They Have Bushy Tails and Store Nuts

One thing that I've had to become accustomed to living in New York is tourists. I certainly have not been here long enough to have adopted a condescending attitude towards them -- after all I am a tourist from time to time too. Living a block from the Theater District I have huge tourist buses from Montreal that park on my street every Sunday afternoon. Around the corner on 8th Avenue is the office for one of the cities "hop-on-and-off" bus tour services, so the sidewalks are filled with out-of-towners. And my office sits a block from Washington Square, so more than a few times I've left my office to be confronted by a person with a friendly smile, a map, and a question. I'm glad to help when I can.

Earlier this week, I was walking down Bleecker Street in Greenwich Village and a notice a gaggle of Japanese tourists on the sidewalk. Just as I was walking past them, I heard a shriek and then I saw all the cameras come out. Needless to say, my curiosity was aroused. What was it by the trees lining the street that could have caused such excitement? These people had clearly traveled thousands of miles to see wondrous things in New York City! And they had discovered ... a squirrel ..... and a very ordinary looking one at that. Bullwinkle was no where in sight. I wondered: aren't there rodents in Asia too? I was tempted to point them to Central Park, but I didn't want to send them over the edge with excitement. (Oh wait, maybe I am developing a bit of a condescending tone.)

On second thought, maybe sometimes in life you just have to appreciate the simple things.

By the way I took the picture above a few years ago when I was a tourist walking around New York City.

Well, At Least It's Not Boring.

Years ago when I was walking through Chinatown here in New York, heading to my then wife's office on Lafayette Street, I found myself in a crowd of tourists. One woman with a southern or midwestern twang turned to her friend and said, "Well, if this is Chinatown, where is Japan town?" I was horrified at the question. For this woman, New York was like the Epcot center at Disney World -- just a collection of tourist attractions thrown together for her amusement.

I was reminded of that little encounter because today I was walking down Bleeker Street to meet a friend and I came out of my haze for a minute and noticed a man photographing a car. I looked around and realized that whole street was lined with 1950s vintage cars, including two green and black NYPD squad cars. Were it not for the photographer, I never would have noticed. The street was being prepped for some sort of film or television show shoot. Things like that happen pretty regularly around here. My lunch companion today pointed to a building and said, "that's the Puck Building." I looked at her blankly until she explained that they used that building for the exterior shots of Grace's workplace on the sitcom Will and Grace -- a mildly interesting tidbit.

Walking around these streets, it is easy to lose your sense of reality -- until something suddenly wakes you up. Walking back to the office from lunch today, we heard a woman screaming across the street at Lafayette Street and Houston. Running down the street after a man in a brown leather jacket, she yelled "that guy just stole my f*&%ing cell phone!" People watched in stunned disbelief. Running full out as she chased him, he made a quick turn down a side street. Although I didn't see the aftermath of the chase, I realized that the guy was running straight into the street that was blocked off because of the filming. I hope he was caught and they cuffed him against the vintage cop cars. Every once in a while you're reminded that Manhattan's not a movie set, but a very real place, and sometimes a dangerous one.