What are some interesting personal stories about New York City?

• Looking for unique stories about New York - whether it's about you or someone you know- who have lead interesting lives, have made an impact on the city itself, or have an interesting connection to landmarks (e.g., construction worker who worked on twin towers, family immigrating to Ellis Island, someone who's worked at New York Public Library for many years, etc).  Thanks so much in advance!

• Answer:

  1. My wife, Lisa, was standing outside a restaurant, smoking a cigarette, when a well-dressed man walked by and plucked the cigarette out of her mouth while simultaneously saying, "Yoink!" He ran down the street, alternating between doing a victory dance and taking drags. 2. There was a middle-aged guy name Hank who lived on our street. But he didn't live in a building; he lived in his van. At least I think he lived in it. Every time I walked by, at all hours of the day and night, he was sitting inside it. He took a fatherly interest in Lisa: at least I think it was fatherly. When she walked home from the subway at night, he would call out that he was watching out for her. One day, he motioned for her to come over to his van. He said, "I have a present for you," and he handed her an envelope. When she got home, she opened it, and we saw it was full of money. Maybe fifteen twenty dollar bills. We didn't know what to do. The next day, Lisa tried to give it back to him, but he refused to accept it. I think she wound up donating it to a charity. About a month later, we noticed Hank's van was gone from our street. That was eleven years ago. We haven't seen him, since. 3. One winter, a young, professional looking woman stopped me as I walked to my office. "Excuse me," she said. "You look cold." "Sorry?" I said. "You look cold," she repeated. "Would you like me to buy you a coat?" "Um. No thanks," I said. I was already wearing a coat. She shrugged as if to say, "Your loss," and we parted company. 4. I was standing outside an art-supply store on Central Park's South side, looking in the window at all the canvases and paint brushes, wondering whether I should start painting. Gradually, I became aware that someone was standing next to me—a bit too close. I looked at her. A classy-looking older lady—maybe in her 60s or early 70s. She smiled broadly at me and said, "You look nice!" For a long time, I didn't know what to say, and then I stammered, "Thanks." She said, "Would you like to come to my apartment for dinner?" For the next five or six years, I regretted my response. You see, no one had ever tried to pick me up before—and certainly never a woman 20 or 30 years older than me. I'm also extremely introverted and not used to talking to strangers at all. I said, "No!" in a harsh voice. It just came out of me. I saw her smile collapse, and I fled. As soon as I recovered my wits, I was disgusted with myself.  That poor old lady! She took a huge risk approaching me like that, and I humiliated her. It would have cost me nothing to have been kind: to say, "Sorry, I can't. I'm married. But I'm very flattered." I would hate it if someone treated me the way I treated her. Guilt about this incident ate at me for years, whenever I thought about it. Then, one day, I saw a photo of her online. Turns out, she was a famous prostitute and that was her "spot." She'd been accosting men in front of that art-supply store for decades! I spent about two minutes feeling relieved. She wasn't attracted to me. She was just trying to make money! Then I thought, "The one time anyone tries to pick me up, it's a hooker! Damn!" 5. Lots of people in New York think they have the right to be pissy. I refuse to grant them that right. Like the time I was in this guy's way when he was trying to cross the street, so he made a face at me. I said, "Listen, there was no way I could have possibly known you wanted to walk in that direction, so don't give me that face, you asshole!" I'm not sure what gets into me. Then there was the time I was in the supermarket, and this woman said, "You're just going to bump into me without apologizing?" I said, "What?" She said, "You bumped into me, and you just kept walking." I said, "Really? Oh, I'm so sorry. I didn't realized I'd bumped into you. Are you okay?" She just glared at me and walked away. I shouted after her, "Okay, since you're a bad person, I take it back. I'm not sorry." She whipped around and said, "I am not a bad person." I said, "Yes you are. I bumped into you, and that was clumsy on my part. But when you told me what I'd done, I immediately apologized. Instead of saying, 'That's okay'—instead of in any way acknowledging that I'd apologized—you just turned up your nose and walked away. That was purposely mean. You're a purposely mean person, and I hope you lose sleep over it, tonight!" She started crying. 