Tag Archives: Brooklyn

If You Want Your Bartender to Love You…

7 Apr

…please bring cash.

Seriously, guys, it’s easy. Alright so let me just admit one thing: it is easier for me than it is for you. I make some percentage of my income in cash so I don’t require a trip to the ATM to keep my reserves up. It is always just sort of, there. It’s a point of pride for me really. And any lack of cash is a source of serious embarrassment. I am a bartender so cash sort of comes with the territory. For the rest of you who receive paychecks through direct deposit and make all your bill payments automatically on some pre-decided day of the month, a trip to the bank might seem annoying, unnecessary even. But if you go out to bars, and especially busy ones, the trip is well worth a little chunk of time out of your day.

So for one thing, we are not all like a Starbucks. (Yes, I understand that Starbucks does not serve booze – yet. Hang with me here.) You know how at Starbucks you can go in, order your grande whatever the fuck you drink and then hand them your card for the $5 not-so-delicious concoction they hand back to you? Well, the same doesn’t hold true in your neighborhood bar. Please don’t walk in, ask me what the cheapest thing is (already a super big no-no) and then hand me your card. I will not run it. And then when I tell you that there is a credit card minimum —  a fact that, by the way, is written in like 6 different locations, one of which is above the ATM that is provided for your convenience — do not tell me that it is illegal to have a credit card minimum. Believe me, that does not help your cause. Not only have I heard that argument more times than I care to remember (I worked in a bar frequented by both lawyers and law students for years) but I honestly couldn’t care less for the following three reasons:

1. It isn’t my rule, it is the rule of the place in which I work and if you have a problem with it you can bring it up with the owners who, by the way, also couldn’t care less.

2. It is an incredibly empty threat. You know it and although maybe you don’t think I know it I actually do, in fact, know it. Do you think any lawyer worth their weight in salt is going to take the time to bring a bar to court for having a credit card minimum? Maybe more to the point, do you think that I think any lawyer worth their weight in salt is going to take the time to bring a bar to court for having a credit card minimum? I mean, you probably do think I would think that since you brought it up with the hopes that it would have the desired outcome of me running your credit card for a $3 bud bottle which makes me sad for you. You really ought to stop going through life underestimating people.

3. Credit card companies are doing just fine without them forcing small business to pay astronomical fees (I’m looking at you, American Express). Here’s the thing: you like your local bars, right? You like them because you become friendly with the bartenders, sometimes maybe you even get a drink for free or a Peep dropped in your beer at Easter time (kidding, that’s only when I work). You like that you know the owners because it makes you feel like you are in the inner circle. Don’t make it harder for them to survive because you are too lazy to walk to the ATM down the block. And certainly don’t complain about how you don’t want to pay a fee for pulling out cash because you know who else doesn’t want to pay a fee? The person you are trying to get to run your card for 3 bucks. The person who, by the way, doesn’t only have to pay that fee the one time. Don’t forget, you aren’t the only one paying with a card. That fee happens over and over and over again.

And here is the other thing. So I work in two, occasionally three, different bars. They are all incredibly different. One is a sports bar with a kitchen that serves better-than-average pub food. One is a super small, super local spot with a diverse beer selection and delicious grilled cheese sandwiches. And the last one turns into something of a hip-hop dance party on the weekends. The one thing they all have in common, though, is that people want their drinks and they want them in a timely fashion. This is easy on a low key afternoon but considerably more difficult on a Saturday night when the bar is 3 deep. And do you know what makes it even more difficult? When I have my back turned to the customers for half the night because I am running through one of the 190 different tabs that have been opened and closed over the course of 3 hours. Because here is the thing folks:

I cannot make you a drink while I am running credit cards through the machine.

And isn’t that what you came out for? Drinks? I mean, I know I have an alright ass and all but I am quite certain you didn’t venture out of your apartment to stare at it for half the night. And if you did, ew, please go somewhere else.

And just one other thing, while I have you all here. If you insist on paying with your card, or you went to the bank and somehow it was entirely out of cash (at which point I would advise you to look for a new financial institution to handle your business because that shit is crashing and burning), please just open one tab. Don’t order a round and close your tab and then come back 15 minutes later and order another round and close your tab again and then come back another 30 minutes later and order another around and, you guessed it, close your tab. That really gums up the works. And it pisses me off. Especially if you are one of the people that gave me a hard time about the credit card minimum the first time around. I remember you. Believe me. It’s just like, think about it. You know how you said

“excuse me, miss?! Helloooo-oooooo”

when I had my back to the bar because I was running a card when you wanted a drink? And how you couldn’t understand why you weren’t getting what you wanted exactly at the moment you wanted it because I was doing something else? Well now, as I run your card for the third time tonight, someone else is waiting with an empty glass, wondering what is taking so long. So, you know, just some food for thought. It’s not all about you.

So you guys, please, I beg you, just bring cash. It saves us all time and, if we’re smart about it, money. And when I know you are paying cash and I am incredibly busy I will probably get to you a little faster. You might even get that buyback that can be so illusive on a busy night. It’s a win-win.

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What’s Up with the Kids These Days?

13 Jan

I am sure that many of us who have spent time in the service industry have had some variation of the following conversation that I had just this past weekend with my coworker, who I will call “B.”

Me: Man, what is with these tourists not tipping?
B: I know, right?
Me: I mean, when I go traveling I buy the book! And then I read the book! And I especially read the part about tipping customs so I am not inadvertently an asshole and then when it says “it is not customary to tip” I say “fuck that nonsense, I’m doing it anyway!” How do they not know?!
B: Oh, they know. They just think they can get away with not knowing. It’s fucked.

I am, like B, quite convinced that most of them know. I mean, how could they not? It’s in all the books. It’s on all the internets. It’s on all the checks when they get auto-gratted because it is such a common problem that restaurants have to put a practice in place to make sure that their staff gets compensated. Maybe it’s like a game they play. A cruel, cruel game. They want to see when they can get away with (1) not tipping and (2) not being auto-gratted and then they write back to all their friends and are like

“We have found the spot! We have found the spot where we can eat our food, poo-poo the wine, AND not pay for the service!”

Those places are mostly in midtown.

Maybe I am exaggerating. But the thing about foreign tourists specifically is that if this was all intentional it was sort of genius. Because now when people order from me with certain accents I assume I won’t be getting a tip. But then when they tip me… woah! It’s like, the best thing. I am so happy about the tip! I even go over to my coworker and I do a little dance and I’m like

“Look! Look! A tip!”

Maybe it’s that all the foreign tourists got together and picked straws and whoever chose the small straws get to be the tip fairies and make bartenders and servers the country over jump with joy when the unthinkable happens. That seems reasonable I think, right? Maybe I’m thinking too much into it. And, in fact, joking around about foreign tip fairies wasn’t even the point. This is the point. In the past few months I have come to the conclusion that the worst tippers, the absolute fucking worst, are (drum roll please) young white kids. What is up with the kids these days, guys?! What has happened?

