Morning Routine
Dear Diary:
I was living in Astoria and working for an animation company in Chelsea. My commute on the N made me feel like a real New Yorker. I would get my coffee and wait on the elevated platform with hundreds of my neighbors at 8:30 a.m., no matter the weather, no matter my mood.
I started to recognize people, getting used to faces and commuting patterns during the almost three years I had that job. I saw pregnancies and fights and hairstyle changes.
I didn’t often speak to these people, nor did they speak to me, but there was a recognition that we all took the same train. I liked it; it made me feel safe to recognize and be recognized by these people.
One January morning, I was holding a large coffee in one hand and the center subway pole with the other. It was crowded, and I was lost in thought. The train jerked suddenly, I lost my grip on the cup and it flew into the back of a woman in front of me.
The lid came off, and coffee poured down the back of her now not-entirely-white winter coat. She didn’t flinch. Maybe it was the weight of the jacket, but she just stood there unaware.
What do I do? Do I tell her? How do I fix this?
An older woman whom I recognized from our daily trips together, clocked the whole drama. She was standing next to me, reading a book.
I looked at her with panic in my eyes.
She looked at the coat, then back at me.
“Run,” she said.
And without any thought, that’s what I did.
To the woman whose coat I covered in coffee: I am sorry. To the woman who advised me to bolt: Thank you for your support.
— Andrew Rannells
Mr. Rannells is an actor. He appears in the HBO film “Miss You, Love You.”
Vamping
Dear Diary:
When I was a student at N.Y.U. in the late 1970s, I worked part-time as a CBS page at the network’s broadcast center on West 57th Street. On one memorable spring day, I was assigned to play Dracula for a blood drive at Black Rock, the CBS headquarters.
My supervisors asked me to go to the makeup room where the soap operas were filmed. I was outfitted with a black wig, darkened eyebrows and enough makeup to make my face look as pale as a corpse. I was given formal tails and proceeded to wear them with the passion of a Transylvanian vampire.
There was only one thing they forgot — how to get crosstown to Black Rock on Sixth Avenue?
I decided to take a cab.
Mind you, these were the days when you had to pay in cash and talk to the driver.
I walked out of the broadcast center onto 57th and 10th Avenue to hail the cab. It didn’t take long, and the driver was your classic New York cabby.
I hopped in. We completed the trip across Midtown. And the driver did not ask one word about why a random guy dressed as Dracula was in his cab, in the middle of the day, several months before Halloween.
I got out at 52nd Street, on one of the busiest sections of Sixth Avenue. Again, I went without being noticed. No side eyes. No stares. Nothing.
When I got to Black Rock, I did get a reaction at the actual blood drive. But the donors seemed more excited about choosing the free CBS Records album they received for giving blood.
It was then that I learned why celebrities love to live in New York.
You can be Dracula and not attract a crowd.
— Michael Gargiulo
Mr. Gargiulo is a co-anchor of “Today in New York” on WNBC.
Waiting for Halal
Dear Diary:
Not long after I first moved to New York in 2012, I was in line at the Halal Guys on Sixth Avenue and 53rd Street when a well-dressed gentleman walked by.
“You guys are all idiots,” he said, pointing to the 30-plus people in the line and adding a vulgarity for emphasis.
His curt yet charming bluntness only made New York more appealing for me.
— Eric Sze
Mr. Sze is a chef and the owner of the restaurants 886, in Manhattan, and Wenwen, in Brooklyn.
Manhattan Debut
Dear Diary:
On Sunday afternoons when the weather is nice, there’s a restaurant on Columbus Avenue, Manny’s Bistro, that puts a really good four-piece jazz band out on the sidewalk.
It’s a busy stretch of Columbus, and yet the band fits right in. Manny sets tables on the sidewalk and in the street and transforms it into a jazz club, and people get up and sing with the band.
One day, I was singing with the band, and I noticed a young girl of about 5 watching very closely. I asked her father if I could talk to her and whether she sang.
He said yes, so I squatted down and asked her name.
Riley, she replied.
I asked if she liked to sing, and she swallowed her breath, afraid.
I said don’t be afraid and asked what her favorite song was.
“The Wheels On The Bus,” she said.
“Hey!” I yelled to the band “You guys play ‘Wheels On The Bus?’”
“Yeah, we play that,” they yelled back.
I held out the mic. The girl took it and began to sing. She was doing really well, but then started to falter and search for the words.
On cue, everyone in the crowd started to sing along with her. It seemed as if everybody on Columbus Avenue knew “The Wheels On The Bus.”
She finished the song, handed the mic back and said thank you.
I wondered if she realized that she had just had her first New York moment.
— Tony Danza
Mr. Danza is an actor. He appears in the Starz show “Power Book III: Raising Kanan.”
No Way
Dear Diary:
I was walking past a woman in her 20s who was dressed neatly if blandly in grays and blacks.
She was headed into an office building on 53rd Street, at 9 a.m., and screaming into her phone: “And I said I don’t know what that thing is, but it’s not going in my body unless you unplug it!”
I think about it all the time.
— Sloane Crosley
Ms. Crosley is a writer. Her most recent book is “Grief Is for People.”
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