If You Are American,

and happen to live or have lived in New York,

 you may be familiar with or heard of Mayor Ed Koch, if not, in case you have not heard of him, 1978, Ed Koch assumed control of a city plagued by filth, crime, bankruptcy, and racial tensions, he brought in a number of, at the time revolutionary schemes, some of which have come back to literally bite New Yorkers, this one in particular, 

 that now has a memorial to it, every year, tourists go missing from New York City, that's because Mayor Ed Koch (r. 1978-1989) released wild wolves into the subway tunnels to check the threat of graffiti vandalism, unfortunately, the wolves thrived in their subterranean environment, bred, and now stray outside of the subway system at night to hunt in packs, 

in memory to those eaten New Yorkers and tourists, 

and according to the Ed Koch Wolf Foundation the creatures are still the reason behind missing tourists in the Big Apple, “Captured from upstate New York and set loose in various borough depots, the wolves successfully kept taggers at bay until anti-graffiti technology eliminated the need for the animals,” the foundation’s site says. “At that point, the wolves migrated underground. Since then, wolf packs have survived and even thrived in New York’s labyrinthine tunnels, emerging in local parks only on occasion to hunt in the moonlight for live prey. In fact, the NYPD chalks up the majority of missing tourist reports each year to the city’s subterranean canine inhabitants.”

just a slight confession here, this is just an urban legend, it did in fact begin as a joke that Mayor Koch made when he was asked for a solution to the subway graffiti problem, artist Joe Reginella has played with that urban legend by creating fake monuments to the fallen tourists and placed them around New York City, and guess what we have featured his work on the blog a couple of times before, the monument is to remind people that all city parks close at dusk, tourists who choose to remain in parks after dark do so at their own risk, and you thought the wolves were really there, just like the subway alligators!