So, listen, I was a young white kid once and while maybe I didn’t tip then like I tip now (I have been working in service for far too long and tip like I am the richest bartender in Brooklyn) but I always left something, and it was generally 20%. Or, at the very least, a dollar a drink. I didn’t always understand buybacks and so I did have this regretable period in my life where I would visit a friend of mine and he would give me my glass of wine for free and I wouldn’t tip him. But of course, he was trying to sleep with me (which he eventually did) and so I feel less bad about it. In hindsight, not tipping and instead having sex with someone seems like a fair trade (although I didn’t really connect the two together at the time and, now that I am thinking about it, I sort of wish I hadn’t ever connected it because I feel a little bit icky). But also, this happened like 8 years ago so I should probably just let it go. What’s done is done. But this gives you a little insight into me. I still feel bad, and am still trying to wrap my head around making a bad tip decision when I was like 23 and sex was involved!

And I got sidetracked. Again. The point is that a lot of young, white kids these days simply don’t tip. I had one girl give me a hard time because the bar I was behind didn’t accept AmEx and she had just drank two Macallan 12 Year on the rocks ($12 a pop at that establishment) and somehow only had an AmEx (which was bullshit because I peeped at her wallet when she opened it and saw not 1, not 2 but 3 credit cards. I imagine the one she wanted to pay with had her daddy’s name on it). Obviously it was my fault that my bar didn’t accept AmEx cards and so she paid me $24 exactly – she just so happened to have cash – and made some snide remark about how if I had let her use the card she would have tipped better. I wanted to tell her to eat a dick but I refrained. It’s just that, really, I don’t make the rules, I enforce them. Don’t kill (or not compensate financially for an exchange of services that you initiated) the messenger.

And then there was the kid who got a tequila drink of some kind, paid with his card, didn’t tip a dime (and in fact wrote that amazing 0 with the line through it on the tip line) and then had the nerve to come back up to the bar and complain that his drink was weak. It’s not like there as some incident where he thought me or my coworker was being rude and wrote something along the lines of “DISRESPECT!!!” on the tip line (which happened recently and I thought it was funny because it really is disrespectful to not tip and at least this person was self-aware!). No. It wasn’t about that. It was that this dude just simply didn’t tip because it seems as though it is a thing he doesn’t do. Plain and simple. And so this is where I get confused. There aren’t guidebooks for people who grew up in the United States and have spent their lives steeped in tipping culture. I can’t be like

“Yo, mother fucker, check out the section on ‘eating and drinking’ in your Lonely Planet to see the proper way to behave.”

Although in hindsight maybe I should say that. Secretly. To my coworker. So we can giggle.

So the point is this: what is with the kids these days? Who is raising them and where? And why in the world do they simply not tip? I mean, I get it, New York is more expensive than it used to be. Drinks that used to cost $6 four years ago now cost $8. But they don’t know that because they weren’t old enough to drink four years ago. They don’t have a point of comparison. Right now is their point! And I mean, yea, I get that people don’t have money. But you want to know the thing? Neither do I. And you want to know why? Because young, white kids don’t tip.

If anyone has any insight into this particular, and very unfortunate, turn of events, feel free to email me at franklyrebekah@gmail.com Nice people only, please.

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Some Spacial Awareness, If You Please

12 Dec

I know I’ve been a little quiet lately but I blame the fact that I have been working like a crazy person. I also blame the amount I have been working on this massive cold I have come down with. It is epic. Seriously, I woke up yesterday and my snot was the color of a locally sourced organic egg. Orange. It was horrifying. I guess this is what you get for working regularly in 3 different bars, and occasionally working in two bars in one day. And then working the following night in bar number 3. You just end up coming in contact with all sorts of nasty things. Dirty glasses, people who blow their noses and then leave the tissues on the bar for you to pick up and lots and lots of one of the dirtiest thing out there: money. I touch a lot of money. And when I don’t put a small piece of fruit or a glass with some water near my register I end up licking my fingers a lot to get the change. I touch the money and then lick my fingers and then touch the money again. I can actually taste the grime. I don’t even want to know what kind of shit I am putting in my body on the regular. Probably the kind of shit that gave me the cold that I now have. Probably the kind of shit that caused me to have snot that resembles a box of Crayola crayons.

Anyway, not the point. The point is spatial awareness. I have been noticing recently, and I don’t really know why this is surprising to me, that people have absolutely no idea that they do not own whatever piece of ground they happen to be traveling over. I get it. This is a city inhabited by a huge number of self-involved pricks but if ever there is a time to think communally it is when you are traversing the grid. Or when you are traveling on the bus or subway. There is a finite amount of space, people. You gotta share it. So I decided to compile a list-like thing with some of the areas that could use some, er, improvement. And I am sorry for the quality of writing here. I blame the aforementioned snot infestation of my brain.

1. Umbrellas

Back in the day when MySpace was a thing that non-musicians used, I wrote a blog all about proper umbrella courtesy. I think about that blog often, mostly every time it rains and I almost get my eye poked out with someone’s mishandled golf umbrella. A size of umbrella, by the way, that has absolutely no place in a city like New York. I just feel as though the sidewalks are only so big and when your umbrella takes up the whole thing so that other pedestrians are forced into the street where they are likely to get soaked when a passing car plows through a puddle well, that’s a problem. And I get it, buying an umbrella from the “UM-brella, UM-brella” guys on the corner seems silly since those things last two, maybe three good rains but at least they leave space for the rest of us, ya know? I would take an UM-brella toter over a golf umbrella person any day, even though sometimes one of the prongs on the UM-brella is sticking out at an odd angle, making passing the UM-brella person a bit, er, treacherous. I fear for my eyeballs when it rains, I really do.

Since I am on about umbrellas, I have a few more little things to mention. There are some times when having your umbrella open is simply unnecessary. One instance that comes immediately to mind is when you are walking underneath some scaffolding. Scaffolding is like an umbrella, in that it blocks the rain from falling on you, only it is shareable in a non-awkward way and made of wood. There is no need to double up, folks, because when you do other people, people who maybe left the house without an umbrella and haven’t gotten a chance to buy a new one, are forced onto the street where they inevitably get wet. And there you are, safely walking under not one but two devices keeping your precious clothing bone dry. It just ain’t right.

And one other thing, when you are walking down to the subway or up from the subway, put your umbrella down. Especially if you have a golf umbrella. I know it sucks to get a little wet but come on. When you have a golf umbrella you are the only person that can fit on those narrow subway stairs because you are carrying a huge, unwieldy felt weapon that could blow in any direction at any time, splattering passers-by with rain droplets and maybe, just maybe, skewering an eye or two (are you sensing a theme here?). I have missed more than one train because some asshole with an oversized umbrella blocked the entrance to the subway and I was none too pleased about it. None. Too. Pleased.

2. Strollers

You guys, with the strollers, come ON. I honestly think, and correct me if I am wrong here, that double-wide strollers should simply be outlawed in New York City. In a perfect world we wouldn’t have to have such a law on the books because people would have enough sense to get those like stacking strollers, or the kids-facing-each-other strollers, but no. People in this city INSIST on the double-wide which, you know, takes up the entire sidewalk and then those people act inconvenienced when the stroller doesn’t fit in a store, or isn’t allowed in a restaurant. If your stroller can’t fit comfortably through a normal-sized doorway, then you shouldn’t be using the stroller. End of story.

