Photo by Wikipedia
So I went to NYC to hustle in art form yesterday. Caught the bus up and back. It’s funny, every single time I go to NYC I come back thinking the same kinds of thoughts…
How do people live there?
Who pays $7.34 for a few chunks of fruit?
I feel dirty. Really dirty.
How do the homeless sleep on the streets?! In such a city as THIS?
My legs/toes/ankles/back/shoulders hurt.
Upon returning to D.C.: Ahhhhhhhh. The suburbs.
Quite honestly I think that NYC is so much hype. It’s a concrete jungle island that’s ridiculously crowded, shockingly expensive (and extremely tax high) and the people are innately cold and aloof and suspicious. There’s a bustle in the air, of people going to and fro to work, to home, to restaurants, to shop, to sightsee, to audition, to basically say they had a NY experience.
There were people asking other smokers if they could please buy just one cigarette from them because the price apparently is now, like, $12-$15 per pack. Yet everywhere–and I mean everywhere–I saw people smoking. There was smoke being blown on me on every block, around every corner. I did some quicko math. $12.00/pack X 4 packs/week = $48.00/week.
$48.00/week X 4 weeks = $192/month.
For cigarettes.
Then there was the weirdo guy, clearly with diagnosed mental illnesses, (said he’d been in “Bellevue”) who “took” to me, following me around for perhaps an hour. He told me in a whispery voice that he lives in the subway, that he has a couch down there, that he has a rat this big. He tried to lure me into his supposed subway home. At some point I truly wondered if he had bodies underground. I kept picturing Hannibal Lecter. Seriously. He even made mention about “making a roast” and asked me if I had a frying pan. At some point he told me he was going to outright “French kiss” me right before bringing his face closer to mine. YIKES. There’s so much more to the story but the aforementioned will suffice. There were other strange-ohs but I’ll just share The Rat Boy story for now.
By the end of the day I was wondering if I was some sort of freak magnet. Perhaps my suburban/ “southerness” (being from D.C. and all) made me attract the freakozoids. Perhaps I didn’t have the typical hardened NY look and appeared more approachable. Or gullible. Though the latter I am so not. Otherwise, I would’ve ended up underground on The Subway Boy’s couch. With carrots and baby potatoes as garnish.
As usual with my summer trips to NYC, I saw too many girls who were dressed quite tourist-inappropriate in heels and tall sandals and of course flip-flops. Flip-flops are so not walking shoes. Why, you have to scrunch up the ball of your foot to even keep the shoes on with each and every step. Tennis shoes, people, tennis shoes. Sure, they’re not as cute but at the end of the day your shins won’t have you hobbling. See, when I’m navigating through massive crowds of people for nine hours straight I prefer to not have heeled women walking slowly in front of me blocking the sidewalks like ducks because their Herald Square shoe choice is challenged.
Gosh, listen to me; I sound like one of them now.
Right Brain Confessions 
