NY Lawyer Takes Public Art Project Even More Public with 24 Dates Blog
Inspired by a “Key to the City” public art project, a New York lawyer is taking 24 dates to 24 once-secret city locations and blogging about it.
The lawyer, 26-year-old Lauren Burke, says she is a “super people person” who is “crazy in love with New York City,” the New York Times reports.
The newspaper says Burke’s dating idea “united practically everything about her own personality, her current romantic needs and her whole oversharing, reality-show-loving generation.” And it says her blog has “a snappy title that might suit either a Danielle Steele novel or a locksmith’s memoir.” It’s called “Key 2 The City, Key 2 My Heart: Searching for Love One Lock at a Time.”
Burke embarked on her dating-and-blogging quest after she and her father stopped by a “Key to the City” kiosk at Times Square, where Brooklyn artist Paul Ramírez Jonas hands out keys to parts of the city that are usually off limits, the Times says. The keys unlock 24 locations such as a locker at Gleason’s Gym in Brooklyn and the baptistry at the Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine in Manhattan.
The Times trailed Burke on a date with a would-be med student. They took a bus ride to their destination, a Revolutionary War site, past White Castles, bait shops and oncology offices. According to the Times, “it was not exactly picturesque, but Ms. Burke did not seem to mind. She clapped and bounced in her seat and took pictures of everything.” And although the destination offered little in excitement, “she was ecstatic.”
It’s unclear whether Burke shares the same enthusiasm for her dates—she remained coy when asked if she has found a keeper—but she did engage in some “furtive snuggling” with the man who accompanied her to the war site, the story says.
A Google search for “Lauren Burke” produces press releases on a 2009 New York University law grad by that name who has written a report on barriers to AIDS treatment for children in China and is appearing in a documentary film about Chinese child trafficking. One release says Burke is a Skadden fellow working at a New York organization that provides services for New York youths in need.