Then there is this other thing that I have been noticing recently. On more than one occasion in the past few weeks I have noticed a dude walking down the street with a stroller, seemingly taking his child on some errands, or for some fresh air, or whatever it is that parents with kids do which I imagine is not that different from some of the things that I do only I do my things unencumbered by anything other than a shoulder bag. But here is the kicker: instead of walking directly behind the stroller, he walks behind the stroller and to the left, pushing the stroller with his right hand. He is not doing this so he can walk alongside the stroller and have a conversation with his kid which would still be annoying but at least would make sense. He is just casually walking down the street, paying the kid no mind, and meanwhile taking up the entire sidewalk. It’s like, dude, it doesn’t matter how far away you walk from the stroller we all know the stroller, and the child it contains, belongs to you. And if that is embarrassing to you for some reason, get one of those damn Bjorn things and give the rest of us some damn space.

On a side note does anyone else find it sort of off-putting when people go to the store without their kids but with their strollers and put their grocery shopping in the stroller where the kid would normally be? I am sure there is a reasonable explanation for this – the parent dropped the kid off somewhere and decided, since they already had the stroller in tow, to use it for other things – but it always gets my mind running. Makes me feel like I am in the middle of some horror film. Like, this kid got kidnapped and the parent never leaves the home without the stroller just in case she runs into the kid on the street even though the kidnapping happened like 15 years ago and the kid wouldn’t even fit in the stroller anymore if the kid was to turn up. Dun dun duuuuuuuuuun!

3. Hand holders, butt pocket hand-putter-inners, waist encirclers, etc.

Let me just start off by saying these two things: (1) I am not one of those angry anti-relationship, anti-PDA people who gets offended by people proclaiming their love for their partner, or their appreciation for their friend; and (2) I, personally, do not like hand-holding but that has nothing to do with this particular entry in the list. This is all about the space. Because what I have noticed, and maybe I am wrong, is that when people are holding on to another person in some manner or another they tend to amble along rather slowly. I’m no speed walker or whatever but I, like most New Yorkers, have a rather brisk gate. I might not have anywhere that I have to be at any particular time, but I will get there at a decent clip, ya know? I don’t actually mind a solo ambler, but it does become a little difficult when amblers attach to other amblers and they then create this impenetrable fortress of amble. Then you have to either slow down to their pace (well, I never!) or else step into the street and risk being run into by an overly aggressive cycler who may or may not be riding on the wrong side of the road. Treacherous.

4. Scooters

In the interest of full disclosure I need to make this one thing clear: I despise scooters. Oh man they make me so mad. I know that this is unreasonable but it’s a fact. So this paragraph will be dripping with disdain. Just so you know. Don’t take it personally but I hate your scooter and when you are on it, I hate you a little bit also. (Kidding. Maybe.) I think that adults look ridiculous on them and, honestly, if you ride a scooter as an adult you should ride in the bike lane along with the people riding respectable modes of transportation like bicycles and skateboards. As for kids on scooters, well that’s a whole other thing. Kids on scooters are my second worst New York City transportation nightmare, just after riding on a train with a bunch of middle school students that just get let out of class for Christmas break or some shit. Kids on scooters are a force to be reckoned with. They go so fast and a lot of times they don’t really know how to control their scooters and it’s like this horrible game of chicken only they are wearing helmets and you are not. Take one scooter-powered helmet to the hip and you’ll understand my concern. That’s a bruise.

I just actually had this flashback. So there was this girl in high school who got one of those rolly backpacks. She was this little slip of a thing and she was taking ALL of the classes so she always had so many books and she put them in her backpack, only it wasn’t really a backpack it was like a rocket-powered travel suitcase and the “rocket power” came from her, running full speed through the hallways so she could get the best seat in class. That’s what I always figured, anyway. I was always a little annoyed by her until one day, on my way to class, she ran right into me! And I fell down! In the hallway! And she didn’t even apologize, she barely even stopped, she just zoomed off down the hallway to class. I was furious. So what did I do? I wrote an article in the school newspaper about the perils of getting to class in the age of rolly backpacks. I am pretty sure I got called into the principal’s office over that one because this one girl was the only one in the school that had such a backpack and the principal thought it sounded like a personal attack, which it was, but it was too late because it was already printed. Rolly backpack girl knocked over the wrong spiteful writer!

By the way, I take some comfort in the fact that my disdain is at least consistent.

5. Gaggles

I like to travel in a good gaggle just like the next gal but when gaggle traveling it is important to be aware of the scope and size of your gaggle. A gaggle takes up more space than a duo, or a trio even (trios being problematic because of the odd-numbered nature of the crew), and so it is good to break off into groups in an effort to share the sidewalk.

Okay, you guys, I actually don’t encounter gaggles all that often I just really like the word. Gaggle, gaggle, gaggle. It’s so fun. And, yea, it is annoying when you see a gaggle and you have to go around them but whenever I see one I always just giggle about the gaggle and it makes the slight inconvenience of passing them by totally worthwhile. Hopefully I will see a gaggle today. I could use a good gaggle giggle. Actually, just typing “gaggle giggle” did the trick.

 

This post brought to you by my snot-infested brain. You’re welcome.

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Photography, Random Run-ins, and Cousin Cookie

6 Nov

Back in 2003, I, along with 22 other intrepid students, went on a year long expedition around the world, learning about politics, economics, ecology, feminism, and all sorts of other things. More than anything, though, I would say that we learned how to be proper human beings. We learned what it meant to go into other people’s countries, other peoples homes, and understand that we were guests there. We had to learn to suspend our own cultural norms in an effort to try and fit, as best we could, into our new and extremely different surroundings. This proved easier in some situations – Cambridge, England, for example, where our biggest concern was remembering that in England the word “pants” is actually synonymous to the American “underwear” – than in, say, Zanzibar, Tanzania, where in incredibly hot temperatures we kept our heads, shoulders and knees covered in an attempt to be respectful towards the majority Muslim population there.* I’m sure that as a group of 22 American, and one super awesome Bulgarian, students traveling through England, Tanzania, India, New Zealand and Mexico we unintentionally offended some people but the point is that we tried. We asked questions of our hosts and attempted to understand local norms and customs as best we could so as to represent ourselves, and our countries, to the best of our abilities. Overall I think we did a pretty good job.

