Britical

 

NYC

 

 

"We’ll do all the DIRTY work. The city’s SEXY new address where MONEY can buy you everything."

So trumpets the vulgar poster the has been wrapped right around a tiny little corner lot one block north of me on 30th Street and Second Avenue. With Dirty, Sexy and Money in exactly those colours, in caps, with the "can" underlined. Huh. The building will be called ‘Darling Tower’. Really. And though the anouncement’s been stuck there for over two weeks, no one has defaced it or marked it in any way. This is a shame, and one of the less good features of New York in the 21st century. After all, it is such a tempting target. Maybe everyone here is a bit non-plussed by the un-irony of the thing (unlikely) or wondering why they’ve so blatantly copied the title of the TV series ‘Dirty, Sexy, Money’. Possibly they can’t think of anything to write…or, things being how they are around here, can’t write. However, as I mentioned in my last entry, my building does stand at the glittering apex of the DIRTY methadone clinic, Bellevue mental facility, and the SEXY nine hundred bed mens’ shelter. Not sure where the MONEY comes in, but given the economy, the slender, glass tower’s investors may find their MONEY has bought them not a little unhappiness. As to the location, the sign should probably say:

‘We’ll do all the PEEING on your stoop. The city’s latest UGLY, empty tower where METHADONE can make you forget it all.

Or something.

Anyway, don’t mind me, I’m just jealous. In my last week’s entry, I skewered the new people in my neigbourhood who have brought their vomity binge-drinkin’ ways down here from the frat-infested, grey environs of the far East 70’s and 80’s - only to find myself actually moving up there. On October 1st, too, the very date ‘Darling Tower’ starts to go up. Nice.

Next month, instead of strolling downtown or across town to see friends who will refuse to trek up to visit me, I will have to get acquainted with either staying home or catching the 86th Street crosstown bus, the express train and the L train. Which can be a hard train to find in the confusion at Union Square station. My tip? Just follow the ugly people (since a shocking amount of them seem to live in Williamsburg).

 

It’s fascinating to see how everyone both inside and outside the Brooklyn bound train struggles valiantly, risking limb if not life, to hinder the closing of the train doors for others - mere strangers! - who are always running at breakneck speed down the stairs so they don’t have to wait for the next train an hour or so later. Thank God I take the L that goes in the other direction (to the West Side of Manhattan) whose schedule seems much less infrequent. The transit authority here, the MTA, has cannily (for once) surmised that there is a greater volume of passengers want to leave Brooklyn than go there.

 

Using a process of elimination (not to mention fear of ending up on the wrong one), I can instantly tell if a train at the platform is Manhattan bound or Brooklyn bound. If it’s the latter, all the people clamouring to get on will be the aforementioned plug-ugly ones. And although they (male and female) no longer do the ironic t-shirt, Pabst Blue Ribbon beer, bumfluff semi-goatee thing - they remain quite perceptibly ugly in newer, more creative ways. For example, these are the concave-chested, pseudo-pauvre guys who still think wearing heavy-rimmed glasses is "cool", when in fact it has only ever been even a bit cool if you are a bit model gorgeous. That way, everyone around you gets to marvel at how you get away with such an ugly accessory and indeed, how it must be because the things serve to throw your shattering beauty into greater relief, which in its turn probably renders you extra blowjobs. I have never seen anyone like this heading for the Brooklyn train.

(Talking of accessorizing and blow-jobs, this reminds me of when, years and years ago, I reluctantly agreed to go for the weekend with a gay friend to Fire Island, which is a pointless spit of land with some pine trees on it. As two ferries came into sight across the water, the crowd immediately divided into two groups. The men getting the ferry going to the area known as ‘The Pines’ were good-looking, if in an overly-groomed, neurotically-accessorized way; your more high-end gays, if you like. We two, of course, were bound for ‘Cherry Grove’ and were thus stuck with the other group: a ragtag bunch of the conspicuously transgendered and the chubby, with a couple of lesbians in big Izod shirts thrown in for good measure.)

So, with Dirty Sexy Money setting up shop right up the street, even my stretch of the neighborhood is changing - and fast. But yesterday I discovered some perverse consolation and a very urgent reason to leave as soon as possible: I was in Starbucks and the girl at the cash register had some sort of mangled balloon party going on on top of her head. I said, "Why…?" She knew exactly what I meant and exclaimed, "Oh! The clown was here!! She lives round here." I was aghast: The Clown? Who. Lives. Round. Here. The balloon…"hat" was indication enough. Not even in a clever animal shape - an amusing deer, say, or a dog - the nonsensical tangle suggested that the maker of the thing was unhinged and dangerous. Worse, I knew with complete and vicious clarity exactly who she was referring to. And I took it as a sign! Because for years I have seen this orange fright-wigged person waddling along 28th Street. I always cross the road to avoid it. I have also, over the years, comforted myself with the thought that it must just have a LOT of kids parties to attend around here for some reason, and surely lives elsewhere - perhaps taking the L train in from Brooklyn every day. And here I will add that I am not ashamed to admit that like any normal person, I am coulrophobic: that is, I am very frightened by clowns, ventriloquists’ dummies, or anyone else that looks like a sub-par mortician has had their way with them. But according to the girl at Starbucks, such a creature lives in my neighbourhood!

