ONLINE Today's Publishing: Better by the Book or by the Web? By MATTHEW MIRAPAUL New York City has twice as many stories now. Everyone has a tale to tell, but since Sept. 11 everyone here can also describe the personal impact of that day's epochal events. Thomas Beller, a New York novelist and editor, presents nearly [...]
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