One of the things that we learned about, and something that I have kept with me ever since, involved photography. We were taught that in certain cultures, people believe that when their photograph is taken, a piece of their soul is taken with it. Whether or not we believe this to be the case, it is important to respect the beliefs of those around you and so we were taught to always, always ask permission before photographing anyone. Consent is key. It might mean that sometimes you don’t quite get the photo that you hoped, but who the hell cares, really. There is something sort of fucked up about taking photographs of people without asking them first, especially when we are surrounded by those who have lived incredibly different lives than us. To me, it reeks of voyeurism. I know that when I have been traveling and have caught people taking photographs of me I have felt somewhat dehumanized. These people don’t know me, don’t know my name, where I am from, what I am about, and yet they want to capture this image of me and what? Show their friends? It’s this idea that an image of me could be in someone else’s home and I could have no idea that always makes me think twice about snapping a photo of someone I don’t know, someone who didn’t consent to it. The idea that a part of our soul is taken every time that flash goes off starts hitting a little closer to home.

Let’s maybe take this down a notch in seriousness, largely because I haven’t had enough coffee yet and this is making my brain hurt. So in New York City you come to find that the longer you live here, the smaller and smaller this town becomes. Partially that is because as we live here longer, our personal map of the city changes. There are certain parts of the city that we know nothing about  – for me it’s just about everything above 34th street and most of North Brooklyn – and then other parts where we can practically dictate the store fronts in order. The city just becomes smaller and the more we circulate within the territory of our truncated maps, the more people we end up seeing until the point when you go to the grocery store and run into about 12 people on the way home, all the while Toffuti Cuties are melting in your environmentally conscious shopping bag. In your own neighborhood, and especially when you are a neighborhood bartender, this is pretty normal. But it is always super fun and exciting when you run into people randomly in other parts of the city that you rarely frequent. Like that time I ran into some girls I went to high school with on the 6 platform in Manhattan, or the time my mom came to visit and we saw her massage therapist, who works in New Jersey, on University Place. I mean, really, what are the odds?! And every time this happens I think to myself

“Self, mere seconds in either direction, one different decision, one missed or caught light, and I never would have run into that person.”

And then I start thinking about all the people that I probably just barely miss. And then I think about how if my life were a sitcom, which I sometimes like to think it is, the audience would be like

“No! Turn on that street! That guy that you made out with in college is walking this way and it might be a love connection!!!”

And then would come the sad, prerecorded

“Awwwwwww….”

when I proceeded on course and missed what could have been the love of my life. Or some other bullshit. Anyway, back to photographs. So on a similar theme, have you ever thought about how many times you might be in other people’s photos? Like, just walking along and you get in the background of some group picture or something? Now, this is something I think about a lot, like, how weird would it be to go to someone’s house and look at an awesome family photograph on their mantel and then see yourself casually walking through the background? Mind blown, right? I mean, you could be on someone’s mantel right now! And not even know it! And they might notice you one day and be like,

“Huh, I wonder where that person was going on this day that is forever remembered as the day that Cousin Cookie drank too many pickle back shots and hasn’t been able to look at cucumbers the same way since.”

I don’t know, it’s just a thing I think about it. There was a This American Life on it a few years back but I was thinking about this long before I heard that episode. It just made me realize that other people think about it too and maybe, just maybe, some of you, dear readers, also think about it.

So this post totally just went on a really weird adventure from the ethics of photography to random run-ins and Cousin Cookie. Funny thing is that I was going to write about this weird thing that happened at work the other day and see what you guys all thought about it but now I have already written over a thousand words so it doesn’t seem the best time to ask you to read much more. So, that’s a post for next time. I guess just remember this: ask permission to take other people’s photos otherwise you might end up on the mantel of some family in the midwest that gives each other nicknames based off their favorite snack foods.

* I know that’s not that difficult but I haven’t had enough coffee yet so it’s all I could think of. Also, there were some people on vacation there wearing short shorts and tube tops and it was really, really inappropriate. Like, wildly.

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This is Me, Trying not to Give a Fuck About Assholes

21 Oct

I originally learned to bartend from a guy I used to date. He had just opened his own bar and had been in the game for awhile. I had done pretty much everything Front of House but bartend, save for pouring a few beers here and there. So there I was one night, having a glass of wine at his bar after coming back from a shift of my own in the West Village, when all of a sudden he got busy. I hopped back behind the bar to keep him ahead of the quickly mounting piles of dirty glasses and, while I was at it, I poured a few pints, giving him time to make all the carefully crafted cocktails he was known for. I decided right then and there that if I was going to continue in the service industry, I didn’t want to be anywhere but behind the bar. It felt safer, more in control and, dare I say it, a little bit cooler. So he started teaching me. He set me up with a speed-pourer equipped liquor bottle full of water, a jigger and a rocks glass and set me to work pouring out glass after glass of perfectly counted neat waters. He gave me a book of drink recipes and went through, X-ing out all the drinks he didn’t think I would ever have to know, and telling me to memorize the rest. He also gave me a piece of advice that I held on to, tightly, until, well, now. He said, and I am paraphrasing here, that bartenders are like a community, and it is each of our responsibilities to educate people how to behave, and how to tip, so that other bartenders don’t have to deal with the crap. But today, October 21, 2014, something like 7 years after I was initially given that advice, I am calling bullshit. Not on the community thing, or the fact that in some way or another many of us are in this together — we warn other neighborhood drink slingers about dickheads and problem customers, call each other when there’s an incident, send our friends good customers when they decide to drink in another bar. I am calling bullshit on the idea that a lot of people are open to learn how to be, well, human.

Here is the thing. I have a super strict standard of behavior for myself. When I deviate from the standard, I am sent into an incredibly intense moral hangover that involves long walks, sulking, ill-fantasies, maybe some tears, apologies and, on more than one occasion, the purchasing of small (admittedly unnecessary) gifts. I really don’t like to act like an asshole. It doesn’t agree with me. And I operate under this misconceived notion that other people also don’t like acting like assholes. Or, perhaps more specifically, that they shouldn’t like acting like assholes or, even more specifically, that they actually don’t think they are acting like assholes at all. They are just being themselves. But realistically sometimes “themselves” actually just means “assholes.” Did that make sense? The point is that some people are just dicks. They are dicks and they don’t care. Well, you know what? As of today, October 21, 2014, I no longer give a fuck.

So here’s the deal. My dad once told me, and this is one of my favorite pieces of advice, that we can only have expectations of people that are in keeping with what they have previously demonstrated is possible for them. Like, if someone is a liar all the time, we can’t expect them to just randomly start telling the truth and we can’t really be that mad at them when they behave the way that they have always behaved. They are doing what they always do, I am just placing my unreasonable, in context, expectations on them. So I get to make a choice. I can either be cool with the fact that they are a liar and deal with it to whatever extent is necessary, or I can get myself all bent out of shape about it. But then who’s the chump? Me. I’m the chump all bent out of shape about an entirely predictable situation. And I don’t like being a chump just about as much as I don’t like being an asshole. So now let’s put this in conversation with bartending.

I like to think that when I go into a bar and order a drink I am pretty polite. I sit in my stool, I take out my $20 and place it on the bar (especially if I don’t know the bartender), I know what I want to drink, I wait my turn, and then I ask for my drink, book ended with pleases and thank yous. I love please and thank you. I might make friendly conversation, I might just read a magazine. I rarely, if ever, tell people I bartend unless they ask (sometimes the 20 gives it away) because to me that just reeks of asking for buybacks which is something that polite people just do not do. In the process of drinking my drink, I do not rip up my coaster or stir up shit, and when I leave I tip. Plain and simple. I like to think that I am a good bar customer more often than not. I even think that if I were serving me a drink I would like me and I might even say to myself,

“Self, that girl drinking the Powers sure is polite.”

