Author: ruhlwrite

Saturday night. Love at first sight. (Well, almost.) The time: December 2007  Noel is from New Jersey. The place: a club in Manhattan The characters: Nick Fiorentinos, the clubgoer; Noel Descalzi, the club’s hostess.Nick is a Queens native. The story: Nick and his friends were out on the town. Noel seated them at the club. Nick wished that she were their waitress. Noel wished she were, too. He says/she says the flirtation was fiery and flamboyant. “We’re very social,” Noel says.…

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As Henry Kimpel climbs the stone steps of Trinity Lutheran Church, an act he has done some 12,000 times since he joined the congregation nearly seven decades ago, he apologizes. Henry has devoted his retirement to Trinity. “I’m a slowpoke,” he says, leaning heavily on his wooden cane. The bad thing about old age, he says, is that you get old. That goes for churches, too. There’s nobody who knows more about the physical aches and pains of Trinity than Henry. For nearly three…

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As soon as Gene Coffey rolls up the ink-black metal gate at his tony tattoo parlor, he starts talking about his art studio. It’s right upstairs, so when he has free time between clients, he goes there to paint. Gene opened Coffey Shop Tattoos in September 2015. Do you want to see it? Follow him up the stairs and past a warren of jail-cell-like rooms until he stops at a plain black door. Inside, illuminated by a century-old skylight, the figures in his oil paintings spring to life. In one…

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It’s a funny thing, but Cliff Straus doesn’t remember exactly when he started working for Straus Paint & Hardware Co. He just knows that he’s never wanted to quit. Cliff, a benevolent bulldog with a buzz cut, walks through the door to the back office and pauses. There, scrawled in fading lead pencil on the wooden jamb, it says “40” Cliff age 4, 64.” Cliff’s the man behind Straus Paint & Hardware Co. Below it, there are a half dozen notches sans…

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Why the violin? Marina Fragoulis isn’t quite sure why she chose it. She was 10, and all she knew was that, for no particular reason, she didn’t want to play the saxophone. Marina’s from Crete. She and the wind instrument were almost paired because Marina had taken an aptitude test at school and scored so high that her teachers recommended she embrace the brash brass. Marina might well have followed their advice because she was new not only to the school but also to the state and…

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