"White people really DO eat fried chicken..."

"Harlem Grandmothers" circa 1910, a decoration in the 125th St. & St. Nicholas Ave. subway station.

Harlem is a world unto itself, a world that is slowly becoming more and more familiar to me. I live just on the cusp of Harlem, in a strange little bubble that is created by and surrounds Columbia University. My street is rather quiet, mostly full of Columbia students or retirees, but a mere two blocks away lies 125th street, which is where Columbia ends and Harlem officially begins, at least west of Morningside Park.

Coming from my rather sheltered upbringing in my tiny mountain town, 125th street is still quite a novelty to me. For example, growing up in Colorado, I had never seen a sew-in weave shop, and on this one street, there are at least 20 of them that all offer affordable miracles in the matter of an afternoon. The ladies who come out of these establishments seem to glow as they walk out into the world, admiring their new lovely styles in store window reflections as they pass. The world on the street, aside from being filled with fashionable Harlem ladies, is a confluence of so many sounds, sights and smells that it can be a little overwhelming. For as many weave shops exist, there is an equivalent number of soul food restaurants and fried chicken cafés that offer hearty aromas as you pass by.

A few days ago, while running some errands on 125th, I decided to stop in one such establishment and sample the local cuisine. As is true most of the time when I'm out and about in this neighborhood, I walked in the restaurant and looked like some sort of albino in comparison to all the other people around me (I blame all of my ancestors for being from cloudy places and having no reason for pigmentation). One thing that applies to most situations in Harlem, is that rarely is anyone ever quiet or reserved in public. Everyone just shouts their business to everyone else in full voice, and that's just the way it is. Over the rumble of the crowd, I ordered my small box of chicken strips and went happily on my way. Everything in the world seemed pleasant enough; I had finished my errands, I now had a hot box of fried food to eat and while in line at the chicken place, I had just heard a very juicy story about a man named Terrell and some woman with a name that sounded like the combination of several small countries, all slurred together.

As I walked back toward my apartment, a man on a street corner, sitting with some of his friends, started to point at me and laugh. My first instinct was to look down and make sure my fly wasn't unzipped. All clear there. I then licked the inside of my mouth to make sure I didn't have a hunk of biscuit wedged in between any of my teeth, it wasn't that either. I wondered what it could possibly be. All sorts of strange emotions and junior high school flashbacks started flooding into my head; memories of embarrassing traumas from gym class or awkward social situations (of which I had many). Why was this man pointing at me and why were all of his friends laughing? Finally, he stopped laughing long enough to utter a few words, motioned to his friends and said "See, I told you. White people really DO eat fried chicken..." As they continued laughing, I walked on holding my box of chicken and breathing a sigh of relief, having avoided any embarrassment other than being quite noticeably white.

Although I often stand out here, I enjoy the neighborhood. I love seeing ladies in colorful flowing dresses wearing beads and cloth head dresses majestically gliding down the sidewalks. I love the little carts on the street selling coco helado on hot days, and all the little kids with their pocket change swarming around them. I love the park on the way to the subway that has the same little group of old ladies socializing each afternoon. I've picked out a favorite old lady of the group, she is always wearing a fancy hat of some sort. I look for her, specifically, every time I walk by, hoping to see which hat she decided to wear that day. I wonder if eventually I will become a routine part of the little neighborhood scene that people will see as a familiar piece of their day. All I know is that, so far, I have at least been able to confirm one man's theory about the dietary habits of my own people.

Shiny Sparkly Things...

Family picture in Dominguez Canyon circa 1989, dressed in our desert finest.

Sometimes I like to walk down Fifth Avenue in the evenings, in moments of Holly Golightly-inspired nostalgia, and look at the window displays in all the magnificent shops lining the streets. Sometimes this can be very difficult to do without becoming involved in an incident of physical danger brought on by directionally challenged tourists and bad camera angles that just happen to always intersect with your rib cage or chin at the wrong moment. More than once, I've had my brushes with near doom at the hands of cute Asian families or high school students exiting tour buses and flashing their cell phone cameras at everything. Even with all of the perils involved, when I am too antsy to go home for the night, but too poor to do anything that costs money (which is nearly always), I take my chances on the hazard-filled sidewalks and admire things, through the glass, that I could never, in a million years, justify owning myself.