And there are plenty of people who drink in bars that are polite. Or at least well-behaved. Or maybe they just don’t offend me in any way. But then there are lots of people who just down right suck. They also seem to travel in packs. They are rude, demanding, condescending, sexist, messy and all sorts of other things. Bartenders can smell them when they walk in the door. I don’t know what it is about these people but you just know, from first sight, or first order, that they are assholes. And in the past, I would want to let them know they were assholes, to educate them, or to prove a point, but not any more. Because you know what? That is not my job. It is not my job, or really my right, to force my own moral compass, my own standards of behavior, on other people. They want to be dicks, to a point, then fine, let them be dicks. That’s cool. They want their drink strong? “Okay,” I’ll say with a smile, and I will make it the same way I always make it. They want less ice? That’s cool, they can just get more mixer. They want to wave their glass at me, snap their fingers, flash their cell phone screen? I won’t tell them they did anything wrong, I will just send them to the back of the line. They might think I’m a bitch. They are welcome to their own opinions. Because here is the thing:  I am doing this for the foreseeable future. Maybe not forever, but for now. And the name of the game is self-preservation. And you know what makes it easier? Not letting it in. (Also, the fact that the new bar I am working at comes staffed with security. At a certain point, shitty behavior actually stops being my problem and that is a luxury I am happy to accept.)

So all you people who are awesome? Come see me! It’ll be fun. And all you people who suck? I will gladly take your money. And I’ll turn all the negative energy into creative motivation for my book. Because, yea, I’m doing that.

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Coney Island Shenanigans

26 Aug

I was going to edit this for Dad-safety, but really, Dad, you should just skip this one entirely.  It’s like that one time I wrote this blog post and warned you about not reading it and you read it anyway and then you regretted it.  Don’t make the same mistake twice, Dad.  Just, yea, close the tab and slowly back away from the computer.  That’s right, ever so slowly…

For the rest of you, there are two very important things that you all must know about me.  First, I love Coney Island.  It is one of my most favorite places in the world.  No matter what time of year, what time of day, that you go to Coney Island, something crazy is always happening.  Good crazy, mostly.  I really believe that Coney Island is one of the only places where people just sort of let their freak flags fly.  Even those people who go about life trying to fit in and be normal, when they get to Coney Island that shit goes right out the window.  People who are still too repressed to let their inner weird-o see the light of day?  Well they steer clear and I feel sorry for them.  Such a boring life they must lead.  Second, I embarrass myself all the time.  Or, well, seemingly embarrassing things happen to me but I think that for the most part being embarrassed is just sort of a waste of energy and so I don’t feel embarrassed.  I just sort of carry on.  Like that one time I ran 10 miles and then worked out at the gym for 45 minutes before realizing that the light blue string hanging out the bottom of my running shorts was not attached to said shorts but was coming from the tampon that was, at that time, shoved inside my body.  I could have been embarrassed but no.  I continued right on stretching until I gathered the energy to make my way down to the ladies locker room to tuck the string back where it belonged.  Life, ya know?

Anyway, normally my love of Coney Island and my tendency to get myself in potentially embarrassing situations don’t really overlap.  Only today they totally did.  So there I was, all by my lonesome on the beach waiting for my friend Kendra.  The sun was strong so I thought to myself, “self, you really ought to put on some sunscreen.”  So I went about putting sunscreen all over, even taking care to get some under the strings of my bikini so that I didn’t end up burning the skin just around the edges of my bathing suit.  I always, always, always burn the area of my butt right where my bikini ends.  Every fucking time.  In fact, I even did it today.  That is not important.  What is important is that in the process of trying to get the sunscreen on around my bikini top I totally managed to, initially unbeknownst to me, flash those sitting around me on the beach.  And, obviously because it is me, rather than just quietly putting my boob back where it belonged I said, to no one in particular, and while tucking it back into its temporary home, “get back in there!”

Sigh.

Sometimes it’s like I have no control.  In all the hubbub happening with the right boob, I didn’t realize that the left one was also exposed.  So there I was, on Coney Island, before noon, boobs out.  Good work, me.  I was almost hoping that, since I had already exposed myself, at least someone could enjoy the show.  But not like a creepy someone.  Just someone who would be like “oh, breasts!  Well isn’t that a nice little surprise for a Tuesday!”  I imagine this person with a British accent.  Perhaps thankfully, now that I am thinking about it, the only people standing near me were a dude in a Speedo standing up and meditating while leaning on his bike and a woman flailing around listening to music and drinking Cannabis Energy Drink.  I fucking love Coney Island.  And so now I am left to ask the age-old question:  if a girl flashes the beach at Coney Island and no one is around (or conscious enough) to see it, did it even happen?  I am not so sure myself.  I guess I’ll find out if a picture of my tits show up on the internet.  God forbid.

But that’s not all!  After Kendra arrived and I told her all about my misadventures in sunscreen application, we decided to go for a swim.  So we went over to the life-guard protected area and hopped in.  There we were, swimming, when all of a sudden I saw what appeared to be, at first glance, either a tentacle-less jelly fish or a very small shark.  Then, upon looking again I realized that it was the biggest condom I have ever seen.  Like so big.  I screamed, obviously, and Kendra and I quickly ran out of the water.  Here’s the thing though. I partially screamed because, ew condom in the water and what if it comes near me and sticks to my leg and then I have some sort of crazy horrible disease because that’s how it works, right?  But also I screamed because that condom was so goddamn big.  I mean, I know there is that thing that people a lot of times think that bigger dicks are better but I’ll tell you what, I would not like to meet the dick that belonged to that condom.  No way Jose.  Once, when I first moved to the city I had sex with this guy with a huge penis and I swear the second I laid eyes on that thing I lost all color in my face.  My lady parts are fucking delicate, you know?  I had trouble walking the next day!  And I think this condom, if memory serves, was even too big for his penis.  If I ever had sex with the penis that fit into that condom I would never be the same.  For real.

By the by, does anyone else think that the sentence construction I just used was really weird?  It’s like, through this whole thing I have not imagined a penis attached to a dude.  I have imagined just like, a free-standing gigantic penis kind of going through life, unattached, waiting to find a similarly unattached vagina or else someone in possession of a vagina who didn’t run the other way when faced with this particular phallus.  I would say poor penis only, judging from the condom which appeared to have been used, it did find someone that wasn’t afraid of it.  I hope she, or he, enjoyed him or herself.  Until that last sentence there this imagination game I had was totally heteronormative.  Not cool, Rebekah, not cool.

So, that’s what happened on Coney Island today.  People may or may not have seen my boobs without a bathing suit covering them, and I definitely saw a condom that was, at that moment, thankfully lacking a penis.  Also, I have learned that I do not have a future in erotic fiction, so that’s a career path to cross off the list.  Happy Tuesday, everyone!

