No, you cannot bounce in the streets

On any given weekend in the city one can easily find a street fair blocking a few intersections.  Don't get me wrong- funnel cake, stuffed animals, unnecessary paraphernalia for sale- it's all in good fun.  A couple of weeks ago, I walked out my front door on a beautiful Saturday afternoon to find one such fair occupying my residential street.  As I tried to escape as quickly as possible from the hoards of people and screaming children my route was blocked by a blow-up monstrosity in the shape of a bounce house castle.  The least they could have done was put it on a flat surface so the kids don't come tumbling out the front.  No one ever said carnivals on the streets of New York were safe... or fun.

No, you cannot match your doll

It’s always a fun moment to open my email and find a gem like this.  My friend forwarded a photo taken on the subway of a man looking completely comfortable wearing a pair of python pants and a turtleneck while holding a doll in his lap with a matching ensemble. 

That was a sentence loaded with things that are wrong. 

I’m not sure which to address first, the outfit or the doll.  Let’s ignore the turtleneck, as torturing and unnecessary in September as it may be; no sane grown man should feel at ease walking out of his apartment in a number like this with a twin mini-me doll in tow. I wonder if the man is jealous that they happened to have a full python outfit to fit the doll but not one in his own size?  I venture to assume he made the outfits himself because I have yet to come across a store in New York that sells this type of pairing, though I’m sure St. Marks has something very close.  I would also like to note the innocent subway riders seated nearby, who seem to be trying very hard to ignore the fact that they are in the presence of a person with agalmatophilia.  As strange as it is, this is just another example of a moment where you almost allow yourself to get worked up about the ridiculousness of the situation, then remember you’re in New York and, frankly, this isn’t the strangest thing you’ve seen today.

No, you cannot leave me barefoot

The month of August was a whirlwind as I was rarely in the city.  I was sure in all of my travels that the stories of real people doing really ridiculous things would flood in, leaving me with a mean case of temporary carpal tunnel from all of the blogging to be had.  Funny enough, it took coming back to the city that never sleeps and hearing a co-workers morning commute horror story to confirm that New York never fails to deliver great material.

It was Friday morning; everyone woke up praising the weekend Gods because, though it was a short week due to the Labor Day holiday, four days is really all any sane person can take.  As I was logging into my email and getting the day started, I overheard a co-worker relaying a story about the shoes currently on her feet and how they were not her favorite.  Never missing an opportunity to distract myself with a convo on shoes, I asked her why she wore them if they did not suit her taste.  It was not the time to be asking this question.

Earlier that morning as she stepped off the express train to cross the platform for the local, a distracted commuter stepped on the back of her shoe, causing it to come right off her foot and fall through the very small space between the train and the platform.  The almighty subway voice is continuously reminding people to ‘mind the gap’ when stepping off the train, which is virtually ignored seeing as the ‘gap’ is really only 5 inches wide.  The man pushed right past her running towards the closing doors of the local train, not even offering a quick yet heartless apology.  As it starts to compute what has just happened, my co-worker was faced with a fight-or-flight situation, options including:

1. Catch an uptown train back to her apartment, where the station is five blocks from her front door. 
2. Make a mad dash for the local train as previously planned.
3. Jump on to the track, retrieve lost shoe, and use super upper-body strength to propel back on the platform.
4. Cry.

Because New Yorkers tend to take the fight rather than flight options, said co-worker goes with #2, giving the consequences of this choice a few more stops to set in until reaching her final destination.  Once in Union Square, she is forced to hobble onto the platform, up the subway stairs, and through the concrete jungle they call a park, all with one shoe.  Every female in Manhattan knows the cardinal rule: you may be out on the town in your cutest pair of 5-inch stilettos, to which no surprise will kill you 2 hours in.  You will form blisters, wobble at the ankles, even chance mild bleeding, but at no cost will you take off your shoes and walk barefoot through the streets of New York.  This is not college, people; there are REAL germs here.  Knowing this, my co-worker really had no choice but to hobble to the nearest store to obtain an intermediate pair of anything in order to get through the day.  Being 8:30 am, the nearby H&M’s and Gaps of the world were not yet open for business, leaving just one option- the Payless Shoe Source an avenue and 2 blocks away.  Though the possibility of contracting a mild foot fungus was high, she walked tall- past the Green Market vendors, past the bum outside of the McDonald’s, past the piles of trash which had been leaking their guts onto the sidewalk since 2pm the day before.  She just kept walking.  Poised as a petunia, she was almost there when a naysayer with no heart yelled, “Hey, where’s your other shoe?” as he passed her by.  Clearly this woman did not leave the house and forget one shoe.  Did this man also yell to the guy who walks around with a cat on his head or the woman who pushes her rainbow-colored poodle around in a shopping cart? Did he ask them why they did these strange things?  No, he did not; he decided to zero in on the one thing that, though odd, was more than likely not the product of crazy town thinking.  Ignoring this defeating question, she made it to the Payless where the cheapest, work-appropriate shoe left much to be desired.  After shelling out unnecessary cash, she finally found herself in the office, explaining a story about why these shoes just weren’t her favorite while I questioned why her foot was not currently soaking in a vat of hand sanitizer.  In hindsight, knowing where the original decision to catch the local train would take her, I’m pretty sure the slim possibility of death in option 3 now seems more appealing.