‘Blessing’ irks nabe BELL & HOWL
A bearded disciple with a bell and a cross marches around Manhattan’s East Side every Sunday morning, ringing his toll and blessing the neighborhood.
While locals have no issue with the man spreading the good word, some say he does it so loudly it could wake the dead.
“For most people, you’re out on the weekend, you’re working the whole week, you want to rest on Sunday,” said Silvia Gerber, a Turtle Bay resident of two decades. “You don’t want to be awakened by this bell.”
She said she first started hearing the bell ringer two years ago.
“I can hear it from blocks away,” Irene O’Halloran told The Post.
She said the bell is obnoxious and stands out from the rest of the city’s noise — constant emergency sirens, car horns and roaring bus engines.
“It’s not a pretty church bell. It’s a nuisance noise, and he just keeps going,” she said.
The Pope of Turtle Bay, who only identified himself only as Nickolai, parked his blue Honda Civic on East 47th Street at 8 a.m. one Sunday this month before donning his signature chime and crucifix.
For the next 20 minutes, he paraded around the neighborhood, stopping to bless Holy Family Catholic Church on East 47th Street, the Church of the Covenant on East 42nd Street, the United Nations building, and to give money to a homeless man who goes by the name of “Knife.”
“Very much evil in this world,” Nickolai told The Post before driving off in his car, which was loaded with religious iconography, including crosses, bibles and pictures of saints.
Others insist Nickolai is harmless and only adds to the colorful tapestry of Gotham characters.
“One way New York has changed for the worse in recent years has been in the decline, the dearth of quite harmless eccentricity,” Turtle Bay resident Alan Rau posted on Nextdoor in response to Gerber’s complaints. “This is what adds to the fabric of the city. Not everyone can be as ‘normal’ (i.e., non ‘creepy’) as you — something for which we should thank God.”