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Goodbye, New York Road Runners

23 May

You know what I don’t like?  When people say “I’ve been doing _________ since before it was cool.” It’s like, okay great.  I’m happy for you.  Way to make everyone else feel like an asshole.  That being said, I do get some portion of the sentiment behind it.  And so, obviously and as I am wont to do, I started thinking WAY too deeply about the statement and have decided that it can be interpreted in a few different ways:

Way #1: When I was doing ______ there weren’t as many people doing it, so it wasn’t as crowded/expensive/over policed/over saturated.

Way #2:  Now that everyone is doing ________ I feel sort of like a poser doing it even though I have been doing it forever and that fucking sucks.

Way #3:  Some combination of the aforementioned two ways.

Okay, so, now that we have out of the way, I would not say that I have been running long distances since before it was cool because, really, running still isn’t cool exactly.  And I also haven’t been running for that long and I really think to even almost get away with such a statement you basically have to have started doing whatever thing that you’re complaining about everyone else doing for at least like, 75% of your life. I have only been running for just shy of 50% of my life and also I don’t take myself all that seriously so, you know, statement off limits.  Anyway, all of this being said, something has been happening to running and I do not like it one bit.

One of the things that I have always loved about running is that even though it is an individual sport, there is so much support amongst the running community.  This is part of the reason why that stupid viral Facebook letter to an overweight runner made me so darn angry.  I have just always found that more than anything else, runners want other runners to have good races.  We all know the work that went into training for endurance events and we all know what it feels like to have a bad day.  You know, for your legs to feel like led, to have to shit halfway through, to be sick, or crampy, or have an ill-timed injury.  You never, ever want to see a fellow runner limping through a race, or a training run, unaware of whether or not they will be able to finish or if the nagging pain in their hip, their foot, their quad means a few months off.  And this is not only true amongst us amateur athletes.  The pros in the sport are just as supportive of one another.  Take, for example, the support that Meb Keflezighi got from Ryan Hall and the other US runners at Boston this past year.  And that is only one example of many.  It was the loss of that sort of camaraderie among runners that made this year’s Brooklyn Half Marathon so…upsetting.

I had decided before running this race that it was going to be my last race with New York Road Runners (NYRR).  I’m not going to go into all the problems I have with this organization, especially since I have talked about the intense price increases over the past few years on this blog before.  I just think that in an effort to ride the wave of popularity that running has been experiencing over the last number of years, NYRR has forgotten about all the people who have kept them afloat for decades.  I don’t know, maybe I am just being grouchy but I really think that all the extra bullshit that accompanies a lot of the NYRR races these days really take away from what is so great about running:  it’s simplicity.

I guess it is partially that along with its new found popularity, running has been the latest to fall at the feet of Big Business.  People spend hundreds of dollars on watches that they don’t know how to use; they fall prey to ridiculous trends about appropriate sneakers without doing research into the benefits and possible problems of wearing them; they spend so much money on races just because the bib pick-up involves a “pre-party” AKA some lame music playing in the background and a bunch of companies hawking their wares.

The thing about it, and I suppose this isn’t entirely NYRR’s fault, is that capitalism does not bring out the best in people.  There is no “team” in capitalism.  It is every woman, man and child to her/himself.  Capitalism, to me, is largely what our national obsession with individualism is born from.  The attitude that goes along with people needing to have the newest gadgets, the nicest clothes, the trendiest sneakers is the attitude that leads to the terrible fucking race that I ran in Brooklyn.  Honestly, I have never seen so many people literally push through other people to get ahead.  I have never seen so many people cross in front of waves of runners to get to water stations without verbally letting people know or even checking over their shoulders.  I have never seen so many people leave water stations and drop their uncrushed cup in the middle of the road, a big runner no-no because it rolls around and can trip one of the thousands of people who come behind you.  When you run a race, you always check your surroundings, you always communicate with other runners, and you really always crush your damn cup and throw it off the course.  Sure, running is something that is individual.  You aren’t relying on other people in the same way as you might in a soccer match or a relay.  But you are not doing it alone.  You are running a race along with hundreds, maybe thousands, of other people and you have to respect that the race is not just yours, it is everyone’s.  All the other people running trained hard, paid the price, woke up at 4:30 in the morning and your pushing, your cutting off, and your not crushed cup could really make a difference not only in their time, but in their safety and their enjoyment.

Maybe I was just running around a shitty group of people but it really made me sad.  It made me remember when I ran the New York City Marathon, yes also organized by NYRR, back in 2006.  I was going through the Queensboro Bridge and there was a blind man running near me.  The bridge was dark so it became a little difficult for runners to see other people, especially if you weren’t running near the sides.  Without saying a word, a whole group of runners created a protective circle around this man, making sure that the darkness and other runner’s inability to see as clearly would not impact his race or make him unsafe.  It was one of the most beautiful things I have ever seen and really made me proud of my community.  In that moment, it was like everyone was running the race together and our achievement was entirely dependent on the achievements of those around us.  At the Brooklyn Half this year, it was everyone for themselves.

Maybe part of the reason for this was that in an effort to, I don’t know, make more money, NYRR allowed way too many people to run the Half.  There were over 25,000 people that ran the race this year, meaning that for a lot of us, we were completely jammed up for the first 8 miles.  When you have a race of that size, you simply sacrifice some of the other things:  in my opinion the enjoyment, but certainly the speed.  (And don’t even get me started on the fact that they gave us half-filled dixie cups of water at the end of the race rather than full bottles.)

I just think that what NYRR is helping to usher in is a complete change in the attitude that surrounds running and that is decidedly not cool.  I don’t know.  I run races because it’s fun, it’s nice to have a goal and it helps me place my running squarely within an equally motivated and supportive group of people.  That feeling is gone from NYRR races and so I am bidding them a not-so-fond farewell, taking my $20 stopwatch and keeping my fingers crossed that those pushers, those cut off-ers, and those cup non-crushers don’t follow me.

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Street Harassment: The Close Proximity Whisper

13 May

Okay, ladies, I’m sure you’ve all experienced this:

You’re walking down the street doing what you always do which is minding your own goddamn business and going about your day when you see a man walking towards you.  You notice him looking but he says nothing, doesn’t exactly ogle but his eyes linger on you a little too long for optimal comfort.  As he gets closer you brace yourself for the upcoming comment, the kissy noises, that terrible clicking sound.  Nothing.  You think you’re home free but then, just as he passes you he leans in and whispers ever so quietly,

“God bless.”

You can feel his breath on your face and the hair stands up on the back of your neck.  You turn around, angry, but he is already halfway down the block making his way to where ever he is headed.  No one around noticed a thing.  He’s in the clear.

If I had to rate types of non-physical assault style street harassment from one to ten, ten being my least favorite, I think that approach would get the crown.  It is worse than the passing car, the obvious stare, the invitations to go out, the whistles from rooftops.  For me, the close proximity whisper is one of the most invasive forms of harassment.  In the United States, we have such an engrained idea of personal space that when someone invades it there is no ignoring it.  That person made the choice to enter into my space, he knew it would make me uncomfortable and he didn’t care.  The feeling of his breath on my skin only adds insult to injury.  It is one step away from him putting a hand on me.  It is infuriating, disempowering, and disgusting.

