The design of decline I was grocery shopping on a Friday night—I’m at an age when not only is that normal but admitting to it doesn’t bother me—and I noticed something new. There were gates on a few of the aisles. Posted signs mentioned that the aisles would be closed after 7 p.m. and that… Read more »
There are some places wherever you live that you take to represent an important part of your life. Maybe a restaurant where you always go or a movie theater where you saw your favorite movie for the first time. Whatever the reason, these are places that you sentimentalize, maybe sometimes to a fault, because you… Read more »
A high school friend of mine worked as a successful lawyer for roughly the past two decades. He won a great ROTC scholarship in high school and once in the Army, managed to get into a program that paid his way through law school. After serving in the U.S. Army’s Judge Advocate General Corps he… Read more »
Fifteen years ago, it was a cold night in an apartment in Prospect Heights, Brooklyn where maybe two dozen people gathered for a Burns Night party. Burns Night is January 25 and celebrates the birthday of Robert Burns, the Scottish poet who lived in the late 1700s. Several of us had brought our volumes of… Read more »
Do you know New York City has an extraordinary and diverse storytelling community? It’s all over the five boroughs, every night. And many of the events are free. All you need to do is check out newspapers and magazines and online sites like Time Out New York and NYC Storytelling. I’ve been part of this… Read more »
New York City, February 1941: On a Saturday morning, my father woke up and found his father drinking coffee alone in the kitchen with only the winter light coming in through the backyard window. My grandmother and uncle had left for work. Dad, 11, talked baseball with his Dad for an hour while eating three… Read more »
New York City of the 1970s is what you discover in Lynn Steward’s debut novel, A Very Good Life. If you miss the Manhattan of that era (or missed it altogether) you’ll especially enjoy the ambiance re-created within the pages of this book. Stepping into A Very Good Life is much like walking into the legendary… Read more »
WRITE ON NEW YORK Just before you fall in love. Just before you drink your wine. Just before you pack your bags. Just before you see your kid for the first time. Just before you write. Just before the buds open, the flowers break through the ground, the world bursts into green in the first… Read more »
The other day, someone asked me what I thought a “New Yorker” was. My first response was a New Yorker is not about what was, New Yorkers are about what is often before anyone realizes it. Besides this though, the question seemed impossible to answer. That person could have asked me to count all the… Read more »
I shouldn’t drive down this block. I’m taking a chance. True, it’s just another street in Brighton Beach, where five-story apartment buildings march right up to the ocean. They resemble 1776 Walton Avenue in the Bronx, where I grew up—plain and mundane. But these sit on the Atlantic, right on the cusp of land and… Read more »
