Street vendor Duane Jackson was back hawking purses yesterday, less than 24 hours after alerting police about the suspicious-looking Nissan Pathfinder smoking across from his table.
“That was too close,” he said. But the disabled Vietnam veteran took it in stride: “I’ve been in this spot for 13 years, from the pickpockets to someone trying to give you a fake $20.”
By yesterday afternoon, Times Square had returned to its usual buzz with a peace rally and hawkers offering tour bus rides. Sylvia and Philip Kanish, from Reading, Pa., sat in the same spot yesterday they had Saturday night when fire trucks and police came rushing in and crowds came running past.
“Someone yelled, ‘It sounds like a gunshot,’” Sylvia, 69, said.
They’ll return to New York, just as they have many times since Philip was robbed here 15 years ago, they said.
“To us, this was a true New York experience,” said North Carolinian Julie Christensen, 38, who after being barred from returning to her room at Times Square’s Marriott Marquis stayed with a friend of a friend in Harlem. “It was an adventure. It was kind of like something you’d see on TV.”
