Author: ruhlwrite

Tomohiro Arakawa has his hands full. He’s juggling a bulky backpack and a spindly scooter as he orders his breakfast at Lot’s O Bagels on Broadway. The Saturday subways are screwed up. He’s on his way to work in Manhattan and doesn’t want to be late. Scooter aside, Tomohiro stands out in a crowd. He’s tall – 6 foot, plus a couple more inches when he’s standing on the Swagtron – and trim, and he’s dressed in 50 shades of black, which add super-chicness to his stature. Tomohiro…

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“I call this my black limousine,” says Odette Lupis as she drives her Easy Wheels shopping cart onto the sidewalk. She’s silver-haired and 77, and it’s burdensome and bulky. In the bouncy, bumpy march down the narrow stairs from her third-floor walkup, it has the advantage. Odette, a photojournalist who began shooting when the field didn’t welcome women, made a career of hauling equipment around. Typically, she carried three heavy cameras with her on assignment. She wore two around…

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Jelani Remy was 7 when it happened. He went to see the movie . He was so captivated by the songs and the spectacle that he couldn’t take his little-boy eyes off the big screen. As soon as he got his birthday money, he bought the cassette-tape soundtrack. “I went through one character at a time and sang each part, over and over,” he says. “I connected with the story, which pulls at the heartstrings. I kept this up for a long time, possibly for years, but I don’t want to admit how long.” Jelani,…

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To say that Genevieve Rudolph was shocked is an understatement. A year and a half ago, when her son, Auggie, was 6 months old, Genevieve and her wife went to Blue Fin in Times Square for a long-overdue date night. By the time the dinner ended, so had her marriage. “She told me she wanted a divorce,” Genevieve says, watching as Auggie rolls out a yoga mat on the living room floor. “She moved out the next morning.” What do you do when your world falls apart? Genevieve didn’t have…

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It all began because Brian Martinez didn’t like his mother’s cooking. He refuses, however, to say she’s a bad cook. She is, after all, his mother. Even if he doesn’t love her cooking, he does love her so he puts the blame on his own stomach. Her lack of culinary skills, he adds, wasn’t really her fault because she was working a lot and didn’t have much time to spend in the kitchen of their Bronx apartment. But Brian, an only child, did. “I started making my own meals when I…

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