They’ve started putting safety videos on buses now. As if A) anyone would watch a safety video on a bus, and B) anything would be different if they did. I refuse to wear a seatbelt on a bus — it’s a matter of principle, or at least a matter of habit. When I took the […]
Dear Portuguese stranger who asked me for directions around 4pm last Sunday at the 49th Street Subway Station, I’m sorry. I’m sorry I didn’t know by heart how to get to the World Trade Center Memorial. I’m sorry I had to look it up on my phone. I’m sorry I told you to take the […]
Hours before the sun, Francis picked up Luke and me from Cumberland House and drove us to London-Gatwick. Going through customs was easy, because this time Luke didn’t have a six-pack of Cascazilla in his bag (I offered to chug them all at JFK clearance, but the TSA wasn’t having it; lucky bastards probably drank […]
Over his time in Europe, Luke’s family has tripled in size. Since we arrived, Rosemary has commandeered his social calendar – he sees new relations every day. Keeping track of all the second, third, and fourth cousins he’s met has been difficult for him, and impossible for me. That one was arrested at an environmental […]
“It’s the gravity,” I said, sending the cue ball straight into the corner pocket. “It’s all wonky this side of the planet.” “Sure,” scoffed Graeme, sinking another two reds, “the gravity.” Luke and I had been looking for a pool table since we got to Europe. We now regretted finding one. “And the weights,” Luke […]
In Amsterdam, it’s easy to get lost. Under the usual circumstances, Luke and I found ourselves separated in a foreign country, trying to reach an outskirts bus station before our ticket back to London burned up like so much hash in the hands of a tourist. Through the execution of such extraordinary skills as following street […]
“This city’s a shopping mall with pot,” I said. Matt, who’d hopped a bus from Heidelberg (where he studies something lucrative and boring) to meet us in Amsterdam, thought about this, nodded, and grinned. “Yeah.” “Why would you go to another country to buy a watch?” Luke asked. We’d seen it go down on the flight to […]
Words can change the world. Can and have since we first spoke them from our lips and scrawled them on our parchment. Standing before Anne Frank’s diary, I find myself shaking with awe and frisson. The cursive between those covers – the work of a young girl – has changed lives; her book carries all […]
The cat lady is a global phenomenon. In every nation, in every era, there she’ll be, communing with her feline companions in tongues long lost to man. I encountered my first cat lady when my family moved to our house on 2nd Street. Kitty corner from the concrete patch we call our backyard lives Joan, […]
A confession: I hate bikes. I hate bikes when I’m walking, I hate bikes when I’m driving, and I hate bikes most of all when I’m biking. I grew up in New York City, where the fervent eco-fitness fanatics who commute by bike ride a twice-daily gauntlet of murderous motorists and plugged-in pedestrians, where a […]
