Tag Archives: midtown east

Can My Karma Withstand Altercations with Two Old Ladies in One Week?

Posted by plumpdumpling on October 13, 2010 – 12:00 pm
Filed under fun times on the subway, funner times on the bus, living in new york sucks so hard, my uber-confrontational personality
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I was alone at the bus stop yesterday morning and standing at the far corner of the glass enclosure, which is where I always like to stand when it’s available, because it shields me from the wind coming off the river. A younger man approached, and rather than walk past me to also stand in the enclosure, he stood just on the outside, as if he was lining up beside me. A few more people walked up as we waited, and all of them also stood outside in line, and I was thinking, “What a civilized people we are.” I moved to the other side of the enclosure so all of them would feel free to move over and come inside, too.

When the bus pulled up moments later, it stopped directly in front of me, and I casually stepped forward to claim my rightful position as first on, when out of nowhere, this older lady rushed over from the right and attempted to intercept me. I have no idea how long she had been waiting there, because the right side of the bus stop enclosure is covered over with an ad for an opera singer who looks like Russell Crowe. All that was clear to me was that I had been the very first person at the bus stop, so no matter how long she’d been hiding, I’d been there longer.

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The Only Person to Apologize in All of NYC Still Gets Trash-Talked

Posted by plumpdumpling on October 11, 2010 – 12:00 pm
Filed under funner times on the bus, living in new york sucks so hard, my uber-confrontational personality, why i'm better than everyone else
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A friend recently asked me how I managed the adjustment from smalltown Ohio to big city culture, and I told her I was prepared for everything but how truly out-for-themselves people are in NYC. I told her that in Ohio, there seems to be more of a collective conscious, a bit of an “if I do this horrible thing to this person, everyone’s going to find out” mindset, and a bit of an “if I do this nice thing for this person, both of us will benefit from my niceness, and the world will be a better place” mindset. She asked if I think NYC has changed me, and it just so happened that I had the perfect story to illustrate my very definite yes.

Last Saturday afternoon, my boyfriend and I took advantage of the end of Summer/start of Fall weather with brunch at Bar Boulud, a stroll through Central Park, wrestling with giant stuffed dogs at FAO Schwarz, and buying a pound of chocolate-covered everything at Dylan’s Candy Bar to start getting our blood sugar prepared for Halloween.

We hopped on the downtown M15 bus around 4:30 p.m., and it was packed, as usual, with elderly people, because only elderly people leave the house before 8 p.m. on weekends. We stood for a couple of stops, sat down for a couple of stops when two seats were freed up, and then stood back up when we saw a feeble-looking couple board the bus.

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When the President Comes to Town

Posted by plumpdumpling on September 27, 2010 – 12:00 pm
Filed under living in new york sucks so hard, politicking
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I think that when I lived in Ohio, I was neutral-to-positive about the United Nations. I actually remember defending it to someone–my dad?–saying that even though it allows itself to be basically powerless and just for show, it’s a good idea at its core.

But now that I’m dating someone who lives literally steps from the UN headquarters, I understand that it was created entirely to take pity on people from lesser countries, give them good parking spots for their giant gas-guzzlers, and allow them a place to prance around in the ridiculous costumes of their homelands.

That’s right. The UN General Assembly meeting made me a jingoist.

It was all just so annoying. The neighborhood was littered with cops not doing anything, clumped in groups and lounging on whatever was nearby. Their undercover comrades sat on the park benches and pretended to read books, believable but for the wired earpieces sticking out of their collars. All of the streets were blocked off to non-UN traffic, so the buses we use every day were rerouted, which means we actually had to walk amongst these animals. And of course none of the bus stops actually had signs on them saying the buses weren’t stopping there.

Tuesday, I got to 42nd Street after work, and these guards were standing on the sidewalk behind some barriers, but I was like, “Yeah, I live here,” and tried to saunter by without incident, but of course one of the guards took a step backward to block me and gave me this whole run-around before sending me one block north, where there were no guards. Reeeeeeeeeal intense security, guys.

Wednesday night, I came up out of the subway, and pedestrian traffic was stopped to let one motorcade of black SUVs pass west and then another motorcade pass east on the wrong side of the road. White dudes in suits were leaning out both sides of the cars, yelling at every delivery boy and street-crosser in sight. It had to all be for the President, right? Sirens wailed and horns honked, and you could see all of the Secret-Service-looking guys crammed into the backs of the vehicles despite the tinted glass, and I stood in the middle of it like, “OH MY GOD THIS IS AWESOME.” Because I am from Ohio and am easily impressed by shiny things.

Oh, UN.

