NY Cowboy- 6-23-2003
Broadway Cowboy


A couple of weeks ago at about 7 p.m. we were cruising up and down Broadway in my Buick, looking for the store Judy remembered that had blueberries for $2 a pint and came upon a cowboy in full cowboy work gear with his horse on the west side of Broadway at 94th Street.

Judy whipped out her digital camera and took a picture [which i am unable to post here because technical difficulties] as I exhorted her to "get in the buildings... No one will believe this is New York unless you get the buildings into the picture..." The Cowboy had parked his horse at a parking meter, and without putting any quarters into the meter, went into a fruit and vegetable market to buy carrots and Romaine lettuce, which he fed to his horse. There is a car parked on the expired meter, behind the horse, but it moved out just after we took the picture. The person with the car came across Broadway, glanced at the horse, got into the car and pulled out when traffic was clear, without any acknowledgment of the horse obstacle, other than avoiding it and not blowing their horn. The pedestrians were equally blasé- about one in 3 actually looked, and the only people besides Judy and I that stopped were some tourists from out of town who actually engaged the Cowboy in conversation. (We could tell they were tourists cause they had on pink and blue pastel jersey shorts and tops that tourists wear.) I was double parked in front of the Whole Foods supermarket and didn’t want to leave the car, so I didn’t find out the pertinent information like "where are you from...where does your horse sleep at night?" We found the blueberries at Barzzinis, but when we went back to see the cowboy again he was gone- disappeared into the sunset over New Jersey.