Elephants in the Closet

Madison Square Garden, albeit an architectural monstrosity, is the large indoor stadium in Manhattan. Pretty typical for a stadium I suppose - elliptical in shape, thousands of seats, and surrounded by a scattering of seemingly endless stair towers (I guess I always have those faraway seats at the top) all around.

Last year, Delta and I had gone to attend a hockey game in MSG. We were walking down the *seemingly endless stair tower*, and were probably somewhere between floors 16 and 15, when we noticed a small, non-descript door in the corridor. Broom closet, I figured. Probably wouldn't have noticed it at all, if the stair tower hadn't been entirely devoid of other interesting things to look at. There was an MSG employee next to us, and he noticed us looking at the door.

"There's elephants in there," he said mysteriously, indicating the door.
"Eh?"
"Behind that door. There's elephants. That's where they're kept when the circus is in town."
Elephants in that little broom closet?

So anyways, it turns out he wasn't kidding. Or insane. Or disposed towards awkward humour. It turns out that in truth, when the circus is in town and preparing to perform at the MSG, they keep the elephants in this large room high in the tower (the ellies are brought in through another somewhat larger door I assume).

But that was a year ago, and in this day and age of information overload, I had all but forgotten about it, until yesterday. I was walking by the MSG yesterday, when I noticed a large tent set up outside.

Imagine, if you will, the intense crush of population density in Manhattan. And now imagine this density at it's absolute zenith, which is always concentrated around the MSG (not coincidentally, situated right next to Macy's). Now imagine a huge tent right on the sidewalk, in this crippling peak of human density. Forcing people to walk around and bump and generally bumble about flounderingly.

This is what I saw yesterday, as I passed the MSG. Which reminded me that the circus is back in town. Which reminded me that again, the elephants are in the closet. :(