The close proximity whisper is something that has been driving me crazy for a long time.  I almost forget that it even happens until one day some dude whispers “smile baby” in my ear and I go through the fucking roof.  But he didn’t touch me and there is no opportunity for a strong worded retort, really. It always takes too long for me to register what has happened and by the time I do my only option is to scream like a banshee at some asshole’s receding back.  The reason I thought of this now is that the other night this happened to me only it was on a crowded train and it was terrible.

So I was with a friend of mine and we were heading to Crown Heights to visit his friend at the bar she works in.  When we got onto the train it was relatively empty but we opted to stand.  I have been standing a lot lately.  It’s a thing.  Anyway, we were standing in the little door alcove on the wrong side of the train (AKA the side the doors open on) so every time we stopped somewhere we would split up; he would stand to one side of the doors and me to the other.  We’d reconvene in the middle once everyone got aboard.  When we stopped at Atlantic Avenue the train got swamped.  We couldn’t meet in the middle again so he stayed to his side and I stayed to mine. Right next to me was a really tall (this is all relative considering I am pushing 5’4″) man somewhere in his late forties if I had to guess.  The second the doors closed he leaned over and, right in my ear whispered,

“Are you a mommy?”

It took me a second to understand what he had said.  It was Mother’s Day after all.  I gave him a small smile and said no and then resumed staring blankly in front of me, my left arm grasping the subway poll, my right hand resting on my left shoulder, as much of a protective stance as I could muster considering I had no room to move.  He leaned forward again,

“You look too young to be a mommy.”

I glanced over at him, raised my eyebrows and did a very slight head nod in an attempt to acknowledge he had said something to me without inviting him to say anything else.  A moment later his hand “slipped” off whatever he was holding and hit me in the chest, landing hard on my breastbone.  I instinctively checked to make sure my necklace didn’t vanish — it hadn’t but it wouldn’t be surprising to me if it had because people just love to steal shit from me — and felt thankful I had the foresight to cover my boobs with my arm.  I glanced over at my friend who had been looking at me protectively, not sure exactly what to do and, I imagined, taking cues from my behavior.  The man apologized.  I shot my eyes up to him without turning my body in his direction.  Then, seconds later, as we approached a stop he put his hand on my shoulder, leaned in much to close and whispered,

“Have a wonderful day.”

He was all up in my space.  He was touching my arm.  I thought maybe he was getting off at that stop and felt a momentary rush of relief but the train doors opened and he made no move to exit.  At that moment my friend called over the heads of the half dozen people in between us and asked if I wanted to get off and walk.

Fuck yes.

We got off the train.  I didn’t look back to see the man’s reaction when he realized that I was traveling with someone and that someone happened to be years younger and much more solid than him.  My friend and I talked about it for a minute, him not knowing the man had touched me because he was unable to see through all the people.  From his vantage point all he could see was some guy whispering in my ear and to him, that was enough to want to get me out of the situation. I put it out of my head for the remainder of the night but now I am thinking about it.  And here is what I am thinking.

It is bad enough to have someone whisper in your ear and keep moving but to have that person violate your personal space and continue to stand there is totally fucked.  It put me in an incredibly uncomfortable situation, one that I could not extricate myself from.  It’s like, there I was, stuck with all these people around me and then this guy who was just toeing the line, seeing how far he could push it.  I was bound, in a way, by the manners we as women have been taught.  I didn’t want to sharply tell him to stop, as I normally would if I could walk away, and then be stuck standing next to him, with the eyes of all the other passengers on me.  I didn’t know what their reactions would be, whether they would support me or think I was a loon.  I mean, all he was doing, really, was talking.  And the first touch could easily have been excused as an accident.  I started feeling like the best course of action was to keep my eyes down and my mouth shut, to not draw attention and maybe it would just stop on its own.  (In my personal experience, this reaction never really has the desired effect.)    I didn’t want to have to defend my reaction to a bunch of people who might not support me and then remain there, shamed.  I thought if I just stood there, more or less unmoving, as nonreactive as possible, he would back off but he didn’t.  He just kept toeing the line, kept inviting me into this seemingly innocent, but incredibly invasive, private conversation that I had absolutely no interest in participating in.

It’s a weird thing, to step out of your own tendencies.  I am pretty outspoken about this sort of thing, normally.  Especially when I am in New York.  That might sound like a weird thing but this is my home, I have lived here for a long time and I know when I should say something and when I shouldn’t.  Before I react strongly to a comment, I note the time of day, where I am, whether or not there are people around. At 4am I keep my mouth shut, but in the afternoon, in a parking lot stuffed with cars, I will say my piece.  I take the shock and awe approach.  I am especially good with words when I am angry and I think that the mouth I have takes casual harassers by surprise.  It gives me the chance to tell them about themselves and march off before they regroup and think long enough to come up with something better than “bitch!” But being stuck in a subway car, pinned in place by the sheer quantity of people, can really make you revert back to socialized habits.

Anyway, a lot of times I think back on things and figure out how I could have handled it differently, better.  There’s always something.  But in this particular case, even with the luxury of space and a few days time, I cannot for the life of me figure out how I could have behaved differently.  I didn’t feel unsafe, really.  What I did feel was the society in which I was raised, one that teaches girls to keep quiet.  I thought about all the times people have told me that it is unsafe for me to speak my mind, that it isn’t worth it.  But I can’t stop thinking about how this guy won. How by not telling him what he was doing, I was complicit in it, I was saying it was okay.  Sure, I got off early, sure, it was clear that I didn’t want to be near him, but I don’t know.  It is very possible that me telling him to back the fuck off, as much as he could considering the circumstances, would have set him off, or would have fallen on deaf ears, but I also could have been the first person to say it and maybe, hopefully, the last person he did it to.

Being a woman is hard.

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When Big Money Comes to Town

1 Apr

Just last night a bar on Atlantic Avenue that opened its doors 16 years ago announced it will be closing them at the end of this month.  I never worked there and, to be honest, I haven’t hung out there all that much in the last couple of years.  I always kind of thought it was one of those places I “lost in the divorce,” as they say.  Whoever “they” are.  I guess we all should have seen this coming when the Barney’s Coop opened up a few years ago.  Followed by a Sephora, a Lululemon, a Splendid, Gap and Banana Republic Outlets, talk of a J. Crew and who knows what else.  There isn’t so much room for character when big money and condos come to town.

