On Saturday morning, I hop on the Long Island Rail Road for the hour-long train ride to Penn Station in New York City. I’m making the trip all by myself, and the clueless Smileys don’t even notice. Even Stevie Kosgrov isn’t tagging along to torment me.
This is sort of a pilgrimage for me. I am journeying to what some people call the comedy capital of the world, the city and comedy clubs where so many stand-ups have gotten their starts.
They call New York “the city that never sleeps” and, judging from some of the characters I’m stuck behind on the sidewalks, it hardly bathes, either.
This whole trip might become a new bit. Me, the country kid from Cornwall, rolling around America’s biggest urban jungle. If I’m a fish out of water in Long Beach, I’m a minnow in Manhattan.
I see a blind guy on the corner of Thirty-Ninth Street. He’s selling pencils and collecting spare change in a tin cup. When I stop to wait for the light to change, he yells, “Hey, wheelchair kid, you can’t beg here. This is my corner. I saw it first.”