Month: December 2011

The wind’s whipping across the rooftop, slamming the door, BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! The N train’s whoosh-clanking into the Ditmars Boulevard station. Enrico de Trizio and Giancarlo de Trizio start jamming to the rhythm of their new-found city. The brothers — that’s the bespectacled Enrico on the melodica and the ponytailed Giancarlo on the cajón — have never played to the sky before, but once they start, they don’t want to stop. Ah, yes! This is why they came to New…

Continue Reading →

It’s a custom in Hawaii to take your shoes off when you enter, so Jeff and Suzi Nauser are in their stocking feet when they answer the door. The framed memorabilia in the narrow entry hall that leads to the heart of their compact three-room apartment is a time capsule of their lives, which inexplicably intersected and intertwined some 15 years ago in the land of the waving palm trees. The black-and-white photos of the hula dancers make Suzi happy when she gets lonely for home; the state pins…

Continue Reading →

Veronica Devine is padding around in her bare feet. She’s a morning person, a really funny thing for a bar owner to be. She’s shucked her sky-high silver sandals, which she swears on a bottle of Smirnoff are as comfortable as house slippers. She went to a customer’s wake last night and didn’t put her pretty blond head to pillow until 11 p.m., long past her 8 p.m. bedtime. Her blue eyes look like faded jeans. It’s not yet 9 o’clock, and she’s been cleaning…

Continue Reading →

Lordy, lordy, things could have taken quite a different turn if Maureen McGowan hadn’t hated Irish step-dancing so much. In a burst of ill-conceived patriotism, her immigrant parents made her take lessons so she could learn the culture of their homeland. What’s worse, they signed her and her three older siblings up with a group that went around performing in nursing homes and way stations for wayward children. That’s why at age 10 Maureen found herself in Peekskill, New York, dancing…

Continue Reading →