I like to walk up from St. Patrick's Cathedral, all the way to Central Park South (avoiding the horse excrement) and then head toward Columbus Circle, looking at shiny sparkly things and the shiny sparkly people who actually buy them. Part of the fun is judging these people, and telling myself that it's much better to be poor and simple, staying grounded in reality, than it is to have everything in the world be actually attainable. It's always nice to be deluded about things like that, telling yourself ridiculous lies about how miserable these people probably are with their chauffeurs, fine dining, extravagant homes, health care, etc...  Feeling the hunger pains in my belly while walking by plates of food worth more than my whole life somehow seems like a triumph after enough of these little proletariat truisms run through my head. Money can't buy happiness, after all, or so say the people who don't have any of it...

One day, I ventured inside of Bergdorf Goodman, deciding for once to see what things looked like in these high-end stores without the glass barrier between. Aside from the mother and daughter from Jersey City who yammered on behind me, it was like entering a world where everything was bathed in some sort of heavenly glow and and joy was tangible and available to anyone with enough credit. When I made it to the top floor, home furnishings, I saw an older lady with her daughter examining several china sets and debating over which would be the most appropriate on their Christmas table this coming year. When I was a kid, we had a special set of Christmas Tupperware cups we would bring out each year for our festivities. Half were red, half were green, and they all had some sort of kitschy little white holiday design stamped on the sides in true 1970's fashion. We would fill them with store-bought "Holiday Nog" that my mother lovingly diluted with skim milk. The only debates that arose were generally less about the fine dinnerware, and more about who got to drink the olive juice left over in the can. I wondered if these ladies in Bergdorf's ever argued about who got to drink the last of the olive juice.

As I continued further through the home furnishings, I saw a married couple admiring a very lovely kitchen table and discussing the pros and cons relating to how the table would effect their living space. To me, the table looked very nice and quite sturdy, and then I thought of the table in our kitchen that my father used to support the engine of a broken-down Volkswagen microbus one bitter winter. It was extremely cold that year, and I remember there being a lot of snow that never seemed to stop falling. Somehow, my mother gave in and allowed the rebuilding of the engine to take place over several days in her kitchen, where she just sighed and looked the other direction, ignoring the thick black grease that ended up covering every surface within 5 feet of the pile of mechanical parts. I wonder if the husband in front of me was taking scenarios like that into consideration whilst admiring the craftsmanship of this fine dining table before us.

After I'd seen enough pewter and mother of pearl to last me for a good long while, I headed back down the series of escalators to leave the store. On my way down, I was accompanied on the moving staircases for 5 floors by two teenage girls discussing their upcoming summer vacations and what they'd have to buy in preparation. They went through a list of all the essentials like shoes, jewelry, more "seasonal" designer handbags, cocktail dresses, etc... The only summer vacations my family ever seemed to go on were backpacking trips in the desert. I remember to get us excited about it, my mother would surprise us with things like new flannel shirts, neon-colored flashlights or wool hiking socks. I think it was the flashlights that worked the best, especially my "hot green" flashlight that fit perfectly into my awesome "hot green" fanny pack. I imagined what these girls would do on a backpacking trip and how they'd look roaming about the desert in their cocktail dresses and new Jimmy Choos.

After a little chuckle under my breath, I finally made it to the ground floor. I said goodbye to the crystalline counters filled with beautiful little objects that shone brilliantly like mountains of diamonds under a sunset of heavenly-crafted lights. Although it's good fun to take a peek at this strange alternate reality every now and then, I am always quite happy to exit back into a world where things don't sparkle and shine quite so much.

Employment and other forms of self-betrayal...

