Thursday, January 10, 2008

Sometimes Hell's Kitchen lives up to its name

As I've mentioned before, I live in the Manhattan neighborhood known as Hell's Kitchen. It's roughly the area between 34th and 57th streets from 8th Avenue to the Hudson River.

Since I've been here, I've heard several stories about how Hell's Kitchen got its name. But my favorite version, and the most common one I've heard, involves a veteran police officer and his rookie partner. The pair were watching a small riot on West 39th Street near 10th Avenue, and the rookie is said to have muttered, "This place is Hell itself" to which the veteran cop replied, "Hell's a mild climate. This is Hell's Kitchen."

Though it has come a long way since then - and is actually a place I feel safe living in - it's the following SHOCKING story that make it live up to its namesake. This story was first pointed out to me by a source who wishes to remain anonymous. Let's refer to him as J. Wilhelm - no wait, that's too obvious. Let's call him Jim W. - a former colleague and president of the Erika Ray Blog Fanclub.

Though my source pointed it out to me first, it's come up in conversation many times with neighbors in a "did you hear about this story" kind of way, seeing since it happened a mere 4 blocks from my apartment.

Anyone seen "Weekend at Bernie's?" Apparently these two 65-year-old guys did too. And they thought they could get away with cashing their friend's Social Security check. Oh yeah - their friend was DEAD. But they were smart enough to know that their 66-year-old friend would have to be present to cash the check - so they ROLLED HIM TO THE CHECK-CASHING SHOP IN AN OFFICE CHAIR. All for a whopping $355, which they didn't get. Thankfully, they got arrested instead.

It's rare, but I am truly at a loss for words.

Read the whole story here.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

unbelievable!!!! How low can you go?