sperm and smelly feet. ah, new york, you charmer.
There were a few interesting things I saw on today’s journey downtown:
- In both the Times Square and Union Square subway stations, there was someone playing the saw. Really? That seems pretty odd to me.
- Coming out of my subway station at home, I saw a guy ahead that I’ve seen before. He’s easily recognizable because he wears white shoes, white pants, a white jacket with a white hoodie underneath (with the hood up) and he has a white bag. I want to know his story! Every time I see him, I think of the sperm scene from Woody Allen’s “Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex *but were afraid to ask”:
did you see the movie? Parts are so so funny...
- Going downtown, the 1 train smelled awful, like someone dumped a bag full of extraordinarily smelly gym socks that had been fermenting for a month or two. I had to fight gagging.
Not the most fascinating stories today, but they caught my attention. Hope you’re having a good Wednesday…
i’m still not sure i really overheard this, even though i know i did….only in new york, man. only in new york.
I couldn’t make this up if I tried. Yesterday I was coming home from my weekly trip to Union Square, and the subways were extremely and unpleasantly crowded. At times like those, I tend to curl into myself and just try to endure and get home. But there was a young couple standing near me whose conversation was so….. well….. Here. You’ll see what I mean.
HIM: ~25 years old, tall and thin, bad skin, arrogant sneer
HER: ~25 years old, short and heavy, bad skin, sad expression on her face.
HIM: opinion opinion opinion CERTAINTY opinion opinion holding forth on inanity
HER: my Jewish boyfriend….
HIM: I am not Jewish. My mother is not Jewish, so I am not Jewish. My dad is, but I am not.
HER: but you have a Jewfro….
HIM: If you were at all an attractive person, you might be able to get this, but you’re not. You probably won’t get this at all, but one time I put on a dress and put make-up on my face and fixed my hair, and when I looked at myself in the mirror I actually got wood. I mean it, I actually got wood. I looked so hot, so gorgeous, I actually got wood.
I stood there with my mouth hanging open, staring at him. What do you do with something like that? 
i really love my city, despite it all.
Every Wednesday I go down to Union Square. This involves taking the 1 train to Times Square and changing to the N/R/Q train. It takes me about 45 minutes each way, and depending on my mood, it can be an enjoyable experience with all the craziness that’s NYC, or it can be a hellish experience with all the craziness that’s NYC. Today was such a mix, I thought I’d share:
Clash of the ethnic musicians
As I was hurrying through the big Times Square subway station, I passed the regular group of Peruvian dudes playing their Andean flutes. Nice. (And I felt smug, because I’ve heard Peruvian dudes playing Andean flutes in Cusco, and in Puno, which is situated on Lake Titicaca (giggle), which is the highest navigable lake in the world.) Seconds later, I passed one of the many roving mariachi bands. Nice. (And I felt smug, because I’ve heard them playing in TexMex restaurants in Austin.)
Then I passed a Guy With a Guitar. He was yodeling Silent Night, and then he switched to……Mandarin Chinese! Surprise!
Austin has nothing on the NYC subway system.
Donation please
Around Union Square (the NYU neighborhood), you see an awful lot of homeless people sitting on the sidewalk with little signs. They usually describe a hard luck story, they often say God Bless, and the person sitting with the sign usually hangs his head (it’s usually a man). Every year, for the past 3 winters, there has been a young woman and her dog, sitting with exactly the same sign, year after year:
Got robbed and need bus fare to get back home. And need to feed my dog.
Either she has the worst luck in the world, or she counts on people not to remember her (or care about her sign). Well, I remember her and her sign. I have a very personal soft spot for homeless people — young people most of all — but come on, girl. Show some initiative.
She wasn’t there today. In her place was a tall, gaunt white man, slouching against the building. His patter was on an endless loop:
Donate a cigarette. Donate a cigarette.
I like that! Direct and honest, no pretending about “lending,” and I can believe him. If I had one, I’d have donated (but don’t smoke!).
After the beauty
Oh sure, it’s gorgeous coming down. The snow drifts that cover the cars are surprising, and lovely. So white, so clean.
You may think, if you’re inexperienced with these things, that the worst part is
- the way it all turns gray, black, and ugly the next day
- the way it hangs around for so long
- the way the snow plows can totally bury your car so you can’t even find it
Those are bad, don’t get me wrong. Big snows in a big city have a very short half-life of pleasure.
oh no!