"The Subway" by George Tooker

I can remember the excitement of having my very first summer job when I was 15 years old, back in my tiny hometown in Colorado. I still recall the giddiness of going to work for the very first time (I think my mom dropped me off), wearing my new and untarnished uniform complete with the clip-on name tag and over-sized bubbah hat, not to mention the thrill of conceptualizing making my very own money at a whopping $5.00 per hour. That lasted for about 5 minutes, and then the dinner rush started and I couldn't shove fried chicken into boxes quickly enough to satisfy the insatiable appetites of white trash families with rancid screaming offspring who critiqued my performance at every turn. I realized that day that sometimes being employed can be more important than having dignity...

Since moving to New York, I have applied for at least 200 different jobs, everything from being a gallery assistant to working retail to dog walking for rich white people. After dozens of interviews and correspondences with potential employers, I have come to two conclusions: I've over-educated myself beyond any possibility of practical employment, and I'm too inexperienced for anything that I'd actually enjoy, or hope to enjoy doing. I've also learned that I'm horrible at interviews and I'm not convincing at improving the truth.

One morning I found myself in an area of Brooklyn called Dumbo, which rests cozily beneath the great stone arches supporting the Manhattan Bridge. I walked down some newly gentrified street lined with once productive old industrial buildings now converted into "lofts" and bourgey retail spaces, approaching a job interview with a company called Royale Concierge (yes, spelled with the "e"). I knew it was a bad sign when the first thing I saw upon exiting the elevator was a piece of paper taped to the wall that said "Royale Concierge applicants wait in elevator area, DO NOT sit in the guest seating area." So I waited, leaning against a brick wall, trying to muster all of my good job interview charisma (which was not much) until a thin abrupt-looking man came out and hastily prodded me over to a small glass room where he and his stern-faced associate proceeded to ask me a barrage of questions about why I felt like I deserved to exist, much less seek employment as a desk attendant in a luxury condominium complex. By the end of the interview, feeling a bit violated, it was surmised that I am a person with "ambition," and people with ambition do not make very good front desk attendants in luxury condominium complexes.

Being ambitious, and desperate, I decided one day to attend an "open interview session" with a very trendy and upscale hotel in Chelsea next to the High Line. I had sent in a resumé in advance, and the posting mentioned "headshots appreciated, but not required," which should have clued me in a bit on what I was getting myself into. When I got to the building where the interviews were to be held, I was corralled into a room full of at least 100 of the most beautiful people I had ever seen up close. I was suddenly very self-aware and very conscious of my thrift store shoes, vest and tie that I had worn to look "professional" amid a sea of very up to the minute designer fashions. They brought us in groups of 10 at a time to a room with a long re-claimed barnwood table and two very suave-looking gentlemen sitting at the head. After making polite introductions, they explained that they were looking for people with "personality" and a "unique look" to match the character of their hotel and its clientele. The next few minutes seemed like some sort of bizarre Real-World audition special when they asked us to go around the table and tell them "our stories." I found out that a lot of out of work models and actors seek employment in hospitality and that in many cases, everything you were taught in grade school about inner beauty and self worth is bullshit when trying to obtain employment in Chelsea. Needless to say, I am too short and have too much of a receding hairline to have ever been considered as a viable contender.

It is amazing to find the limit of the depths to which you are willing to stoop when trying to become "employed." You really learn the amount of abuse you're willing to take before you just snap and run out of a room crying and cursing the day that money came into being. You also, at least in my case, learn just how many people from New Jersey are willing to commute long distances into the city, just to say they work in Manhattan. All in all, my great struggle paid off. I've finally obtained the title of "employed." I'm now selling my soul, 7 days a week, split between 2 jobs, to make enough money to pay my rent and eat sparingly and occasionally, sometimes. Thus my New York cliché continues as I starve myself into a loosely-sustainable Manhattan lifestyle. Ah, isn't life grande....

The romantic misadventures of Ernest, and other Subway tales...

A lovely heart shaped map of the NYC Subway system, illustrating my affections.

