It was Friday. I took a day off from work, so we could take our baby to the passport office to get his passport. Our adult passports, one expired and one close to expiry, can be renewed online, while the…
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Tagged with: baby passport, measles, passport office, post office, varick street
Posted in baby, city life, Greenwich Village, New York City, NYC, Uncategorized
Posted in baby, city life, Greenwich Village, New York City, NYC, Uncategorized
“WC, Bitte?” or Get on the Pot
It was December 1989. The Soviet Jewish Immigrant charter bus took us on a grueling journey that seemed like it lasted a week thought it probably took no more than a day or two. The route? Odessa>Uzhgorod (Western Ukraine)>Bratislava (capital…
Tagged with: austria, bratislava, czechoslovakia, odessa, pot, soviet union, train, train station, ukraine, ussr, uzhgorod, vienna, wien
Posted in immigration, Memories, Uncategorized
Posted in immigration, Memories, Uncategorized
Laundry Room
5:59 AM. The elevator doors open into a blissfully desolate basement. The cleaning crew has not yet punched in and even the earliest-rising of your laundry nemeses, the old lady with the hip replacement and yappy Havanese, won’t venture in…
User Interaction
At one of the departure gates at Laguardia Airport, a middle-aged man in a gray business suit and tie towers over a small boy of 10 or so wearing a striped shirt and jeans. The man’s right hand is on…
Tagged with: HCI, Human Computer Interaction, iPad, Laguardia, Laguardia Airport, LGA, tablet, TSA, UX
Posted in airport, New York City, NYC, technology, Uncategorized
Posted in airport, New York City, NYC, technology, Uncategorized
Crowds and the Case of the Rolling Suitcase
“The first problem of living is to minimize friction with the crowds that surround you on all sides.” ― Isaac Asimov Blundering through the bowels of Penn Station, I dodge the onslaught of long-distance travelers, commuters, and daytrippers. They stumble but push…
Tagged with: Brooklyn, crowds, Manhattan, MTA, NYC, Penn Station, rolling suitcase, Russian, subway, Utne Reader
Posted in Memories, NYC, subway, Uncategorized
Posted in Memories, NYC, subway, Uncategorized
Remembering Sandy: Part V
By 9 p.m., I was at my nephews’ house. My sister-in-law, Yelena, and my nephews, had just returned from Staten Island, where they spent the day helping salvage what was left of her brother’s newly finished basement and car. It…
Tagged with: 61st Precinct, homecrest, hurricane Sandy, police, Sandy, Sheepshead Bay, Spongebob, storm Sandy
Posted in brighton beach, coney island, Memories, NYC, Sheepshead Bay, Uncategorized
Posted in brighton beach, coney island, Memories, NYC, Sheepshead Bay, Uncategorized
Remembering Sandy: Part IV
It felt good for Little Brother to be charged with what felt like Big Brother responsibility–rescuing the parents, and Grandpa. OK, fine, so they weren’t in any mortal danger as far as we could tell–but the job had some heft…
Tagged with: bensonhurst, brighton beach, coney island, gravesend, home attendant, homecrest, hurricane Sandy, new york community hospital, Sandy, Sheepshead Bay, tropical storm sandy, turkish
Posted in brighton beach, coney island, Memories, NYC, Sheepshead Bay, Uncategorized
Posted in brighton beach, coney island, Memories, NYC, Sheepshead Bay, Uncategorized
Remembering Sandy, Part III
Once I had some juice in my phone I called the parents immediately. They lived in evacuation Zone A which, oddly enough, was not particularly well evacuated. This of course I already knew from a jokey conversation with them the day…
Tagged with: brighton beach, f train, home attendant, hurricane Sandy, kazakh, midwood, neptune avenue, New University Pen and Stationery, oceanview avenue, penn plaza, price gouging, risotto, Sandy, SoHo, storm Sandy, tropical storm sandy, wicked willy's, woolworth building
Posted in Greenwich Village, Memories, NYC, Uncategorized
Posted in Greenwich Village, Memories, NYC, Uncategorized
Remembering Sandy, Part II
The morning after the storm was deceptively normal, the very vision of the quiet apocalypse: probably what Rick and Co. on The Walking Dead feel every morning waking up in a comfortable bed, before booting up and recalling that the world…
Tagged with: coffee, hurricane Sandy, I.M. Pei, laguardia place, mitchell-lama, pablo picasso, pei, picasso, Sandy, silver towers, university village
Posted in Greenwich Village, Uncategorized
Posted in Greenwich Village, Uncategorized
Remembering Sandy, Part I
Maybe it’s just the compulsion of the storyteller, but Sandy brought out the documentarian in me. Whether racing from one responsibility to another or calmly watching the storm and the damage it wrought to our city, I kept coming back…
Tagged with: Delfine Vizearra, GMT Tavern, Houston Street, hurricane Sandy, Laguardia Corner Gardens, Morton Williams, New York City, NYC, risotto, Sandy, storm Sandy
Posted in Greenwich Village, Memories, Uncategorized
Posted in Greenwich Village, Memories, Uncategorized
BoHeMigrant 