But here’s the worst. The snow gets piled up at every corner of every intersection. The piles can be really high. People usually stomp out a path, but it’s very murky and ill-defined.
The problem is that filthy lakes form, at every corner. Since they’re surrounded by mountains of increasingly hard snow, they can’t runoff into the gutters so they just get bigger as the snow melts, and dirtier as time goes by. It’s best if you follow someone through, so if they take a step and it’s a LOT deeper than they thought, you can try to find another route. You can usually find one, but not always. But on my way downtown today, twice I stepped (surprise!) in very filthy water, up to my mid-calf. Once, nearly to my knee.
Here’s where the rubber really meets the road. Ugg boots? No way. Beautiful suede boots? Not on your life. Leather boots? Not if you care how they look. My boots are quite ugly. For real. Seriously. No kidding, ugly. But my feet and legs (and jeans) are warm and dry, and all those fancy ladies shrieking at that one intersection probably can’t say that.
living in manhattan – hard times, man. your car gets towed and you might get bedbugs. enter: roscoe, the famous bedbug sniffing dog.
Two things happened today that are just so particular to living in NYC, so I thought I’d share. Each requires a tiny bit of background.
1 – If you have a car in NYC, as I do, you either have to pay an exorbitant monthly fee for a space in a parking garage (I’ve paid less for big apartments in other places than you might pay for a parking space in a garage), or you park on the street. That’s risky, parking on the street; I’ve had my tires and wheels stolen a couple of times. Someone smashed a window and stole all the airbags (yes, really!). Someone scratched the word “Niger” in the side of the car. Really? Niger? What’s that about. If you park on the street, you also have to deal with alternate side parking, which involves moving your car every other day. I won’t go into all those details, just know that you have to move your car every other day.
OK. Living in NYC means living on a movie set, on top of everything else. So many tv shows and movies are filmed here, which is great and awful. You just get used to watching for your neighborhood, when watching a movie or tv show. You get used to seeing all the movie trucks and gear set up everywhere. You hate it, but you deal with it when something is being filmed in your neighborhood and all the damned parking is taken up for days. So what happens is that the production company posts signs ahead of time informing you of the filming period. The signs are everywhere, and they’re posted AHEAD OF TIME. They’re supposed to be, anyway. This morning, I went out to move the car and it was gone. There were signs posted that hadn’t been there yesterday, and the car had been towed by the production company. When this happens, they do not tell you where they’ve towed the car. You just have to hang around and hope you see a tow truck, so you can ask them, and hope they know. Your alternative is just to walk blocks and block and blocks in all possible directions looking for the needle that is your car, in the haystack that is your neighborhood. Luckily, a couple of hours later I found a tow truck and was told where to find my car.
2 – Animal life. Each place in this world has its own kinds of infestation. For NYC, you’ve probably heard about our cockroaches and mice/rats. You can’t stand on a subway platform for long without having your attention drawn down to the tracks, to watch rats scurrying back and forth. You may find “evidence” that mice have been in your apartment. I’ve never had cockroaches in my place, but they’re a classic accompaniment to many apartments here in NYC.
Recently, NYC has been grand central for bedbugs. That’s a horrifying infestation, because they’re extremely hard to get rid of. Adult bed bugs can travel over 16 feet in 5 minutes. I’d heard about friends’ buildings getting infested, and I’ve been grateful it hasn’t happened in my building. Until recently. First one guy’s apartment got bedbugs. Even though we are all relatively well-educated and “sophisticated,” it was an uncomfortable experience discovering that I viewed him differently now. We all did; when he’d leave the laundry room, no one would want to use the dryer he’d just used. I’m sure he felt it, even though we all tried not to act that way.
On Monday, we all received a notice under our doors from the coop Board of Directors informing us that 4 apartments are now infested with bedbugs in our building. OK, that’s pretty frightening – and I just bought a brand new mattress, I’d hate to have to get rid of it, if it came to that. But our Board of Directors hired
Roscoe! The Famous Bedbug Dog Expert!
Roscoe at work - not in my place
He started working at 9 this morning, sniffing in all the apartments in our building. While he was in my place, I watched him work, sniffing corners and countertops and baseboard edges and anything covered in fabric – I watched a little anxiously….what would Roscoe do? Would he certify me as clean? Would he find a bedbug?
I have to say that Roscoe was adorable. You’d never find a cuter bedbug authority, anywhere. And I also have to say that I’m clean. WHEW.
What a day, man. What a day. We know what the remedy is, don’t we? KNITTING!
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