In my relatively short time as a resident of New York, I have come to the conclusion that riding the Subway is better than having cable TV (which, for the record, I do not have). In no other place do all of life's idiosyncratic and bizarre tendencies come to a head so abundantly, than in a crowded subway station, especially after 11pm. I have come to relish the entertainments the Subway affords me each day, and have come to think of different stations in different neighborhoods as simply a way to change the channel and pick my own genre of live human theatre.

One of the many charming features of the Subway, aside from the specific and pungent aroma of the stations in the heat, is the fact that one can see everyone from beggars to bankers to aspiring socialites all crammed together like over-sized pickles in an inadequate jar. Men, women, children and the folks somewhere in between, all are forced to interact without acknowledgment, trying to maintain each of their quasi-unique socio-cultural/economic identities as they also attempt to avoid any unnecessary molestation. Much of the time, a quiet sort of Puritan reverence is observed by most passengers, just trying to make it to their next stop without having to make eye contact with another living soul. This is all a noble hope shared by many, but if one is to ride the train for more than about two stops, there's always some character who ignores the awkward, vacuous and utterly impersonal rules of the American personal space bubble and this is when things get interesting.

A couple of weeks ago I was waiting for the train in the elevated station near my building. I sat down on a wooden bench next to a fatigued looking woman and her three equally fatigued children, ranging in ages from about 4 to 10. Soon the sound of athletic shoes on pavement bounding toward the bench caught my attention. The shoes and hasty footsteps came from a man, panting and out of breath, dressed in a very fabulous lime green velour track suit now approaching the emaciated mother of three. She rolled her eyes as he said "Yo, baby, we gotta talk!" The unamused woman responded back, "Ernest, I ain't got no more words left for you." For this, I turned off my iPod, knowing that the show in front of me was much more interesting than my current playlist. Ernest, who's name was shouted loudly and repeatedly, and the nameless woman proceeded to argue for several minutes about the perils of their short-lived romance, which, obviously, was on its way out. Apparently there was some dispute over train tickets from Yonkers, a trashy gift unworthy of a lady, AND another woman whom Ernest protested (a bit too emphatically) that he didn't actually know. As the happy couple argued, the three forgotten children seemed to melt into the bench, obviously a routine they were well accustomed to by now. By the time this mini telenovela-esque episode dissipated, I came to my own conclusions that neither party had argued their case effectively, and subway voyeurism is wonderful. Without resolving anything, Ernest ran off in a huff yelling "forget you!" to the the scene behind him.

Another day I was taking the train down to the Lower East Side for my internship, when track maintenance ensued and an entire train packed with mid-day passengers was stuck in the middle of the tunnel for at least 15 minutes. There was an old homeless woman in the back corner of the car, directly across from me, precariously perched like a pigeon on a makeshift throne of garbage. She was literally shaped like the number 7, her neck and shoulders came to a sharp 90 degree angle with her weather-worn head bobbing along parallel to the ground. She was dressed in rags and was filthy. What she was doing with her garbage throne, is still a mystery, but just as the train lurched to a stop, she woke up from her trance, and ritualistically produced a bottle of rubbing alcohol from one of her bags of garbage. With a theatrical flair, she began dumping rubbing alcohol on herself, the floor of the train car, the seats, the walls, her garbage throne, and the feet of innocent bystanders. She then proceeded to wash the entire affected area with her disgusting, claw-like hands, taking the utmost care and insuring that no surface was left un-cleansed. Half the car immediately moved to one side, gasping for air as the rubbing alcohol fumes permeated the static prison that now kept us under this old woman's dominion. Once she felt satisfied with her work, she then resumed her silent perch atop her piles of trash, taking little notice of the bewildered stares from the other passengers.

Along with these more notable scenes are just the average, everyday rantings of drunks, lunatics, religious fanatics and people who have just stopped caring about the consequences of social impropriety. Riding the trains is not only a mode of transportation, but a rich and unique cultural experience that only New York can afford in such a particular manner. Just like everything else in this city, there is never a dull moment when riding the subway.