When I came to New York City in late 1988 from North Bay, Ontario, I expected, in fact sought out, excitement. A lifelong Canadian, I'd never lived for any length of time in a place the size of Toronto, much less New York.
So, yeah, I went to shows, restaurants, ran in Central Park, and openly gaped at the skyscrapers in Midtown. Eventually I would find work in one of them. Since 1997 I've been pretty much steadily employed with New York-based newspapers.
What I hadn't bargained for was excitement of a different sort. It doesn't mean that I haven't found a way to adjust to the fact that NYC is a terrorist target (I was coming out of a subway entrance in the World Trade Center neighborhood during the second air terrorist attack, and consider myself a survivor of the events of that day, and most recently I served in the emergency press crew during Superstorm Sandy, working to make sure that news from the near-epicenter of the storm made it out to readers).
On Halloween, faced with no public transportation to my Midtown skyscaper workplace in the storm's aftermath I duct-taped a string bag with a change of clothes to my back, and, in my jogging gear, ran the 9-plus miles to work and arrived as close to my everyday arrival time as ever. When I walked to the building security desk I made the peculiar request of borrowing a pair of scissors so that I could cut open my duct tape bag enclosure because I'd made it so snug that I'd not been able to slip it over my head.
The woman rent-a-cop asked me how far I'd walked, and her colleague (with the scissors) immediately corrected her, saying, no, that I'd actually ran the distance, which I'd explained was likely about nine miles from my Brooklyn neighborhood.
She stared at me as if a chimpanzee, not a human being, was standing before her.
That night I ran home to Brooklyn, and it was my scariest Halloween since I was a kid. My office tower is at Sixth Avenue and West 47th Street, and I was in good form, running south on Eighth Avenue. Then at 27th Street, the lights were out. It was cloudy, so the night sky offered little help. For a few blocks I ran behind a man who was wearing a penlight on a head band and carrying a little flashlight. He eventually veered off on a sidestreet and I was alone in the dark. I slowed down to a light jog, but didn't stop. For blocks I could barely make out the uneven pavement and curb cuts. At 14th Street, a gaggle of rubberneckers were looking at the ripped-back facade of an apartment building. Some people above and below Canal Street had gathered before harsh light powered by rattling generators. Mostly, it was pitch black and bizarrely empty of people.
Finally, and gratefully, I jogged to the Brooklyn Bridge pedestrian crosswalk. It was about 9 p.m. and black as coal as I made my way up the wooden walkway that connects Manhattan to Brooklyn. You can't imagine what it felt like to see the bright, twinkling lights of my home borough. When I saw them, I picked up my pace and made my way home as fast as my feet would carry me.
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