My next stop is the Ed Sullivan Theater, up on Broadway and Fifty-Fourth Street, where David Letterman tapes his show.
I’m kind of in total awe, just thinking about all the great comics who have appeared on this stage. Some of them probably even used this very same sidewalk to get to that stage.
You know, people will tell you that New Yorkers are so rude they don’t even get along with each other. But Letterman says that’s not true: “I saw two New Yorkers, complete strangers, sharing a cab. One guy took the tires and the radio; the other guy took the engine.”
In New York, they say people go to hockey games for the fighting. In the stands. To participate.
So during my entire visit, not one single New Yorker acts extra nice to me because I’m in a wheelchair.
And I love every minute of it!
Check it out:
A taxi splashes me because I stop too close to the gutter.
A tour bus nearly runs me down in a crosswalk because I don’t realize that the traffic signals in the city are just “suggestions.”
I learn you should never, ever travel behind a horse-drawn carriage in Central Park.
While I’m waiting for the subway to head back to Penn Station, a rat the size of an otter scampers up from the tracks just so it can pee on my shoe.