About a
month ago, I spent a few days in New York City, after having received an
invitation to the IBPA’s annual Benjamin Franklin Awards as a nominee for my
second book Shackled. I’d never been
to New York before and I wanted to share with you ten things I experienced that
were so very “New York.”
1. A car accident between a UPS driver
and a cab driver and all the colorful language that you would expect in New
York City with such an event.
2. A woman wearing clothes entirely too
tight for her size being cuffed and arrested right there in the theater district.
3. A guy welding a broken pipe showing
off at least a half a moon and I’m not talking about the one in the sky.
4. Thousands of people all with the same
glazed expression staring up at the moving ads in time square.
5. Standing in the middle of my hotel
lobby and listening to everyone talk but no one speaking English.
6. SMELLS ! Everything from cigarette
smoke to body odor to the pungent scent of strips of raw meat grilling on carts
of street vendors.
7. Sirens blaring through the streets both
day and night like an angry city lullaby.
8. Locals toting their groceries on
their backs and their babies on their fronts in slings on their way back to
their apartments.
9. Graffiti….on the inside of the
bathroom door….inside a Chinese food restaurant…and I was grateful it was
written in another language.
10. And finally, a woman standing next to
the name of someone she loved at the World Trade Center Memorial remembering and weeping for her loss
on Memorial Day.
Oh and I saw some other cool things like the statue of Liberty and the
empire state building tooJ
All and all, I had a great trip and enjoyed the awards ceremony for the
Benjamin Franklin Awards. I ate delicious food and took home a silver award
that I can gleefully tack on every copy of Shackled sold now proclaiming it as
an award-winning book. Have you ever
been to New York, and if so, what was the strangest thing you experienced?
