Every year, two so far, Lorraine joins the staff at Forbes.com in welcoming contestants for the Boost Your Business award of $100,000. Entrepreneurs compete online and in person to convince venture capitalists that they would make the best use of the award. Lorraine’s job is to work with each of the five finalists the day before to polish up their pitches. I get to tag along to offer my perspective and to help her enjoy a few days in New York. If you watch the video you will see our cameos. Look at the end for some glowing words about Lorraine. You can also look at each of the contestants’ pitches and even vote for your favorite. I thought the Honey Wear people had the best pitch.
We went a few days early and found ourselves in the middle of the annual New York City Columbus Day Parade complete with marching cops and firemen, musical floats, politicians, and high school drum and bugle units. Not just New Yorkers participate. There were police officers and sailors from Italy. and lots of Italian cops from New Jersey. One county even sent its jury transport bus to be in the parade (in New Jersey jury security is very important and they are proud of their measures). We were at the very beginning of the parade so we got to see the various parade personalities in their ceremonial sashes interact. Here is my slide show of the parade, or at least the beginning. I got a kick out of the fact that even the sanitation workers have a dress uniform, green of course.
The hilarious thing about the Columbus Day Parade is that despite the fact that it is in The Big Apple, there is a decided small town feel to the floats and the marching units. Even the Teachers of Italian have an entry. I spotted one news crew doing its location standup in Italian, obviously for an audience in Italy.
I got to see my first Broadway show, the musical Mama Mia. I remarked to myself that these singers and dancers were pretty good, but wait, this is Broadway! I thoroughly enjoyed the experience although I have yet to go buy any Abba albums. To demonstrate the crossroads of the world that New York is, the couple next to us was French, the people behind us were Italian, the ones in front were German, and the ones in front of them were Swedish.
To show how New York has improved over its reputation we walked back to our apartment from the theater. The streets were well lit and we felt entirely safe. We stayed in a condo on 10th Avenue in the neighborhood once known as Hell’s Kitchen. We rented the condo by the night from a connection Lorraine has.
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