My CurioCity: Greg Young, Godzilla, and Madison Square Park
At Storytrail, we love discovering curious stories about the world’s best cities and sharing them with you in our fun little videos. Visit www.storytrail.co to watch them!
In “My CurioCity”, we talk with travelers and historians about their quirky experiences in cities around the world. NYC-based writer Greg Young of The Bowery Boys shares his experience of unrequited love, Godzilla, and Madison Square Park:
“So this is a little sad but it gets funny,” says Greg Young about his favorite New York City dating horror story.
“So I had a date with someone I really liked. We were supposed to go see a play, but I had gotten really sick. I didn’t want to cancel, but I also didn’t want to be coughing and sneezing the whole show, so I took a ton of cold medicine. Like, a ton. Three times the normal dosage of Sudafed. I was basically stoned.
After the play, we walked around and I started confessing my love for this person in a cold medicine-induced stupor. He said ‘I think we should just be friends’.
We continued the date and walked to Madison Square Park. At the time, they were filming Godzilla there. The one with Matthew Broderick. The really, really bad one.
So we sat in the park and watched them film the scene where Godzilla is stalking through Manhattan, and the characters are trying to lure him to the Flatiron Building with a gigantic pile of fish.
So it’s 11pm or midnight, I’m high on Sudafed, and here’s Matthew Broderick scurrying around a 6 foot tall pile of fish stacked in the middle of 23rd Street and Broadway, trying to avoid an imaginary CGI Godzilla.
Between the date, the cold medicine, and the movie magic, there was a lot going on and I started to cry. It wasn’t that I was sad, it was more like there was too much stimulus. My date stayed with me the entire night, until I got tired, told him to leave, and went home.”
To Greg, his Godzilla date night was “incredibly magical” (aside from the crying and the unrequited love) because it typifies why New York is so distinct from other places. “That’s the sort of magical thing about New York. It’s a mini-Hollywood. You can turn a corner and see a TV or film shoot.”
When Greg is not out on disastrous dates, he is working on The Bowery Boys, a project he co-founded with Tom Meyers. Both a blog and a podcast about New York history, The Bowery Boys has developed a cult following across the country, and on June 21, they released their first NYC history book, The Bowery Boys: Adventures in Old New York.
“Part of my belief, and what we do as The Bowery Boys, is if you do know history about places, it makes them more valuable, and your interactions with them more valuable.”
Here at Storytrail, we couldn’t agree more.
This story is part of Storytrail “My CurioCity” series written by Abigail Levner. Visit www.storytrail.co to discover more curious city stories from around the world. We launched with Rome in June 2016, with New York, Los Angeles, London, and more coming soon. To get in touch, email abigail.levner@storytrail.co.
To learn more about Greg Young and the Bowery Boys, visit www.boweryboyshistory.com. “The Bowery Boys: Adventures of Old New York” is available June 21, 2016 wherever books are sold.
