Clinton Township Newsletter

3 a p r i l 2 0 2 4 My theory, and one thing I love about New York City, is every day you're there, you'll see something you've never seen before in your life. The Statue of Liberty and the Empire State building are all well and good but, I love the more interesting and, dare I say it, crazier scenes. Here are some of the things I've seen there over the last forty years. When I first moved to NYC in 1984 for college, I was in a small shop in SoHo one day and who saunters in but the pop singer Huey Louis, at the height of his fame. He asked one of the employees if he could buy the bench out front, and was promptly turned down. With a shrug of his shoulders, he pivoted, winked at me smiled, and quickly walked out – at which point I almost died, and thought of how my friends and I had saved our babysitting money for concert tickets to see his show in high school, viewed from way back in the huge Jacksonville Coliseum. Once I disembarked the NJ Transit train in Port Authority and fell in with the crowd when I noticed there in front of me walked a man wearing a sport- coat, a sombrero, and a cloth diaper – no pants – hustling just as quickly as the rest of us to get to the street. I once walked past a shirtless young man on Sixth Avenue wearing a full, Native American, head-to-toe, feathered headdress. No one even blinked. Next to my dorm building on 16th and Union Square West, Madonna spent a week filming her movie, "Desperately Seeking Susan", yet no one was paying much attention to her, pre-fame, besides us Parsons students and the boys from Xavier, around the corner. One day as I was making my way across Washington Square Park, I found myself amid a massive student pillow fight, evidently a yearly thing, As I was walking along a side street near NYU, I once saw two young guys yelling loudly at each other, and then making very weird gestures toward one another. Naturally, I stopped to watch. Just then an NY police officer ran up and yelled, "Knock it off!! What are you DOING?!!" They explained, Sorry Officer, we're, um, acting students, and we're just rehearsing for a class." At this point the cop just walked away, shaking his head. (These crazy kids!) Once a young teenage boy ran right past me with a pair of stolen shoes in hand and, running after him, followed a huge crowd of people. Through the crowd flew a mounted policeman, who whipped out his lasso, twirled it in the air, and lassoed the kid, right there on the Mews, a cobblestone street from the 1830s. The crowd collectively stopped and yelled, "WHOA!" and for a second I didn't know which century we were in. Once, as my friends and I were waiting outside the Palladium, Andy Warhol sauntered past me, followed by his entourage – surreal. His Factory was a stone's throw from my dorm window, and I regret the fact that I never knocked on his door. I bet you, too have a million interesting NYC stories – email them to me! In the meantime, I hope you have an uneventful April Fool's Day! (Lol!) CarolBeder ' s –Julie Flynn DAYS TO KEEP IN MIND Monday April 1 APRIL FOOLS DAY! Friday April 5 Gold Star Spouses Day Tuesday April 9 Last day of Ramadan April 12, 1861 : The American Civil War began with the Confederate forces' attack on Fort Sumter in South Carolina and lasted from 1861 to 1865. April 14, 1865: Assassination of Abraham Lincoln Monday April 15 Patriot's Day (commemorates the Battle of Lexington and the Battle of Concord) Monday April 15 Jackie Robinson Day Tuesday April 16 Emancipation Day Thursday April 18 Tax Day April 21, 1898: The Spanish American War began Monday April 22 Earth Day Monday April 22 Passover begins before sundown and ends after nightfall on April 30. Tuesday April 23 World Book Day Thursday April 25 Take Your Children to Work Day

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