There are plenty of very obvious reasons for visiting the city of Manhattan. The food and the entertainment are simply superb, and the choices really are endless. But for all the times to visit New York, February might be the most dubious month. Like so many cities at this time of year, it’s really rather cold. However, like so many other cities, the cold doesn’t stop the dance, and the rhythm of the city is still strong as ever. Furthermore, there’s also something terribly romantic about New York when it’s blustery and snowy, as it shows another one of its faces.

There’s another great reason to visit in February, when the coziness of a boutique Manhattan hotel starts to beckon. On February 9, the city declared a city-wide Alligators in the Sewers Day . This was the 75th anniversary of the legendary moment when a team of workers were shoveling snow into the sewers and discovered an 8-foot long alligator living down there. It happened in East Harlem, and the singular event lead to a whole chain of stories from around the city about various bands of wild alligators lurking beneath the city surface.

Chances are really very high that this central event, that lead to so many other urban legends about alligators never really happened. There are eyewitness accounts of such sightings, and they do recur over the decades, and it might be that the recurrence is as interesting as the question of truth. There are very few experts with any kind of scientific training who don’t acknowledge that such a thing is impossible, that there’s no way an alligator could survive for very long at all. Still, the stories persist. Tales of parents giving kids Florida gators as pets, who flush them when they start to grow, have been around as long as anyone can remember.

In all of these urban legends, it’s curious to consider why they are so popular. What is the deep psychological meaning of a band of albino alligators living beneath the feet? If this were a dream, how would someone interpret it? On a metaphorical level, there’s no doubt that the idea of the gator in the sewer is real, but whether it translates into the physical realm is unlikely, although fun to talk about.

Technorati Tags: urban legends