6. When Lisa and I first moved to NYC (in 1996), we were walking towards Washington Square Park when we heard a shot. (I was born in New York and visited it often as a kid. I had just been telling Lisa, who was new to the city, how safe it was, nowadays.) Suddenly, all these people were running towards us as if a maniac was after them. Then we heard a couple of more shots and people started screaming. We ducked into a restaurant and moved as far to the back as we could. Then, we realized that since we were hungry, we might as well stay there and eat. We'd wait out whatever craziness was going on outside. So we sat at one of the tables, and pretty soon a waiter came and took our order. Forty-five minutes later, we left, and when we got outside, we saw the police had put yellow tape up on both ends of the block, keeping everyone out. We were inside the tape. We shrugged and ducked under the tape to get out of the cordoned-off block. A cop started yelling at us, "Get back!" "What do you mean?" I asked. "You can't go under the tape like that!" "Well how are we supposed to get out?" "You shouldn't have been inside a crime scene to begin with. How did you get in there? "We were just eating in a restaurant, and you put the tape up while we were inside." "That's impossible. We checked all the businesses on the block before we put up the tape." "Well, you couldn't have checked all that carefully. We were right there, inside that building." "No you weren't. We checked!" "Whatever. How can we get out of here?" "Get out the way you came in." "That is the way we got in," I said, pointing at the tape. "No it's not," he said. At that point, I lost it. I started screaming at him while Lisa tried to calm me down. He got tired of arguing with me and walked away. We slipped under the tape and went home. Lisa has had to remind me several times to not argue with people who are carrying guns. 7. Lisa is an actress, and one day she was getting her headshots taken by a somewhat famous photographer. He was telling her about this project he was doing, which involved taking photos of topless women posing all over the city in public places. (New York is one of the few states where it's legal for a woman to be topless anywhere a man can be topless.) She told him it sounded like a cool project and joked that she'd like to pose for him. He pounced on the offer and said, "How about tomorrow?" And somehow, after about an hour of soft sell, he'd talked her into it. She then had to come home and tell me, "I'm going to wander around Brooklyn topless tomorrow. Wanna take a day off work and come with me?" It was a day I'll never forget. The photographer would tell her to go stand by a building or a lamp post (with her T-shirt on) and I'd go stand by her. He'd then spend about five minutes composing the shot and focusing. Then he'd say "Go," she'd whip off her shirt, hand it to me, and I'd walk out of the frame. Then the photographer would spend several minutes snapping photos. When he was done, I'd hand her her shirt back, she'd put it on, and we'd repeat the process somewhere else. Of course, there was more than one photographer. Pretty much every passing guy took out his cellphone and started snapping photos of Lisa. Except for the guys who got dragged away by their wives and girlfriends. 8. I was directing a production of "Uncle Vanya," which requires a pistol that can fire blanks. This is almost impossible to come by in a post-9/11 NYC, and, in fact, it's against the law. You are not even allowed to have toy guns in the city, unless they look look absurd. There's even an ordinance about the wacky colors toy guns have to be painted—I think you're allowed to have one if it's bright purple. (Which probably just encourages criminals to paint their guns bright purple. But whatever.) One of the actresses in the show owned a starter pistol, and she brought it to rehearsal one day and asked if I'd like to borrow it. I said, "Sure," put it in my backpack, and totally forgot about it. (The show wasn't meant to open for another few weeks.) I carried that backpack everywhere without remembering I was carrying a gun all over the city. Then, one day, I was early for a meeting and so I decided to go to the Barnes and Noble in Citicorp Center. That building has tight security, because it's one of the tallest skyscrapers in the city, and there was a rumor it was going to be targeted after 9/11. Still, I thought nothing as I plopped my backpack down on the scanner. But then, as it rolled in on the conveyer belt, I remembered what was inside it. "Oh no! Oh no! Oh no!" I thought, and almost as fast as I thought it, I was surrounded by security guards and cops. They grilled me for an hour. I tend to think this theatre stuff I do is important, but when a bunch of burly, dead-serious cops asked me what I was doing with a gun, and I said, "It's for a play," I felt like I was four years old. These guys are trying to save the city from terrorists and I'm making their jobs harder by messing around with starter pistols—for a play? for a stupid play? Finally, one of the cops said, "I'm going to confiscate that weapon, and then you can go." I thought of the actress who had loaned it to me, and how she'd said it was important to her. I think her dad left her the gun in his will or something. Timidly, I said, "Look, I don't want to cause any trouble, but do you have the right ... I mean ... the legal right to take it from me?" The cop just stared at me. Then he said, "This can go down one of two ways. You can let me take the gun and go home. Or I can put cuffs on you, take you to the precinct house, and throw you in a cell." I let him take the gun. Later that week, the actress, who has way more of a New York attitude than I do, went to the police station and yelled and screamed until they gave her the gun back. This is fun. I'll post more stories when they occur to me.