Things I saw in 20 minutes

I went to Freemans Sporting Club, the barber shop I wrote about in this post, to get a haircut this morning, but they don't open until 12:00 noon. So I came back home. It was an interesting trip nonetheless. Here were some things I saw in the 20 minutes it took for me to go there and back.

"Snowman Seeks Skibunny" -- graffiti on wall, Rivington Street

"Angry Fembot Army" -- graffiti on door frame of private home, Freeman Alley

"Fascism Sucks" -- slogan on t-shirt worn by a middle-aged man sitting outside the Salvation Army building

As I walked by a construction site at the corner of Elizabeth and Prince Streets, just two blocks from home, a construction worker sweeping the sidewalk flagged me down and asked if this area was called SoHo. He wore an orange hardhat and had no front teeth. I told him that it was closer to Little Italy than SoHo, and that SoHo was on the other side of Broadway.

"So if I was to tell people where I work, what would I say?"

"Well," I said, "you could say NoLIta. It stands for North of Little Italy."

He didn't like the word "NoLIta" (probably because he didn't know the name and neither might anyone else he'd care to tell) and instead asked if he was anywhere near the Lower East Side. I told him that, in fact, the Lower East Side was a merely one block away, on the other side of Bowery.

"Ah, okay," he said. "Cos I'm like, where the hell am I?!"

We laughed at the absurdity of his predicament. I imagine he's going to go home tonight, and his wife will ask, "So, honey, where did the company assign you today?" And he's going to say, "Well, it wasn't Little Italy, and it wasn't SoHo, and it wasn't the Lower East Side, and some dude told me it was a 'hood called Noriega or Normandy or somethin' like it." And then his wife's eyes will narrow, and she will say, "You weren't at work today at all, were you? You were out drinkin' with your cousin Leroy! Remember what happened the last time you drank before 5:00 PM? Remember how you lost them front teeth?"