Way up on the Upper East Side, then, it will be OK to leave some of this behind: the murderous clown…the dirty, sexy, money Darling Tower…the stinking piles of men passed out on my stoop. I will have new men on my stoop - doormen, in fact, who will be there to help keep out the clowns, the unwashed, the badly accessorized - and also to collect all the gifts and flowers that, during the 17 years I have lived here, presumably must have got lost or stolen somehow. There will be new places and people to constructively criticize - and that is very exciting. And since I used to work on the UES for a time, I know what I’m talking about when I say: watch out people who talk back to the cinema screen all through the movie, watch out gentlemen in those silly pink Nantucket trousers, and watch out blonde ladies with triple-wide strollers who don’t say thankyou when you hold the door open for them. I am on my way, coming soon, going up October 1st: and if not DIRTY, SEXY, MONEY - then definitely HEL-lo, Daahlings!!

Copyright Britical 2008. All Rights Reserved.

 

NYC

 

 

Someone once suggested that a person may be permitted be slow, or stupid - but not both. They must choose. For quite some time here in New York, the ever-expanding pharmacy chain, Duane Reade, has managed to uphold the principle that people do not in fact have to choose at all - and that they can indeed multitask by being not only simultaneously slow and stupid but also overtly resentful. And be paid minimum wage for it. Indeed, I would venture to say that Duane Reade have made it their raison d’etre (as anyone working there would, let’s face it, probably never say).

To step into a Duane Reade is to be constantly reminded of this sorry state of affairs, as any New Yorker will tell you at some length. Speaking of which, waiting in line, only to reach the head of the queue 20 minutes later and, as you’re about to have, say, your box of tampons and large bar of chocolate either loudly price-checked or rammed slowly into an unnecessary little plastic bag, and despite your assuring them you have your environmentally sound one but thanks anyway, they will stop, and turn, oh so inevitably, to Shaniqua, to ask for the fucking key. Always. (Exception: the one at 32nd Street & Second Avenue where everyone is efficient, almost desperately helpful, and one lady always calls me "sweetie" and "baby", which seems about right to me, if all a bit suspect to any of you.)

If you don’t live in New York, you can be grateful that none of this will mean much to you. The company, whose stores infest our city in a deliberate campaign to deprivie us of alternatives, has large trucks which sport a big red and blue slogan which gaily pronounces: "Wherever you go, there we are!" As if that’s a good thing. As if, to most New Yorkers, it does not taunt us with the very root of problem itself. Not to mention that it sounds like something they nicked from a 12 Step programme warning addicts not to "take a geographic" in a vain attempt to escape their tortured soul ("Now look, Brad, as your sponsor, I know from when I myself fell off the wagon and started drinking again right after moving to Rio that ‘wherever you go there you are’… blah, blah, blah… burp…" etc.).

I live, with some disgust, as I may have mentioned before, in the middle of three blocks that are immune to gentrification. Within them lie a fatal triumverate of methadone clinic, Bellevue Hospital (mental outpatients galore), and 900 bed mens’ shelter (a sweet deal there, ladies, oh yes). So when Duane Reade opened a store next to my building a few years back, even they closed up shop and scarpered only a few months later. Surely a first for them, they have not ventured back in since.

Outside this Duane Reade DMZ, then, there has been plenty of construction and so-called gentrification. The "outer" neighbourhood, as I will refer to it, is now full of the sort of frat sports bars you used to find only way up in the most easterly of the East 70’s and 80’s. Those fine, upstanding residents have now taken their parents’ rent cheques and moved down here instead. So when I passed a building with a light green and white façade on Third Avenue the other day I barely glanced at it, assuming it was a Whole Foods or yet another stupid yoghurt shop. The next day, though, I noticed there had been a sign affixed to it: ‘DR Express’ it said. Come again? What fresh oxymoron of a horror was this?? I am not quite sure what they’re getting at with this: could it be a huge admission of guilt..?

Presumably, Duane Reade’s new "express" stores will now hire those who are a goodly bit more swift, yet still stupid and resentful. Like Nascar drivers. Whatever their dishonourable intentions may be, I now find myself looking perversely forward to my next trip to the pharmacy - even if the experience will now all be over in a resentful, stupid instant.

 
Copyright Britical 2008. All Rights Reserved.