Goin' to Hang With the Gays, Yeah!!!

A bulk of our (so far, completely fascinating) J-school experience involves covering individual beats--each of us reporting on a separate neighborhood for the entire time we are in the program. We were given our assignments for our neighborhood beats today. We knew this was coming, so we were all a bit excited and anxious to find out where our second homes would be for the upcoming months. The very informal ceremony of handing out neighborhoods was held with a tiny bit of fanfare--one of our professors (Wayne Svoboda, an amazing writer and Fulbright scholar) stood at the podium in front of the whole class, called each of us by name and then picked our neighborhood out of a hat. I was a little scared that I'd get some place out in East Queens or the Bronx--somewhere that would not only be difficult to get to, but that I've had little to no experience in. So imagine my surprise (and luck!!) when the prof says, "Kathryn Lurie," and then picks "Manhattan District 4" out of the sea of neighborhoods. Some of us had our laptops open to identify these areas immediately, so I was able to see that I, in fact, have Chelsea and Hell's Kitchen! I sooooo lucked out! (My sympathy goes out to Megan, who lives in Staten Island and got assigned to Far Rockaway.)