New York City Street Theater

Tourists go to Broadway, but New Yorkers always enjoy street theater

1. New York Entertainment

For the tourists, there is no better show in New York City than a big budget Broadway musical. But for native New Yorkers of my generation, nothing beats good old street theater. A crazy person engaging an angry person at the wrong time can provide upwards of ten minutes of entertainment.

For those ten minutes, New Yorkers will stop what they’re doing to enjoy the spectacle of two ostensible adults screaming at each other. After that, you’ll see the crowd peel away as they realize that nobody’s going to actually fight anybody, and if there is a fight they don’t want to be stuck talking to the cops.

There are other classics of the form, of course. There’s “Messy Drunk Girl Breaking Up with Her Boyfriend at Three in the Morning at the Top of Her Lungs”, which enjoyed nightly repeat performances on Ludlow Street in the Lower East Side for a decade in the early 2000s. Truly a crowd pleaser, with a Rocky Horror audience participation aspect as people who live above the lucky couple scream at them to shut up, followed by the throwing of eggs at the players.

I once had the pleasure of witnessing a production of “This Boy Who is Clearly an NYU Student Thinks He Can Fight These Three Bouncers Outside This Bar.” It was a cold winter night, and I was the only audience member. The bouncers enjoyed the show as much as I did, and they allowed the kid to keep rushing at them for a while and letting his punches bounce off of them.

Eventually, he rushed at one who shoved him back as hard as he could, throwing the guy into one of those half phone booths the city used to have. The kid then stood up, and whining so loudly that it may have been heard all the way back at his home in Westbury, Long Island, “YOU PUSHED ME! THAT HURT!” I laughed harder in that moment than I have at any George S. Kaufman comedy.

But the absolute classic of New York street theater, the show any person must catch once when they are in town, remains “Idiot Playing Three Card Monte”. When I was a high school dropout, my burnout friend Ricardo (not his real name) starred in a production, but with a twist. The Monte dealer allowed him to win the first round, and then Ricardo, thinking he was smart, took the money and walked. He was followed by one of the dealer’s friends and mugged a block away.

Which brings me to one of the greatest ongoing productions of street theater in New York City: “The Sidewalk Press Conference”.

2. His Coworkers Call Him: MEGA-MEANIE

This was the headline in the New York Daily News, and the story was that a NYC Hospitals worker was the “designated buyer” for an office lottery pool, for the Mega Millions jackpot. He had a ticket that came in second place - winning a grand total of $175,000. His contention was that this was a ticket that he purchased individually, not in the office pool, and therefore he had no obligation to share any of the money with anyone. And so his coworkers did the rational, adult thing; they sued him.

This would ensure that one way or another, all the money will end up in the right hands - the lawyers’.

Keep in mind that after taxes, the man’s winnings came out to $107,000. That has not been enough to retire on since FDR was President. So win or lose, this guy was going to have to keep working with these people.¹

One fine day, I was taking a break from my at the call center. It was interesting work, because it was part of an ongoing project to see how rude people across America could be to a stranger on the phone before hanging up on them.

I mean, that wasn’t literally the job. I was calling people up and seeing if they would answer survey questions. But it amounted to the same thing.

My walk took me by the Empire State Building where I saw a cluster of news reporters in front of the McDonald’s across the street. Everybody was there, the Channel 9 Eyewitless News van, microphones from 1010 WINS, NY1, CBS, Channel 5, all in a rack in front of two men in suits.

Here is a ranking of public press conferences, as sorted by location:

THE BEST: In front of the courthouse.
Usually you’re going to see a criminal and his lawyer, neither of whom is innocent, tell bald face lies to a press corp who know the score.

USUALLY PRETTY GOOD: In front of the police precinct.
Sometimes you’ve got the upper brass defending a bad cop, sometimes it’s announcing a “who cares” community initiative.

SOMETIMES GOOD: In front of City Hall.
These can be good for seeing the Mayor, or occasionally a celebrity receiving a commendation.

BEATS GOING BACK TO WORK, BARELY: In front of the McDonald’s across the street from the Empire State Building.

One of the men in a suit begins to speak; he’s a lawyer for the Mega-Meanie. As I stand, straining to hear him, my mind wanders trying to figure out exactly why they chose this spot for their press conference. I guess they wanted the Empire State Building for their background? Which would be an extremely cool visual, only everyone’s standing on ground level, so all you really saw was the majestic and soaring Houlihan’s on the first floor.

Inspiring stuff, I grant you, but not exactly a lawyerly concern. Personally, I like to hold all my press conferences in front of Señor Swanky’s, but that’s me.

Anyway, as the first lawyer speaks, the second, on cue, unrolls a big Xerox copy of the lottery tickets Mega Meanie had bought for his coworkers. It was their habit of copying the tickets he bought, and having all the people in the pool sign it. To avoid the possibility of hard feelings and messy lawsuits.

Then the reporters started asking questions and I realized - I’ve seen press conferences on TV many times, and I never thought I’d get to ask a question. Yet, here I was on the street, a part of the scrum, and I could not let this moment go by.

The problem was, the only question I really had for the attorneys was - “Did you guys actually rehearse that moment when the stripe suit guy unrolled the huge Xerox? Also, how did you decide who got to speak? Coin toss?”

Alas, at that particular point, I had not read about the case. My M.O. when reading the Daily News in those days was to read every section - Sports, the comics, the Op-Ed - except for the news, which was pretty useless as a focal point for gathering information. And I know what you’re thinking - “Liam, clearly any paper that treats an office lottery fight as front page news clearly is the only news source you’ll ever need.”

But I raised my hand and the man called on me, and the entire story of what was going through his mind was written in the passing emotions on his face. First, I watched him register that I was not holding a microphone, a notepad, a tape recorder, or any other tool of the journalistic trade.

Then I watched as he took in my outfit, appropriate more for a bathing-optional environment like a call center than a professional journalist hoping to appear on television. By this point, he had clearly passed into resignation, as the journalists all turned to look at me, excited, as I opened my mouth to ask:

“But what about the children?”

He then chuckled and continued the press conference, and I turned and walked off in search of the next distraction.

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1. I looked it up and after a year of having the winnings frozen, the man, John Piccolo, agreed to share the money with his by-then-ex-coworkers. His brother gave an interview saying he wasn’t surprised because John “was always a greedy man.”