It’s a weird coincidence because I was literally just thinking about this yesterday.  (My life, by the way, has involved a lot of coincidences recently.  Maybe I’ll tell you about them someday.)  So I have a few friends, two in particular, who oftentimes lament the loss of the old Brooklyn, the Brooklyn they grew up in.  One of them posts in this blog here which is really awesome and you should check it out.  No, seriously, check it out.  Anyway, I didn’t grow up in Brooklyn, or New York City for that matter.  I grew up in the suburbs in New Jersey, a place that has a lot of trees and doesn’t really change all that much.  You don’t hear too much about people losing leases on storefronts.  Generally, stores close because whoever owned them either gets sick of doing it or gets old and dies.  Then the store closes and a nail salon goes in its place.  There are A LOT of nail salons in my hometown.  You also don’t have the same brand of blind development as in the city.  Here, luxury condo after luxury condo just sort of go up over night, oftentimes cheaply built, overpriced, and under filled.  Eventually people move into the doorman, gym included building.  Usually they are transplants from Manhattan, previously transplants from somewhere else, looking for something more affordable.  Their “more affordable” prices-out the people who had lived in the neighborhood previously, many of whom priced-out the people who grew up there.  In my hometown, a lot of people knock down houses to build bigger houses with more rooms than they can possibly use.  I really don’t understand the appeal of getting lost in your own home but that’s just me.  My mom calls them McMansions.  They are pretty much just the architectural version of a big dick contest.  I digress.

So I grew up close to New York City but not in it and even though I went to the city quite a number of times my memory of it is pretty limited.  Here is what I remember:

1.  Going to Take Your Daughter to Work Day with my Dad and spending most of my time at the Museum of TV and Radio watching old episodes of PeeWee’s Playhouse.
2.  My Dad’s one office that had those really cool pipes that ran throughout the floor so you could deliver messages to other people.  You would put the message in a little tube thing and then put it in the pipe and it would get sucked away and end up where it was supposed to go.  I loved those pipes.
3.  I’m pretty sure we went to the Thanksgiving Day Parade once?  Or did I make that up?
4.  That one time me and my friend Gina cut school and went into the city for the day.  We felt SO cool.
5.  My Uncle Mike works at The Met and I got to go see The Temple of Dendur when it was still closed to the public.

We never went to Brooklyn.  Honestly, I don’t think I even knew what Brooklyn was when I was a little kid except for as it was represented by Spot Collins in Newsies.  Spot Collins and the boys from Brooklyn really saved the day in Newsies so I always figured that where ever it was it was pretty damn hardcore.

Over the last almost 10 years that I have lived here, I have seen my neighborhood change quite significantly.  And that is nothing, I am sure, compared to the changes that came before.  I have wondered sometimes what it was like in the 1990s, before trendy bars and restaurants opened and before the hipster invasion of 2011.  I was wondering exactly that thing as I walked home from a hardware store across a busy avenue in the less developed, slightly rougher, area.  I walked past a scrap metal collection place and stopped at the light, right next to some guy who I guess had just disposed of his metal and was waiting for his buddy.  Then, this:

Guy: Damn, you lookin’ sexy mama.
Me:  (Eye roll, unimpressed head shake.)
Guy:  What?  Bad day?
Me: It was fine until you said that.
Guy: Well, how are you supposed to know if I don’t tell you?
Me: I already know.
Guy: How about I take you for a drink? Some coffee? There’s a bagel store over there.
He gestured at a storefront that has been having constant grand openings for the past 8 years at least.  I am 100% certain it is a front for something nefarious.  The light changed and I walked away.

So here’s the thing.  I never felt intimidated or scared talking to that guy.  A few years ago, I would have been petrified because it might not have been one guy, it might have been 3 and he might not have found me quite as amusing.  There certainly would have been less people walking around.  More than anything I was annoyed that this guy called me sexy while I was holding a bottle of Draino* to, once again, unclog the shower.  I mean, without the Draino I would have also felt annoyed but for some reason I felt like sharing that with you.  I just found it amusing because, like, I was hungover, I think I still had a little makeup on my eyes from the night before, my hair was filthy and I was carrying Draino and some drier sheets and yet still with this guy.  But the point of all of this.  The point is that this gentrification is a real mixed bag.  I miss the days when big chain stores didn’t come to Brooklyn, when everything was family-run, when spending money locally was really the only option rather than some trend that only wealthy people can afford.  I miss my neighborhood being less trendy.  I miss hearing more Spanish than English on the streets.  I miss having sunlight on my street, the sunlight that was blocked by the fucking ugly 13 story building they built on my corner.  What I don’t miss?  Walking home from the train alone at night.  My neighbor getting jumped on the front steps.  Another friend getting beaten up by a group of marauding women.  Feeling afraid.

Here’s the thing.  I know that when Big Money Brooklyn takes over my neighborhood I am not going to be pleased.  I know I will get priced-out.  And it will be one more step in the direction of making all of New York less affordable for the people who always lived here.  I feel like I can’t really be mad about being priced-out because I, unknowingly at 21, did it to others.  At this point I am aware of my own privilege and the impacts it has.  It will suck, though.  So I don’t know.  I mean, I’ll take the improved safety but I wish you would keep your condos, your Barney’s, your expensive cars, your $15 bottles of pickles.  My hometown, and towns like it, could use a little business diversity.

*I was feeling very guilty about this because my landlord, who I ADORE, told me not to use Draino because it messes up the pipes.  But every time he comes to unclog the drain he tells me to use a drain cover because I have so much hair.  But I do!  And it clogs anyway!

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A Letter to a Smoker on Seventh Avenue

24 Mar

Dear Smoking Man,*

Hello, remember me?  I actually ate dinner at your house about 5 years ago with my then-boyfriend.  And about a month and a half ago I served you a drink.  I thought about reminding you of that long-past meal we shared but decided that perhaps that would be too much.  It was only that one time, after all, and I don’t even remember your name, your wife’s name, or the undoubtedly pleasant, yet slightly bizarre, dinner conversation.

Here we are now, another chance encounter.  You walking, in a light trench coat, me running up to the park.  You smoking your cigarette, me breathing in air too cold for mid-March.  The fact that you smoke doesn’t bother me, it’s your right and besides, it can’t be any worse for me than the exhaust fumes I suck into my lungs mile after mile.  You take one final drag and, as I approach, you fling your cigarette to the right using your thumb and forefinger as a sort of butt-launcher, missing my by inches.

I imagine you are someone who does not simply discard his empty coffee cups on the side of the road rather than wait for the appearance of a trash can.  I think it likely that you bring your own reusable bags to the supermarket.  Maybe I’ve got you all wrong but, I have to ask, why is it that people who are otherwise responsible inhabitants of an overly shared space feel it is okay to drop their cigarette butts on the ground?  Why is this one form of litter still acceptable?  But even more importantly than that, can you do us all a favor and at least look before you flick a still burning object through the air?  Because, you know, I don’t care if you smoke, I don’t mind breathing the smoke in, but I don’t really care to be burned by your cigarette.

I’m glad we had this little chat, Smoking Man.  And, honestly, it was lovely seeing you again.  Maybe next time I will even say hello.

To future encounters

Rebekah

*The one smoking on Seventh Avenue in Brooklyn, not the creepy one from The X-Files.  By the way did I ever tell you guys I have limited edition Mulder and Skully Barbie and Ken dolls?  Well, I do.  But I won’t tell you where they live for fear you will try and steal them.

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