This is adapted from an email to a friend named Liz. I’m putting it up in response to the latest brouhaha about body cams.1
Eleanor Roosevelt used to write a column, "My Day." I was thinking of that earlier... bear with me; this will make sense.
I decided to go down to Kremer Pigments on W. 29th street to buy coarse marble dust to make a clear gesso (will explain why I want to do that some other time). Discovered on my way that I'd forgotten my cell phone, continued.
On West 29th discovered an interesting tile/stonework place but continued on & made my purchase. On the way back to 7th curiosity got the better of me, so went into the tile place. I really wished I’d had my cell phone because this place was wild: marble slabs everywhere and signs saying, “Danger”. I called out, “Is anyone here?” but no one answered, so walked up 7th to 34th, turned west, walked to 8th to the McDonald’s where I planned on drinking coffee & reading the book that I'd taken with me.
As I turned up 8th on 34th, I saw a full white sheet that someone had left on the top of the green painted railing outside the subway entrance. I hesitated, then checked it out - no effluvia or crud. Totally clean, or as clean as it could be. Polyester, made in China. I bundled it up took. Drawing drapery is great practice.
Had my coffee. Exited, turned north on 8th. Just south of 35th a crazy black man was screaming into the wind to my left, in the bicycle lane. I averted my eyes because making eye contact with these guys is deadly. He was half-dressed, with the requisite shopping bags.
Overheard convo between a feisty Latino woman & her male companion. The woman was saying, "If you use the word 'faggot' you get uh-rested."
Continued north. Saw/heard a few more nutcases, but none threatening.
Just north of 37th, to my right, a white kid with purple bruises on his face was lying, unconscious, on the ground just outside a dry goods store run by a South Asian. I stopped and asked the store owner what was happening. A white couple was there, the woman on her cell phone. He told me she were calling the cops. I'd have done the same but I had no phone.
“What’s going to happen?” I asked. “They’ll send an ambulance.” I wondered why he wasn’t the one doing the calling.
Continued north. Approaching 39th, I overheard two white businessmen types (casually dressed, one was wearing an LL Bean vest) discussing business. The Jewish-appearing one said to the WASPy one, "Liz needed to use the bathroom, and they told her that she could use the one downstairs, not the one upstairs!" This was some kind of in-joke. They both cracked up and continued talking business. Some kind of media thing.
What was strange about this was that I was thinking of writing you an email about this series of "only in NYC" incidents even before I heard them talking about your namesake.
Maybe at that instant you really were using the bathroom.
Something about this series of random NYC occurrences struck me as Felliniesque. But it was also relevant to the bodycam controversy. You have to see daily life in a large American city to believe it.
https://x.com/wil_da_beast630/status/1778413827446436135