Katte Ray

Colleague called 311 while I went into the building to find a building manager. He said the grate belonged to the MTA so only they could go down.

We’re in FiDi so an MTA office happens to be across the street. I went there & found some wonderful ppl who told me about their marriages & found me the engineers who worked in the building

The engineers came & looked but bc the grate was across the street, they said belongs to the MTA .org not MTA building. They told me to go into the Bowling Green station & ask for the station manager.

I did. Ticket booth guy said they were only available 8-4. As I was leaving the station, I ran into th building manager who was looking for me. He wanted to tell me that actually the grate was Con Ed.

Fuck if Con Ed is going to help me. I’ve lived in NY for 13 years doing battle with their customer service, there’s just no way.

So I go to Duane Reade. There are no wire clothes hangers but there is a heavy duty measuring tape & duct tape.

Colleagues bring me a magnetic paper clip thing that i bash on the sidewalk to get the magnets out. I tape them to the bottom of the measuring tape & lower it down v slowly, many times. The ring is not magnetic, I guess.

So then it’s just me & the measuring tape with duct tape on the bottom & irregular subway train breezes down in the grate. Bc I have a measuring tape, I know it’s 11.5 feet.

I bring up a lot of dirt from the bottom of the grate. I push the ring around, sometimes out of sight but I’ve locked onto it.

I’ve been practicing this unique maneuver for about 30, 40 mins when finally I get the tape directly on the ring & begin to pull it up.

There is a crowd around me now, cheering me on & yelling that I should go slower, faster, left, right. I get it all the way to the top, but it’s going to get knocked off when I actually pull the tape through the thick grate.

My colleagues try to stick their hands into the grate but their fingers aren’t long enough. Mine are pretty long so I tell everyone to shut up and push as much of my hand down as possible.

In one movement, I pull up on the measuring tape & grab the ring with my other hand.

There were so many ppl I met this afternoon, building managers & a shoe repairman & Duane Reade employees & quite a lot of the MTA & strangers on the street who tried to help. This ring meant something before, but now it feels like the whole city is part of it

Lessons learned: get your rings sized correctly, & your hacked-together taped-up tools are more effective than navigating bureaucracy.