Tag Archives: financial district

Attacked by the Bubble Man

Filed under living in new york sucks so hard
Tagged as , ,

There are these gypsy vendors near the Bowling Green subway station every night who sell ties for $5, earrings for $2, perfume for $10, candy for $1, and so on. Most of them are harmless, and indeed, I almost enjoy hearing the guy with the huge dreadlocks boom, “Everything a dollar!” and seeing the candy lady sitting at her cart and reading in between customers every day. I like to think about how many books she finishes in a week.

But every now and then, there’s a guy selling bubble guns. He’s really aggressive with people he has no chance of selling to, like young women in impressive suits and bachelors with popped collars. He repeats, “Get your bubbles; take a LOOK!” and shoots bubbles at the people who ignore him.

Last night, he was directing his bubbles right into the face of a little Japanese kid in a stroller while the parents just smiled, and I passed by without looking at him. He said, “Get your bubbles; take a LOOK!” right into my ear, and I ignored him, so he stalked after me and shot bubbles at me halfway down the stairs to the subway.

Can I file harassment charges?

Dumpy Butt

Filed under good times at everyone else's expense, living in new york sucks so hard, stuff i like
Tagged as , , ,

I don’t mean to jab at anyone’s sense of style, because I live in granny sweaters, but I spent a lot of my time in NYC thinking, “It is so sad that she spent so much time and effort to look like that.”

Most interesting designs, I think, look wonderful in theory and terrible in practice.

But even I surprise myself sometimes with the things I like these days. Like t-straps and saddle shoes, which my mom used to force me into against my will when I was kid.

Even lately, I’ve found myself not totally hating the idea of things like harem pants, which appeared in jumpsuit form in this season of “Project Runway”, looked pretty amazing, and won a challenge to end up on a Time Square billboard:


photo by Modelinia

But last night, on my way to the subway, I walked behind this girl, who proved my “terrible in practice” theory:

But I applaud her for trying.

I Was Making Fun of Her Behind Her Back, If That Helps

Filed under good times at everyone else's expense, jobby jobby job job
Tagged as , ,

I was making fun of a co-worker this morning for having something from a company called Model in a Bottle Inc. delivered to the office.

And then the mailman showed up with my Frederick’s of Hollywood package.

I still contend that mine is less embarrassing.

NYC Pillow Fight 2009!

Filed under living in new york is neat
Tagged as ,

I celebrated World Pillow Fight Day on Saturday by attending the fight on Wall Street. You’ll note that I said I celebrated and not my loyal and faithful friends and I celebrated, because while I’m generally regarded as the flaky one of the group, I was the only one who actually showed up. Boo-yah and a thousand points for me.

I didn’t actually bring a pillow with me, because you know I wasn’t going to risk mussing my hair, but the train downtown was loaded with children with animal-shaped pillows, hipster girls with pillows in handmade cases, and middle-aged couples with pillows they’d seemingly owned their whole lives. This young German-speaking couple got on the train at Union Square and bumped into me without a word of apology, so I set about hating them in my mind and then set about laughing at them in my mind when they got all confused at City Hall when the 6 line terminated and they didn’t know which train to take to continue down to the Wall Street stop. Superiority!

When I got off the train by Trinity Church, masses of people had stopped on the sidewalks to see where all the pillow-carriers were going. The street I had planned to take to the intersection of Broad and Wall was barricaded by the police, so I tried another street, which was also barricaded, and then another street, which was also barricaded. I ended up stopped behind a construction project a good two blocks away from the action, cursing the NYPD for ruining anything remotely community-forming and hopeful, and taking lame pictures like this with my tiny zoom:

The sidewalk opposite me was open almost to Broad Street, so people were crowding in and trying to burst through the barricades, but the police kept pushing them back and yelling through their bullhorns. Everyone looked so dejected coming back toward my intersection, and I was already feeling sort of down about being alone, so I decided just to call it a day and spread the word about how lame the event turned out to be.

But just then, someone slapped someone else with a pillow right beside me. And then someone else slapped someone else. And then it was all-out war, with people streaming down the sidewalk to join in the impromptu fight.

Pillow innards filled the sky as cases ripped open against heads and shoulders, and I was so glad that absolutely no one had heeded the organizers’ rule against feathers:

The police tried to break things up, but the fighters’ will would not bend, and the cops finally settled for merely separating the crowd when cars and bulldozers came through:

Pillows were thrown at windshields, but it was all good-natured fun. My favourite part of the day was when a limo rolled up to the intersection, the throng obediently separated, and just before the car could pass through, a guy unexpectedly ran along the line of people and smacked every one of them with his pillow:

THAT, my friends, is the spirit of New York City.

Unsurprisingly, Microwave Cake Tastes Like Microwave Cake

Filed under all of my friends are prettier than i am, it's fun to be fat
Tagged as , ,

Let’s not kid ourselves–chocolate cake that takes three minutes to bake in the microwave is only meant to be consumed out of desperation in the midst of a munchies crisis in the hours between 2 a.m. and 6 a.m. Or by obese people at any time. And yet my dear friend Emily, who was experiencing neither of these, asked to make it in celebration of her birth.

She sent me a link to the recipe for Chocolate Cake in Five Minutes! Monday at work, and we went out before lunch and tried to procure all of the necessary supplies at one of the delis downtown, which is no small feat if you know New York City and its tiny stores. We knew we weren’t going to find the cake flour, so we went looking for cornstarch to add to regular flour like someone suggested in the comments, but they didn’t have that except in huge bags in the back, so one of the guys had to bring us a little takeout soup container full of it. They didn’t have the cocoa, either, so we bought some packets of pre-melted Nestle’s (what?). And then we gathered everything else and went back to the office to experiment.

Surprisingly, what came out was actually very much cake. The moistest chocolate cake you’ve ever seen, at that. It wasn’t quite as sweet or as chocolatety as we would’ve liked it, but we more than made up for that by slathering it in Nutella, chocolate icing, and peanut butter. Even better than the taste, though, was watching it rise in the microwave. For the first minute, it seemed to do nothing. But at the start of the second minute, it lifted straight out of the mug like a tower and then kept on rising almost completely to the top of the microwave before it got too tall to hold itself upright and leaned off the side of the cup at an angle. As soon as we opened the microwave door, though, it sunk right back down to the top of the mug.

Pleased with our work, we then decided to microwave not just a mug but an entire mixing bowl of the stuff. And here’s the result, melted knife and all: