每个人都能拿到纽约的荣誉钥匙

MELISSA BLOCK, host:

Think about the phrase: Key to the city. That ceremonial key that mayors bestow on heroes and celebrities. Well, what if everyone could have a key to the city and you could bestow it on anyone you wish?

That's what's happening this summer in New York City, as NPR's Margot Adler reports.

MARGOT ADLER: I've always wanted a key to the city ever since I was a kid and watched New York mayors bestow them on dignitaries. The city's current mayor, Michael Bloomberg, has given keys to the ** Lama, to the New York Yankees, but as he told a news conference...

Mayor MICHAEL BLOOMBERG (New York City): Those keys are only symbolic. They actually don't open anything.

ADLER: Yet this month, everyone has the authority to give out a key to the city. In fact, they've made 25,000 of them, and the keys are not symbolic.

Mayor BLOOMBERG: These keys are actually functional. They are master keys that unlock padlocks, steel gates, post office boxes and secret compartments across the city.

ADLER: It's a public art project by Creative Time and the artist Paul Ramirez Jonas.

Mr. PAUL RAMIREZ JONAS (Artist): Welcome everyone. You're in the line to the key to the city.

ADLER: There's actually a process you have to go through to get your key. You line up at a kiosk. You have to choose a partner, a friend or a stranger, and you go through a ceremony signing a big book, giving your key to the other person who gives you theirs.

Mr. CRAIG SNYDER (Filmmaker): I, Craig Snyder, bestow the key to the city to Martin Fiasconaro in consideration of being the educator of the day in Times Square. Do you accept this key to the city?

Mr. MARTIN FIASCONARO: I absolutely do.

Mr. SNYDER: Then by the power temporarily granted me in this work of art, I, Craig Snyder, award you this key. All right, congratulations to you both. You're now official holders of the key to the city.

ADLER: Once you have your key and your passport, which lists all the sites and how to get to them, you can visit most of them all summer. One site is only minutes from where you get your key. It's a box on a street lamp in the middle of New York's Bryant Park.

Ms. IYA MAGRE: We literally just got our keys about five minutes ago, and we just thought, oh, Bryant Park is right here. Let's go check it out.

ADLER: Iya Magre is a college student home for the summer, and she found the lamppost and the attached box.

Ms. MAGRE: It's just a little inconspicuous green box, and then you open it up with our awesome special keys and there's a small light switch and it's entirely surrounded by notes and business cards, and all these really cool stuff that we are going to explore while we wait for this light to turn on.

(Soundbite of laughter)

ADLER: Magre has flipped the switch, but one thing they don't tell you is it takes a long time to turn on - minutes. But suddenly...

Ms. MAGRE: Something's happening. There is the beginning of an illumination.

(Soundbite of laughter)

ADLER: It may seem silly, but most of us have never turned on a city street lamp, so it's fun. Each key opens 24 sites - a locker in a gym, a garden in an ashram, a baptistery in a church, a cemetery and a Faberge exhibit at the Brooklyn Museum.

Our next stop, the home of New York City mayors - Gracie Mansion. Nine mayors have lived here. Mayor Bloomberg does not. You have to go on the tour.

Musician Robin Goldwasser is ready.

Ms. ROBIN GOLDWASSER (Musician): I was hoping to find the ghost of mayor's past.

ADLER: According to our passports, our key will open a bedroom closet in the mansion. As the mayor puts it...

Mayor BLOOMBERG: You know, there's rumors maybe of ghosts in there. Who knows?

ADLER: It turns out there are no ghosts or mayors in the closet. There's a portrait and an original check written in 1797. While a few are disappointed, most admit they would never have gone on the tour if they hadn't gotten their key. The main purpose, to get people to see parts of the city they've never seen, achieved.

Margot Adler, NPR News, New York.

(Soundbite of music)

MICHELE NORRIS, host:

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