New York

Friday Fictioneers for December 29th, 2023

Rochelle is flying solo for today’s Friday Fictioneers picture. Click on the New Year ball to be dispatched over to her blog page where the timetable and schedule of how to be all-aboard the #FF bullet train to her grand central player’s squares. Just write fewer than 101 words and you’ll be riding on the City of New Orleans.

PHOTO PROMPT © Rochelle Wisoff-Fields

Genre: Historical Friction
Title: Characters in Control
Word Count: 100

In 1907, Katie and William boarded the train in Philadelphia for New York City’s first New Year’s Eve Ball lowering celebration from atop One Times Square. They were excited to be part of America’s celebratory history.

They worried little about New York’s train safety, including one major crash in February.

As they stepped off the train in New York, Kate asked William if something was wrong. He looked ill and lost.

“I don’t know, Darling. It’s like some future writer started a story about us but stopped when he realized that he knew nothing about New York City in 1907.”

Look both ways and pay due diligence to how we got to where we are.
Mind the gaps in the tracks and cross-tie walkers.

Click on the New Year’s party in KC to read more stories.

My favorite New Year’s movie scene.

Friday Fictioneers for August 12th 2022

Mistress Rochelle shuffled her photo deck and dealt us a Roger Bultot metro scene to provoke our creative juices with a New York state of mind. This one mused up too many stories for one day, in this case a pair of Ragin’ Cajuns in the Empire State. If you can gin up a microburst of fewer than 101 words, click on Roger’s pic to sky over to Rochelle’s blog and get the lay of the land. Come play with us. This is fun.

PHOTO PROMPT © Roger Bultot

Genre: Fan Fiction
Title: Look Both Ways
Word Count: 100

***

Philippe say, “Look. Two one-way signs pointing opposite ways. That says STOP ALL WAY. We ain’t in N’Orlins no-more, bro. Nothin’ make no sense.”

I replied, “It’s New York, Bubba. See dat church fence, windows barred, that shop covers windows—tagged.”

The lady across the street walked toward us. There was a loud screech of tires—then a scream. Everyone ran.

“Call 911. Dat lady got run over.”

He called. “Shit man. WTF?”

I sez, “She was reading my blog. Walked into the street before she read my postscript.”

“How you know dat, mista Bill?”

“She didn’t look both ways.”

***

Look both ways, even on one-way streets.
Mind the gaps on sidewalks
and don’t read my blog crossing streets
if you’re in a New York State of Mind.

 

Click on any famous New Yorker to read more wonders of fab fiction.

And then there is Billy J…. (it is a long one)

 

Sammi’s Weekender #237 (mudlark)

Click the graphic to open Sammi’s blog.

 

Over The Susquehanna River

From New York it winds
nine hundred mudlarkable shoreline miles
through the Chesapeake Bay to the Atlantic.

Unlike Billy Collins, I fished it,
caught carp, sucker, catfish, perch; swam
polluted waters; climbed and walked
bridges and trestles. I grubbed its mud.

Remember disasters. Before mountains rose.
The Susquehanna is in my blood.

Look both ways when the river flows.
Here it comes, there it goes.
Mind the gaps, the pits, the whirlpools, and vermin.

***

Poetic license: The Susquehanna River is 444 miles long from New York, flowing through the State of Pennsylvania (where I knew it) into the Chesapeake Bay. That’s 888 miles of shoreline. I rounded up. Disasters include the Knox Mine crime, Three Mile Island, pollution and environmental catastrophe on an epic scale, and many devastating floods.

Sammi’s Weekender #234 (Empire)

Click the graphic to go to Sammi’s Blog. There you may read more prose or poems, and you can play along.

Yearning for Old Broadway

The Empire State’s
wonderful people
of the city that never sleeps.
Coney Island, Manhattan,
Central Park, and the Brooklyn Bridge.
That tall building, George M!,
Lady Liberty, the Bronx,
‘the city so nice
they named it twice,’
Gotham,
Broadway Joe, the fucking Yankees
in the Big Apple.
Herald Square, Times Square.
How I want to be there.
Sadly, the day of many hearts
broken by hate.
I love New York!

Look both ways.
Take the Staten Island Ferry and the NYC Subway.
Mind the gap, as in watch your step in the City of Five Boroughs.

Sammi’s Weekender #159: Intrepid

Alive in Manhattan

Conceived in infamy, born of the Essex clan months later, that Intrepid warrior,
called the Fighting I, she of the seas; Pacific, Atlantic, one vet of two wars.
I walked your decks, thought about men who died there.
Torpedoed. Kamikazied four times.
Now you survive, tall on the Hudson, alive in Manhattan.

Look both ways, from bow to stern, port to starboard.
Mind the gaps for a time to reload.

Essex Class WWII Aircraft Carrier – USS Intrepid