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Sunset Park Women’s Cooperative Says SI SE PUEDE!

Ask 21-year-old Cristina about the most horrible experience she’s had as a domestic worker and her answer is immediate. “This one lady made me clean the floor of a whole apartment on my hands and knees. There was a mop right there, but she wouldn’t let me use it.”

City Notes

Starting in our June 2010 issue, Williams Cole and I began to republish nonfiction pieces from our archives, as part of a “Best of a Decade” celebration. Originally, we planned to create a contest out of these selections, and I even managed to persuade five estimable friends of the Rail to sign on as judges.

Learning From White Castle

From August 13 to 16, 2010, I ate at White Castle #100034 on 781 Metropolitan Avenue in East Williamsburg 11 times. I live around the corner from the restaurant and use it to guide friends to my apartment all the time (“pass the White Castle, make a right”), but have never actually eaten there prior to this undertaking.

A Windy Path

Suburban commuter trains are disparate from city subways; this is true in most cities.  Unlike the city subways, the commuter trains have cushioned seats and there is a code of quiet.

The Staten Island Ferry Terminal

The bright fluorescent lights and featureless walls of the ferry terminal come as something of a shock after the congenial sunshine and peaceful reveries of the Battery. The words “STATEN ISLAND FERRY” appear over the entrance in letters six feet tall, in a garish neon blue.

Finding God in a Watering Hole

Williamsburg is brimming with signs of spirituality: bands of Hasidic mamas pushing strollers over the bridge, Puerto Ricans and Dominicans rocking flashy crucifixes, yoga-mat toting ladies on their way to Sunday meditation class. But for the young and hip, Christianity seems passé.

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The Brooklyn Rail

SEPT 2010

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