Don't Sleep In The Subway

I’m walking to potluck tonight, heading west on 23rd street, hyped up on a grande and playing Chatty Cathy with my good friend CM when I see the day's award winner. There's usually one a day, minimum.

Wheelchairs hardly rate a glance on 23rd street. Over the years, this strip seems to have attracted a lion’s share of social and charitable services. There’s the Veteran’s hospital, United Cerebral Palsy, an apartment & service building for the blind (accompanied by audible 'walk/don’t walk' signals on the corner of Sixth Avenue), senior citizen housing, a school for the deaf, a homeless drop-in center and so forth.

And for the truly challenged, there’s an art school.

So, the “why-I-love-this-town-today” award goes to the guy in the major hemi-powered wheelchair, zipping down the block with a woman riding in the seat alongside him, a young man standing, riding on the back of the chair, the driver screaming angrily (and loudly) at his ride-hitching companions about god knows what. But his two fellow travellers ignored him, and took the free lift east.

My only question…how much horsepower does this thing have to carry three people? Who pimped that ride?

I swear – there’s more incidental entertainment here than I could ever absorb.

And lest I forget, there's a service for my own particular "tribe of the challenged". Musicians can always sleep on the lovely lawn in Madison Square Park.