My Doctor Don’t Know CPR, but He Knows How to Treat Me Right (Eventually)

Posted by plumpdumpling on September 9, 2010 – 12:00 pm
Filed under creepy boyfriend obsession, good times at everyone else's expense, living in new york sucks so hard, narcissism, why i'm better than everyone else
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I step onto one of the elevators in Kamran’s building on Friday after work, and a guy in blue scrubs comes in after me. To me, his matching cotton uniform means the guy is too lazy to own real clothes, but I understand that the rest of the world assumes he’s some sort of “medical professional”. This woman slips in just as the doors are closing, so they open back up, and the three of us stand there awkward and silent while we wait for them to close again, because it’s super-rare for someone to talk to you in an elevator in NYC, no matter how cheerfully you smile at them as they enter.

She’s about my age. (Maybe a little older, because people my age can’t afford to live in Kamran’s building unless they have really morally-inexcusable jobs on Wall Street, or at least that’s what I tell myself as I return to my Brooklyn hovel.) She’s wearing a navy blue shift dress that looks expensive, she’s covered in chunky jewelry that looks expensive, and all of the bags on her arm are from expensive stores. I see her slyly eying the guy in the scrubs, and I think about how she probably thinks she’s really hot and deserves to date this spiky-haired dental hygienist posing as a doctor.

So we get to her floor first, and she makes this production of tossing her long blonde hair and holding her bags in her krelbows in that way women always do in movies when they’ve just finished a shopping spree with their friends and are now going to brunch at an outdoor cafe to drink mimosas and laugh at things not even they actually think are funny. She bounces off the elevator, the whatever-he-is looks after her, and for a moment, you know the two of them are totally mind-jerking-off about one another. But just before she’s out of sight, she loses her grip on her very long umbrella, and it gets caught on her I-swear-they-were-patchwork heels. She trips and almost falls down but catches herself, and I almost laugh out loud but catch myself.

And usually, this is where I would accidentally do the same thing six floors later, but I didn’t need to be all bumbling in front of this guy, because I had my own doctor waiting for me at home.

Or, well, he came home from work, like, 4 hours later. But I still felt awfully superior sitting alone in his apartment eating homemade frosting.

Why Life is So Great Right Now

Posted by plumpdumpling on July 30, 2010 – 12:00 pm
Filed under creepy boyfriend obsession, everyone's married but katie, living in new york sucks so hard, no i really do love ohio
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1) Last weekend, I was out all afternoon on the hottest day of the year, and Kamran texted me at one point to say that he thought the air conditioner had stopped working. I arrived at his apartment later with a couple of iced coffees just to make fun of him and his overactive imagination, but no, there was definitely warm air coming out of his vent. We spent the remainder of the night sitting perfectly still on the couch, afraid that moving would allow the sweat rivers dammed in our hair to unleash on our foreheads. It. Was. Miserable.

Way wore than the night we lost power in my apartment, because Kamran lives in a studio with windows on only one side of the room, so there’s no way to create a cross breeze unless you open the door. And I wouldn’t have been entirely opposed to propping the door if New Yorkers weren’t so infamously curious about other people’s habitats; you know every single person who walked by would’ve stopped dead to watch us gnawing on ice as we watched Manhunter.

I texted my best friend, Tracey, about it, and she suggested I fly to Ohio and enjoy her central air. I also considered going back to my own apartment, figuring that a single wall unit for all 900 square feet was better than nothing, but I didn’t want to leave Kamran alone with his take-home law school exams. We went to bed around midnight, but Kamran woke up at 2 a.m. feeling like he was having trouble breathing and thinking we’d need to go to a hotel, which made me EXCITED. But then he remembered a box fan hidden in the back of one of his closets and aimed it right at us so we could at least not die during the night.

Two days later–after his exams were all finished, of course–his landlord graciously had a guy come and install a brand new unit with a timer and remote control so we never have to leave the couch again.

2) You may think of me as some huge important chef thanks to my starring role in Julie & Julia and my wildly popular food blog, but the truth is that about the most I do is heat up some hotdogs for breakfast in Kamran’s convection oven. But his oven went out in March, and we kind of didn’t bother to do anything about it, which means I’ve been heating up my hotdogs in skillets.

Skillets.

But early this week, when the new air conditioner went in, the landlord also sent him a new microwave. A huge one, with a light underneath to illuminate the stovetop, and a vent on top to keep the apartment from smelling like pigparts.

3) Last night, I met Kamran to go shopping for toilet paper (romantic!), and as we were leaving Duane Reade (a pharmacy that got its start in NYC at the corner of Duane Street and Reade Street–clever!), I realized that it was my chance to buy my favourite generic lipgloss, which I’ve been without for several months now but have been too lazy to walk an extra block to the Duane Reade for because the CVS near his house is so much nicer. I forget sometimes that the littlest things can make such a huge difference to my happiness.

4) I’m in Ohio for the weekend for my stepsister’s wedding! This means I’m the only one of the five of us kids who isn’t married. Last time I was home, I told my grandmother that Kamran and I are going to California to visit his parents early next month, and she said, “Oooooh, are you going to pin him down while you’re there?” And I said, “Um, haven’t I done that already? We’ve been together almost four years now. The only thing we haven’t done is move in together.” She didn’t like that.


And you?