Who ever thought that the song, ‘New York, New York’ would turn out to be NYC’s Swan Song?
When the song, ‘New York, New York’ arrived on the scene in 1977, like countless others, I belted out what I thought were the immortal words of the song whenever I heard it.
So many of us back then thought that the slogan ‘I Love New York’ would last forever.
Who ever thought that the song, ‘New York, New York’ would turn out to be NYC’s Swan Song?
Back when I was belting out the words of the song, my only connection to New York was the first time I saw it, having been sent by the Toronto Sun to cover Canadian Stephen Lewis’ address about Afghanistan to the United Nations.
I rated the speech as awesome, until two Afghani, New York-based professors pointed out, that it was the same speech for three years running.
A small story pointing that out was quickly filed to the Sun, and before I could return to Toronto, Lewis and his wife, a Toronto Star senior columnist had gone to my editors demanding to have me fired.
But that’s NOT the most important part of the story. Feeling that I owed my editors another story to fill in the space from my trip to NYC, I tried to quickly come up with a replacement article.
Feeling my panic, the professors arranged an interview for me with a man I never heard of. His name was Donald Trump, and during that interview, he spoke lengthily about a skating rink he was fighting to have built in New York City.