Five senses
taste We joke that were we ever to lose you in a foreign country, we’d know exactly where to look first. “Excuse me, where’s a good place to get a bowl of noodle soup?” Remember the time we took you to Chez Nous for your birthday and you insisted the meal was lovely and you [...]
Rub this story
Like other East Asian languages, Korean lacks a distinctive “L” or “V” sound. So “love” ≈ “rub.” ~~ If you’ve never had Korean BBQ, you might find people’s craze for it hard to understand. A good introduction can be found at sisters Ann and Janet’s stall at Smorgasburg, a flea food market (where have these [...]
Straight talk
The first thing you notice when you sit down at Perry’s station is the digital clock in the shape of a clapperboard, accurate to the millisecond. It read 11:03 plus change as I settled into the chair. Perry strode over a few moments later, compacted frame, hair buzzed on one side, tattoos encircling both biceps. [...]
Ugrh
Late night chat with Ugrh, a fruit stand vendor near Teresa’s apartment Native of? Turkey. How long have you been in the States? A month. Current job? Working the 8:00 pm to 8:00 am shift at the fruit stand on the corner of Greenwich and Chambers. Wait, you mean this fruit stand is open 24 [...]
Hugo
Random airport happenstance is how I ended up eating Chipotle at IAD with Hugo, a thirty-nine year old El Salvadoran. Hugo was en route to Houston to visit his dad for Father’s Day, but a missed flight left him on standby for my 8:30 plane. Turns out Hugo has a pretty amazing story. One with [...]
Tony
Tony Piccione (pah-cho-nee, as in rhymes with Tony) is dealing. Dealing pretzels, to be more precise. As he strides around the run-down gym of Wilson Elementary School in West Philadelphia, which also doubles as a cafeteria, students dash up to him and tug at his clothes. “Mr. Tony, can I have some pretzels?” “Is your [...]
Christian
Antipasti As his name tag will tell you, Christian is from Romania. If you want to know more you’ll have to catch him when he’s standing still. Good luck. He moves around the dining room with the ease of a dancer and the precision of a surgeon’s blade. One minute he’s noting down a wife’s [...]
How to be a tour guide
Come from a sufficiently under-developed nation, preferably near the equatorial belt. If the latter proves unfeasible, settle for somewhere in the southern hemisphere where summertime falls during winter de los gringos. Be male. If you must be female, aim for mediocre attractiveness. Too plain and people have trouble keeping eye contact. Too pretty and wives [...]
I’m with him
Matt Katz is in pursuit. His quarry, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, moves at a surprisingly breakneck pace given his large stature. Katz, an up and coming reporter for the Philadelphia Inquirer, has been on the governor’s trail for a little over a month now, dashing from press conference to town hall meeting to budget [...]
The art of the profile
So many people are shut up tight inside themselves like boxes, yet they would open up, unfolding quite wonderfully, if only you were interested in them. -Sylvia Plath My only advantage as a reporter is that I am so physically small, so temperamentally unobtrusive, and so neurotically inarticulate that people tend to forget that my [...]
