Manhattanhenge, the twice yearly phenomenon where the setting of the sun aligns precisely with the  28.9 degree offset from true east-west of New York’s streets was marred by the injury and subsequent hospitalization of a popular 3rd Avenue bar owner.

“I was over by the  jukebox talking to one of my regular customers and he told me about this Manhattanhenge thing. ‘It’s a thing of beauty’ he said.  ‘28.9 degrees.  The sun sets right down the middle of the block’ he said.  ‘Don’t worry.  They close the streets so you can take pictures’ he said.  Yeah, I know.  He’s a nerd.  Probably shouldn’t have listened to him.”

And off our popular bar owner went, down to 23rd street with his camera.  It was here that he met the crosstown M23 bus.

“I was on my usual route, heading east on 23rd when I see this fool in the middle of the street with a camera” said the driver of the bus, a 20-year veteran with an impeccable safety record.  “I yelled at him, ‘what are you…a nerd?  Get out of the road you fool!’ but he just stood there staring at the bus.”

And so he was run over.

The first ambulance on the scene was set to take him to the Hospital for Joint Diseases when the bar owner, injured and in shock, started rambling on about “28.9 degrees…….28.9 degrees offset from true east-west.”

“He sounded like a nerd, so we took him to Bellevue instead” said the ambulance driver.

Once in Bellevue he was locked in the Nerd Isolation Ward, where mechanical instruments plucked and prodded him.

“We won’t let the nurses in that ward” said one doctor.  “It’s bad for morale.  The nurses leave crying because the nerds are talking about books and math or their mother or cats.   You know, whatever nerds talk about whenever they are around women.”

The bar owner, quickly realizing his situation raised holy hell.  “Jesus, Mary and Joseph. I am not a nerd.  I just know one.”

Once his non-nerd credentials were established, “He owns a bar for Christ’s sake,”  our popular 3rd Avenue bar owner was transferred to a regular ward, where a trio of nubile 20-something nurses in white uniforms gave him sponge baths and attended to his needs day and night.

From City Hall, newly enthroned Mayor-For-Life, Mike Bloomberg vowed to use the next 30 years of his reign to stamp out nerds in the five boroughs.

“I will not stop until every nerd in New York City has been banished to Nassau County” he said.  “First cigarettes, now nerds.  The evil never stops.  And once the nerds are gone I’m going after the Estonians.  Now if you’ll excuse me I have to go cut the head off some chickens and interpret the blood patterns.”

The nerd in question, who after all was responsible for the injuries to our popular 3rd Avenue bar owner has been banned from all bars in Manhattan.

“I don’t mind” said the nerd.  “It gives me more time to read and devote to my blog.  Right now I’m reading Ken Kesey’s ‘Sometimes a Great Notion.’ Have you ever read -“

The nerd was going to say more, but this reporter, outraged by his nerdiness, beat him unconscious with my microphone.

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