I’m in 3rd Place!! Plus a Riot and a Prison.

A Quick Recap: The City has a contest—if you swim 25 miles before August 30th you win a tshirt. The man and woman who swim the most laps at each city pool win something else, which I found out last night is a dinner. Plus, the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place winners all get the dinner.

I am currently in 3rd place at my pool!! There’s no way I can catch up to the women in 1st and 2nd place, they have twice as many miles as I do. They must swim every day, or twice a day. Plus, I started late. (I didn’t whine when I typed that.)

But my lead over everyone else is solid. If I keep going the way I’m going I should be able to hold onto 3rd place. Unless the people behind me start swimming every night or twice a day.

In my singing book I tell the story of a riot that took place in Chatham Street Chapel on July 7, 1834. It was started by a choral society and an anti-abolitionist mob, if you can believe it. Interesting riot-buddies. Anyway, the Chapel was torn down and on the site now is, ironically, a prison. I told the story here about trying to get a picture of the plaque commemorating the Chapel, but the prison guards not only wouldn’t let me past the gate to get a picture, they both told me they’d worked there for decades and there wasn’t a plaque about a chapel anywhere. Nowhere, no-how.

So I went around and up to the plaza at One Police Plaza, walked past the benches and into the bushes, leaned over and took this picture. The arrow indicates the plaque. I just thought it would be interesting to show the distance I was from that plaque. Close up below.

Stacy Horn

I've written six non-fiction books, the most recent is Damnation Island: Poor, Sick, Mad, and Criminal in 19th-Century New York.

View all posts by Stacy Horn →

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