The Hustled and Hustlers

Not much time, it is already the following day. I am a little bit tired from having to be in the city by 7:45 this morning. Inventory is coming up and I am not really looking forward to it.

The thing that really tripped me out yesterday was my ride on Suburban Transit which I call Subaltern Transit because I leave this really well to do suburb in central Jersey (practically Pennsylvania) and head to my Brooklyn, Harlem, Financial District, Upper Eastside work-play-stomp almost everyday. I take either the 5:55 am or the 6:15 am to be in the city at around 7:00 where I drink my habitual Red-Eye (coffee with a shot of espresso), read a surfing magazine, watch the European tourist try and turn Port Authority into Gare de l'Est and just stroll up 8th on what used to be the craziest Red Light District in North America. It is now just a former X-rated world where I giggle at the people that go into to this comedy club that was a strip joint in a not so previous life. This is the same stripe joint where I saw the most toothless set of strippers this side of the Mississippi simulate the most torrid of sex acts in front of an all female group of Japanese tourist. Oh, and there was a cigarette involved. Now look at the place.

Great Jupiter! What has happened to MY CITY!

Well, the thing that was interesting as we hustled onto the bus like a bunch of Flash Gordon automatons (preparing for battle to the soundtrack by Queen) was that out of the 3 other passengers sitting around me I was the only one reading a book. I was brushing up on Rodo and Retamar, another commuter sitting diagonally from me was sleeping, the gentleman directly in front of me was playing solitaire on his lap top and the guy adjacent to me was watching Al Gore's film An Inconvenient Truth on a portable DVD player. So only one out of the four of us was reading. That says a lot to me about the publishing world, people's habits and how we receive information. I was actually more shocked by the fact that once we arrived at Port Authority the guy who was watching his DVD immediately put on his earphones and marched out of the bus with an introverted cadence of the heart. I bet you he dates on line.

The academic snob in me wanted to say "Pity, maybe I shall eat a peach."

But Littlemilk said, "C'est la vie, maybe I can make it to work on time if I walk today. It is cold, but its nice to get the blood pumping and to feel my cheeks become tingly at their most rounded tops. And who doesn't like Central Park South and the view of the trees."

So I walked to work en mass.

Nothing else to report.