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A Somewhat Eventful Evening
Yesterday was interesting.
9:00 am Work
12:00 Still working
1:00 Post office: FUN!
2:00 Lunch at my desk
3:00 More of this working stuff
5:30 Duane Reade (where, apparently, I stood behind the Top Chef winner, who is a chatty fellow with many prescriptions in his life. Poor guy. But a happy guy, definitely. Jazzed about something in Vegas, so if you care about Top Chef, watch out: something in Vegas is coming.)
6:00 Watching Gilmore Girls rerun with Eric’s sister, Karen, who’s visiting New York this week
7:00 En route to San Gennaro
7:20 Meandering through Mulberry. Mini-lesson: This thing only makes sense if you attended as a kid. Pina coladas, margaritas, Tom’s BBQ, and techno-for-sale hardly make sense for Celebrating Italian Church Culture. Which explains why Eric and Karen kept making those faces at me.
8:00 Dinner outside at Da Gennaro
9:15 More meandering, and a game of cheat-your-ass Feast basketball, which netted Karen a stuffed blue monkey. No jokes, please. I exhausted them all last night.
9:30 Train to Astor
9:38 Walk to 1st and 11th: Veniero’s*
(*Why pay $5.00 for a crappy cannoli, when a delicious, cheaper one is available twenty blocks north?)
10:30 Still sipping cappuccino at Veniero’s, home of the slowest service known to man
10:40 Walking home, we can really see the Towers of Light; it was too foggy from downtown.
10:50 Home again, home again
11:08 Karen negotiates with Continental to rearrange her Ike-deflected flight. No dice. She departs for her friend’s apartment.
12:00 Decompression: watching an old Friends. But, what’s this, now? I’m not feeling so great. BURRRRP.
1:00 Same
2:00 Same
2:05 Attempt to go to bed. Same.
2:25 We hear the crinkling of metal and plastic and rubber on metal and plastic and rubber. Wait five seconds. The scaffolding at the corner of 17th and Union Square East comes tumbling down. Metal on metal on metal on wood on metal on concrete. It was nice and clangy for 2:00 am.
2:26 I’m feeling worse now, visibly shaking, partly thanks to the stomach, partly to my accident panic. (I don’t like car accidents. I know: who does? I really don’t like them. It was kind of like I just crashed. I was worried about the people down there like they’re my cousins.)
2:28 First responders: undercover cops in a silver Malibu
2:31 Ambulance, fire engine, police emergency unit, another ambulance, and so on, until eleven emergency vehicles arrive, lights blaring, engines roaring, sirens wailing. I’m glad we were already up.
2:37 HUGE crowd gathering on the street, those affected and not. A group of baby thugs run out from the shadows of Union Square park to scream and jump and peer into the cab caught beneath fallen scaffolding.
2:38 A fight breaks out, can’t tell between who or why.
2:40 NYPD shoos everyone away
2:41 Recovery is under way. Treatment of a girl who appears to have been hit, and removal of those trapped inside the cab on the sidewalk.
2:45 The cabbie from the other half of the accident stands around. Scant damage to his vehicle, none to him.
2:58 The sixth episode of Jessica’s Bathroom Fun since 2:00. (Who wants to read that in between all the action above? Not I, said the hen.)
3:30 Clean-up ongoing
3:50 Crowd dwindling
3:55 Stomach has drafted the entire corpus into rebellion
4:00 We close the window and attempt to “sleep”
5:00 I shake my fist at the sheep I’ve been trying to count for the last hour. Check the window to find two remaining police cars and the poor other-cabbie, who’s been there all night.
5:30ish SLEEP
6:00 Hello, stomach!
6:10 SLEEP
7:00 You again?
7:30 SLEEP
9:07 Time to wake up! late! for work! Hello, Friday!
9:07 Scaffolding crew on-site to rebuild; already on break
THURSDAY SUMMARY: not a lot of work done, lots of street fair mostly enjoyed, lots of wee-hours street drama, lots of body rebellion, and not a lot of sleep had
LESSONS: do not eat the garlic sauce at Da Gennaro. Or the calamari. Also, maybe don’t drink the cappuccino at 11:00.
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Enforcement
Between the regular warnings that your personal property is no longer personal when you ride with the MTA, and the weekly police “drills” to get us used to seeing thirty or more police cars swarm to locations throughout the city, things are feeling much more 1984 around here.
Last night, I heard a cop scream from his loudspeaker, “PULL OVER THE CAR. … TAKE THE KEYS OUT OF THE IGNITION AND PUT THEM ON THE HOOD… NOW!”
Since when is it standard operating procedure to demand the keys placed on the hood?
I was too preoccupied watching and listening to get a good shot of the interaction, but it ended with …nothing. Not even a ticket for the cabbie. And unfortunately, since the cop stopped talking through his loudspeaker, I don’t know the details.
Sometimes it feels like they just stop people because they can. And needless to say, I don’t like that.
Last Saturday, I was coming home tired from a visit to my mother (on Staten Island). And as anyone who has to ride the ferry somewhat regularly knows, by the end of a long day, after sitting with idiots on the boat, then finding a subway closure and a longer walk than expected, you just want to get home.
So as I was schlepping three bags at a fairly good clip through the underground paths at Union Square, I was surprised to hear a police officer shout after me, “Ma’m.” Again, “…Ma’m.” And finally, with gusto, “……Ma’m!”
It seemed that he was expecting me to stop, especially since just a moment before I’d seen another three women stopped for a bag check. But this was not how my night was going to end. I’m not voluntarily turning around so this jackass can make sure I’m “safe”. It was on him to stop me, and he’d have to make a real issue of it to catch up.
So I kept on walking.
And since, in some ways, I’m still a good little sheep, I thought I should do something to make me look as innocent as I really am. So I took out the gum I’d been chewing and deposited it neatly into the garbage as I passed it, still not stopping.
There, asshole. I’m a good, non-littering citizen. But you’re NOT going to touch my bag.
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A Bicycle Built for Delivery
From a walk through the village on Friday night. In New York, something is always moving.
And how do you like this guy’s fancy man-jeans? Sexy.
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Long-Term Payoff
A cab for change, the Prius hits New York. And considering the gas prices we’re seeing, I bet this $25k investment pays off in three months.
