ALMOST CARRIE ~ It’s a Bird, It’s a Plane…

There comes a time in the life of every serious Sex and the City tour guide when she’s forced to contemplate her field’s most insurmountable theoretical quandary: What is your favorite episode?

My answer is as complicated as anyone’s, but when I’m in a pressure situation I’ve always relied on one response: “Hot Child in the City” (Season 3, Episode 15).  “Hot Child” takes the viewer on a journey through the lingering adolescence that exists within every adult as Carrie dates the emotionally stunted comic book artist Wade Adams, a man who lives with his parents and has a superhero alter ego named Power Lad.  SATC was getting a whole lot of flack during those early seasons from critics who thought the show amounted to little more than four grown women dressing and acting like teenagers;  “Hot Child” tackles the issue and turns the criticism on its head.   Plus, at the end of the episode Carrie and Power Lad get high on Canadian Supergrass (“6 times stronger than pot”), and Sarah Jessica parker just nails it.  It’s a cold soul who doesn’t find her laughter infectious in that scene.

High up on Power Lad's terrace.

Now here’s the weird overlap between life as a real New Yorker and life as a guide for a fictional show.  One day this past summer, my bus pulled up to its usual parking spot by Onieals, while I prepared to usher 55 tourists through the door for Cosmopolitans.  I have been taking tourists to Onieals without incident for seven years (it doubled as Steve and Aiden’s bar Scout), but on this particular afternoon, a staff member intercepted me with some surprising news: “There’s a guy sitting at the bar with his friends.  He was part of the show, played some kind of comic book guy, and he has no idea that 55 fans are about walk in.  I thought I should warn you.”

“You mean Power Lad?”  I asked. “I’m on it.”

I zeroed in on him immediately and draped my arm around his shoulders like we were old pals.  “Listen,” I said, “I have 55 die-hard Sex and the City fans behind me.  They’ve come from all over the world.  Would you mind terribly if I made a big deal about the fact that you are here?”

Power Lad (who is actually a man by the name of Cane Peterson and works mostly in radio) was bewildered, unaware that Onieals was a location on Sex and the City, unaware that there was any such a thing as a Sex and the City tour, unaware that his friends had set him up, bringing him in at that time of day and knowing full well that mayhem would ensue.   But Power Lad took it like a champ.  He posed for pictures and flirted and later confessed to me as I was ushering everyone back outside that it was the best ego boost he’d had in years.

That’s the thing about New York—sometimes, in the middle of your workday and without the aid of anything from Canada, you catch a fleeting glimpse of your favorite superhero.

Emily Sproch is a writer and a Sex and the City tour guide.  Each Friday, she chronicles the fine line between reality and fiction in her column “Almost Carrie.”