Practice!
Or: "How I Failed the Comedy Gods of NYC"
There’s one classic joke that every New Yorker knows. The reason every New Yorker knows it is because if you stand still for more than 20 seconds on a sidewalk in Manhattan, someone is going to ask you for directions.
Here’s a story that illustrates the phenomenon called “This Happens A Hundred Times a Day in New York City”:
7th Ave., Manhattan, in the low 50s. I was killing time before a job interview, leaning against a building reading something in the Daily News. This was in the days before Starbucks, oh best beloved, if you can believe such a time existed.
The guy stopped and asked me which way the M&M store was. I pointed him in, what I realized while watching him walk away, was the wrong direction, uptown.
Even worse, a minute later I had to go to the job interview, and I also walked uptown. The tourist walked past me heading downtown. He didn’t say anything, but he gave me a “What the fuck is your problem?” look as he marched past me.
That’s not the joke.
2003: The scene is 6th Ave, midtown, a block north (or south, I’m not clear and it’s not important) from Radio City. An older tourist couple stops me in my tracks to ask for directions. The conversation went exactly as follows:
GUY: How do we get to Broadway?
ME: Practice.
GUY: What?
ME: Practice.
WOMAN: Practice what?
ME: Practice… (realizing I am now in trouble) getting to Broadway.
WOMAN (nodding as if she understood): Oh.
But the very worst is the one that will probably haunt me until my dying day and it went like this:
A man. Holding a violin case.
8th Avenue. One block south of Columbus Circle. One block west of Carnegie Hall.
The violinist stops and asks me:
”Excuse me, how do I get to Carnegie Hall?”
He said it. He was literally holding a violin and said the thing.
And stupid me did not say, “Practice.”
Instead I gave him accurate directions and it wasn’t until I’d walked two blocks that I realized what a gift the comedy gods had given me, and how badly I’d bungled it.
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Because sometimes the comedy gods giveth, and sometimes they taketh away — and either way I’m here to telleth you all about it. Eth.
I must have been asked "How do it get to Broadway" 100x in my life, but have never been quick enough to say "Practice" even once. I commend you!! Ha!