Culture Shock in New Jack City

I guess this entry could be considered Part 2 to the NYC weekend saga. Anyway, I just thought I'd spill the beans on a few more of my experiences in New York. I spent the day after that gut-wrenching Yankee game with my old school pal John, who goes to NYU. Since there wasn't much to see as far as a campus goes, we decided on a self-guided walking tour of the neighborhoods around NYU. We passed by the dozens of local street vendors, Thai's selling Thai food, Native Americans selling junky clothing including the token "Original Homeland Security" t-shirt, etc. From here we made our way through St. Mark's Place in the East Village, one of the areas famous for its anarchistic punk subculture. John told me though, that this was becoming one of the areas that was no longer "legit", just an imitation of what it used to be. I could sort tell. There were only a few dives on the street, with a bare minimum of punks and hobos hanging out along the way. (Though it was a nice day, they were all probably hiding out in some dark basement).

After St. Marks, we came into a small Puerto Rican neighborhood and passed a large wall with murals on it. I might add that one of which, the largest, was one of the funniest depictions of Barack Obama I've seen. It may not have been a Monet, but I must say, it had the same level of impact on me as that Shepard Fairey "HOPE" poster thats been damn near everywhere for the past six months. I guess its not until you see this sort of thing without an MSNBC ticker underneath that you realize that '08 election really mattered to people you wouldn't normally expect it to. Imagine an urban neighborhood painting John Kerry's face on a mural back in 2004. I can't either.

So we were parched and headed into a local grocery store to get some drinks. That Arnold Palmer really hit the spot as we sat in a nearby park, shooting the breeze and quietly making fun of people walking by. People watching really is a fun thing to do. Try it sometime. And commentary always helps. Even if it just involves talking about what would happen if you walked over and punched a random person in the face, or what would happpen if you ran off with a bum's bag of cans, or even making your own humorous interpretation of the conversation two people are having twenty feet away. Yeah it sounds dumb and immature, and it very well may be, but when you do it you know you'll laugh.

Following our little rest, we went in search of Chinatown. Now, John doesn't have the best sense of direction, but we still found our way there. A few storefronts with chinese characters signaled we were getting close and soon enough we were there. Not simply content with walking the streets, John and I popped into several random stores which looked interesting, the first being a music-ish store with shelves of CD's and DVD's. I say "music-ish" because none of these local retail establishments sold only one type of thing. For example, this store in particular had its chinese porn section right across from a shelf of canes and walkers. There's something you won't find at Wal-Mart. We then left this establishment and made our way into... well I'm not exactly sure what you'd call this store. It was full of dried sea creatures and herbs. Need dried shark fin? They have it. How about some dried sea cucumber? Well it doesn't smell to good but they have it as well. And of course they have the required, almost gag-gift funny, asian aphrodesiacs. I could not help but snap a picture of the funniest of these, the box labled "Best Penis" with a picture of a burley chinese man on the front. And I thought those Cialis commercials were ridiculous!

Slowly but surely we moseyed out of Chinatown and into Little Italy. Now I might add that one of the most interesting things I saw during this transition was that there really wasn't much transition at all. The only way you could really tell the demarcation line was where the little chinese lanterns that hung above the street stopped and the stringy red, white, and green italian decorations began. Beneath this, chinese shops became intersparsed less and less with the numerous italian restaurants until it seemed as if every storefront was some sort of bistro. With so many eateries so close together, the owners resorted to stationing a member of the wait-staff outside of each restaurant, beckoning couples and tourists to choose their place for lunch. Of course, no one stopped John and I. We didn't really fit the tourist look and had we been a couple, I doubt any restauranteur would want us to eat at their establishment anyway.

That was basically it for Little Italy. I'm sure we could've taken in some more but it was getting late. We headed back through the street vendors near NYU and grabbed some good ol' Pad Thai on styrofoam plates and fried oreos for dinner. I insisted that we sit on benches in Washinton Square Park that had a good view of a group of NYU students practicing dramatic readings. The "stage was set" for yet another session of people watching and quiet mockery.
"What if we ran up and stole their books?"
"What if we started belting out that Macbeth passage we all memorized in 10th grade?"
"What if we just stood up and yelled 'YOU SUCK'?"
The hypothetical ideas bounded back and forth until we were scratching the plates where our Pad Thai had once been. With another hilarious day in the books, I bid John adieu and headed for the Brooklyn-bound F Train that was calling my name.

...though it may have been more fitting to have said "Ciao!" or "再见" or "ลาก่อน"