Same Pictures on the Awning

On Thirty Ninth Street and Eight Avenue we dropped our bags. Out the window was an enormous billboard of a young African American kid in a cap from three angles.  The text said something about New York style.  He must be someone.  Back out on Eighth Avenue, now beneath the same billboard, and the young man’s deliberate lips, the street is completely jammed.  We need to make our way ten blocks up to the Eugene O’Neil Theatre. 

Walking along the sidewalk we move with the flow of the uptown traffic.  Young suburban faces, gnarled pan-handling faces, cops who seem ready and tourist touts who also seem ready to sift from this flow something of value.  My wife is thinking of noodles.  We spy a Chinese looking place.  “I’ll just get something quick.”  There is a line of five deep to be seated.  We move on.  I spy a Starbucks.  “I just want an espresso before the play.”  The line is too long and is even longer at the next Starbucks we come upon two blocks later.  This all used to be so seedy and at odd hours dangerous, but now it is merely cold and crowded. All that seed and danger has moved on-line. 

Is this the only place in the United States where we experience this intense concentration of humanity?  Where else?  Perhaps there are some blocks that feel like this in Chicago?  Certainly it doesn’t bring to mind Boston or San Francisco, or L.A.  It does suggest China, and India, and Japan, and Indonesia.  Shinagawa Station and Causeway Bay and the streets in front of the Red Fort in Delhi, (Google maps tells me it is: "Nataji Subhash Marg" but I couldn't tell you if anyone else there refers to it that way.)  always feel like this. It strikes me that this is one of the things that ties New York and fleetingly the United States, to other more crowded parts of the world.  Once, New York had puffed itself up to be unique in its size and its numbers.  But not anymore.

We arrive uncharacteristically early.  There is another Chinese food place that seems to have the precise same pictures on the awning as the one we passed a few blocks back.  I already have my eyes on the Starbucks across the street, which has precisely the same green goddess logo as every other Starbucks in the world.  We divide up.  I get my triple shot and she has her la mian.  We’ve managed to meet the other two members of our party.   The line moves swiftly.

Now we are gut-laughing as the villagers curse the Almighty:  “Hasa Diga Eebowai.”  We connect with people and humor differently when it's all live