City people do the darndest things.
EXCESS BAGGAGE
In January 2011, Columbia University researcher Edward Hall III arrived at JFK Airport to catch a flight to the West Coast…and realized he’d forgotten his picture ID. He tried to get help from one of the United Airlines desk agents, explaining that he “really needed to get to San Francisco.” When she refused to allow him to board without his ID, Hall took matters into his own hands: He jumped over the ticket counter and dove onto the baggage conveyor belt…which carried him through the airport and deposited him on the tarmac. Airport personnel detained him, and when police arrived to take him into custody, he explained, “I just wanted to make my flight.”
TRASH PILE
After the blizzards of 2010–11, trash sat on city streets for weeks and irritated everyone from Staten Island to the Bronx. But it turned out to be a lucky break for Vangelis Kapatos of Manhattan, who, in January 2011, tried to kill himself by jumping out of a window on West 45th Street. Fortunately, about 100 bags of trash at the curb below broke his fall. “He landed on a garbage pile,” said one city official. “That’s the only reason he’s alive.” Kapatos wasn’t injured, and his family took him to Bellevue for psychiatric evaluation.
GIVE HIS REGARDS TO BATHROOMS
In 2008 Irish playwright Paul Walker staged an unusual production: His play Ladies & Gents was performed in a bathroom in Central Park. Why? According to Walker, he wanted to take the audience “out of their comfort zone.” The play was a thriller about a sex scandal in 1950s Ireland, and it was performed in two 20-minute parts: one in the ladies’ room, and one in the mens’; audience members switched bathrooms to see how the story ended. (Portable, working toilets were stationed outside, since the facilities were occupied.) In its review of the show, the New York Times said, “The cast members sell the gimmick perfectly.”
Along with St. Moritz, Switzerland, and Innusbruck, Austria, Lake Placid is one of only three places to host the Winter Olympics twice (1932 and 1980).