Fame is not for faint hearted people.
This week, I found it when I got a taste of celebrity life thanks to the armed bodyguards who chased me and my peers wherever we went.
On a Wednesday night, my friend Savannah Larson and I decided to go out for a drink. And I decided to give a test drive to an on-demand private security app called Protector, which I wrote about last week.
A trio of former NYPD officers (our bodyguards Chris, Taylor and George), dressed in jeans “tactically casual” outfits and slim-fit black windmills, appeared at a meeting spot in Times Square at 9pm. Carefree girl embarks on the night out.
Taylor walked ahead of us as Savannah and I locked their arms and started smashing through Times Square. George and Chris behind us are ready to move between our left and right sides.
They made the busy city streets easier and windy.
“Yo… who is it?” We overheard a single gawker as 33-year-old Taylor lightly tweaked him outside the Times Square subway stop.
We sent two black SUV drivers and waited at the bushwick bar where the protector carried us, opting to ride the subway with our bodyguard instead.
NYC's subway system has never felt safer.
Chris, Taylor and George surrounded Savannah and I took a “N” train southbound to Union Square station, then loaded with a Brooklyn-bound L to Jefferson Street.
“I'm turning to this,” said George, 43, when he revealed a disturbed woman on the ground on one subway platform when the subway car door temporarily opened. Ta.
Once we arrived in Bushwick we walked to Bar Carousel on Wycoffe Avenue. There, Savannah and I scooped up the wine.
When we were ready to go, the trio escorted us into one of two black SUVs parked us in the corner and began returning to our Savannah apartment in Greenwich Village.
Little did we know, the “paparazzi” were ready to attack.
As our SUV turned the corner near Washington Square Park, Chris, sitting in the passenger seat, began to look at Taylor in the seat behind him.
“Look at this guy behind us. Chris said, instructing driver Julian to make the final right turn, then the one on the left.
However, the operation did not throw the black Honda out of our tail.
Chris called George, who was riding with Anthony, another driver provided by the protector, in his second SUV, to inform him of the potential threat.
As if the driver expected Beyoncé and Jay-Z inside, Honda began to bring us closer and more and more aggressive.
“Julian, to your right!” Chris cried out that the vehicle was trying to pull up with us, holding the front license plate.
At Chris' instruction for the next 15 minutes, Julian pounded the gas, throttled the signal, rocked between the lanes, made a fast turn, and cut off the Honda.
When Chris asked if one of us could google the nearest NYPD district, Savannah and I released an uneasy grip in each other's hands, inside the 10th precinct of West 20th Avenue nearby I made it possible to head to.
Outside the precinct, Julian barely places his SUV in the park before his fearless guardian left, blowing his flashlight into the Honda windshield, and was surprised by the male driver in the passenger seat and his companions. I illuminated my expression.
Savannah and I looked at the window behind us as three officers joined our bodyguards and repeatedly asked the duo inside Honda to roll the window.
Suddenly, the driver began ignition and the car lights were on.
“Girls, leave now, now!” Chris said, opening the door to his SUV and throwing it.
Inside, Chris said he found something in the Honda's rear seat that looked like camera gear.
“They are probably paparazzi,” he said.
“What a terrible day – we're not famous, and now they're at the police station,” we meditated. The police eventually drives the unidentified duo
Savannah and I are finished. There was plenty of life and time to get home.
I later asked Nick Saras, founder and CEO of the Protector App, if either he or his peers set up a 15-minute chase, but he said they were just like us. He claimed he was surprised.
“We had nothing to do with Chaser, but we weren't involved in anything like that,” Saras said.
Fame often appears to be attractive, but we loved our parents, but my boyfriend later made a good point.
