thrill of the chase

In Tuesday's adventures...

#1: TAKE A NAP AT METRONAPS. Submitted by four different people, including a hungover guy sitting in front of a Park Slope coffee shop.

Metronaps is a new place in the Emprie State building. It features special napping pods in which you take a 20 minute nap in the middle of your workday and leave, they claim, feeling refreshed and revived. As a New Yorker who often finds herself wanting to take a mid-day nap while out in the city, but is hesitant to camp out on a bench (the one time I did try that, on a Broadway median strip bench, a cop shook me awake with the inexplicable words, "Whyncha wake up, honey, and go play some tennis". I arrived for my appointment with great expectations. Everything about the place, as you'd imagine, is quiet. The attendant said, "Welcome to Metronaps" in a voice that was barely audible. The room was very dark and full of sleeping pods that look 2001-ish and also like the egg chair on the cover of that Luna album. The attendant explained that a light would come on when my nap was over, and that the chair would vibrate. He tucked me in with a fleecey blanket. Being tucked in by someone you don't know at all is a funny, sweet feeling. And so my nap began. I had to control the desire to whisper toward the socked feet napping in the pod next to mine the eternal sleepover question: "Are you asleep yet?" I put on the headphones, which were playing Nature Sounds New Age music, and listened as loons and trickling water were tortured by Casio keyboards and harps. I was so excited to be lying in a white pod in a dark room that I couldn't come close to sleeping at all, until the last two minutes or so, when I started to get sleepy and closed my eyes. The lights in my pod came on then, and I staggered over to the "refreshment station" to splash some lemon spritzer on my face, about a hundred times more tired than I had been when I came in. It took some really spicy Korean food for lunch, around the corner from the Empire State, to wake me up again.

#2: FOLLOW SOMEONE AROUND MANHATTAN. BUT DON'T LET THEM KNOW YOU'RE FOLLOWING THEM.
Submitted by Alex, napper in the pod next to mine.

This was by far the craziest and funnest summer adventure so far. I'm not going to start writing about it now, though, because I need to pack. I leave tomorrow for a driving vacation around the south. But be assured, I'm bringing the summer list along and my adventures will continue south of the Mason-Dixon. Hopefully I can update along the way; if not, I'll have a lot to write about when I get back.

But what, I don't know, makes a girl

In Wednesday's adventures...

#1: BUY SOMEONE A LEMONADE. Submitted by a dry cleaner in the East Village.

After one watermelon and one lemonade, I've come to the conclusion that giving free things to New Yorkers is one of the hardest things in the world. But for meeting interesting people, it's pure gold.

(Person 1, an old lady on 8th street, east village)
Me: Would you like a lemonade?
Spinster: No! I would not! I don't know you from Adam!

(Person 2, skinny hipster, 11th street)
Me: I'd like to get you a lemonade.
Him: Excuse me?
Me: Would you like a lemonade?
Him: Are you flirting with me?
Me: No!
Him: Good, because I like boys.
Me: So...do you want a lemonade?
Him: It burns my throat. But thank you.

(Person 3, teenage boy with thin, mousy moustache, St. Marks)
Me: Would you like a lemonade?
Him: A lemonade? Are you gonna make me join your church or somethin'?
Me: No, I just want to get you a lemonade. You look thirsty.
Him: Um...OK.
Me: OK, wait here.
(rushing to return from deli)
One refreshing Snapple lemonade. And I got you some M&Ms too.
Him: Cool! Ah, I don't have anything to give you!
Me: (laughing) That's OK!
Him: I'll probably see you around here again sometime, and I'll buy you, like, a taco or something.

#2: GO TO THE PARK AND SEE WHAT PEOPLE ARE SAYIN'. Submitted by an elderly gentleman, nicknamed Mr. Key, (as in Key Food grocery store) on 5th Avenue, Brooklyn.

As I was wandering around the area anyway, I went to Union Square Park to see what the people are talking about. There was a certain ominous feeling in the air, due mostly to a very loud, heated arguement about democracy occuring behind me. What about democracy was being argued was unclear. Only snatches of the conversation would come through, very loudly, including "I'M TALKING ABOUT _DEMOCRACY_!", "THAT'S NOT DEMOCRACY! YOU ARE CRAAAAAAAZY!" and "YOU'RE ONLY ALIVE BECAUSE OF DEMOCRACY!" This arguement impacted greatly on what the other people in the park were saying. Many cell phone conversations went something like this:

Girl: Yeah, so that's my right, right? I can ask him where he was and who he's with. Yeah. I KNOW! Uh-huh. Oh damn, the people behind me are fighting! Ha ha ha! They're so loud! They're like, screaming and turning purple!

In the section of benches I was sitting in, reading, with about 10 other people, also reading, there was a feeling of danger in the air. One guy turned to me and said, "Democracy has never been so loud!"

But for others, the fight was just background noise, if they even noticed at all. A man sitting across the path from me was absorbed in his book, and in eating a giant slice of pizza with the other hand. Every few minutes he would slap the book on his knee, roll his eyes and say something sarcastic, like "Yeah, RIGHT." Despite repeated attempts, including pretending to tie my shoes and drop my book, I couldn't get a good look at exactly what book he was so sarcastic about.

And for some, the park was just a chance to enjoy summer. A girl who looked about six, walking by with a man who was likely her father said, "I got a Mr. Softee cone today, I had a playdate and outside, it's hot. I'm so happy I could jump over a skyscraper."

Francie

Tuesday's Adventure...

CALL ME, submitted by Francie Ellis, 9 year old future fourth grader. Who kindly provided me with at least 10 copies of her phone number so that I could complete this request.

(sound of phone being dropped, squealing, boy yelling)
francie: hello?
me: hey francie, it's Ms. Sarah!
Francie: Ms. Sarah, Ms. Sarah! Where have you been my whole life?
me: Francie, I've been loving summer. Do you love the summer?
Francie: Yeah. We went to the beach last weekend.
Me: Nice.
Francie: Guess what my new obsession is.
Me: Gray wolves.
Francie: MS. SARAH, I haven't been obsessed with wolves for a long time (editor's note: she was still talking about them when school ended in June!)! I really like weasels now. Do you want to be in the weasel fan club?
Me: Sure.
Francie: Alright, I'll make you an ID card. What color weasel do you want on your card?
Me: What do you recommend?
Francie: Ummm...I think I'll give you a...white one.
Me: Great.
Francie: Well, my brother is still driving me CRAZY.
Me: Just remember what I told you about having no reaction. That works a lot.
Francie: Yeah, but not ALL the time.
Me: Hopefully, you know, Jonah will grow up and mature a little in the next couple years. He's only 7.
Francie: I want to sell him for about 50 cents! No, 10 cents!
Me: My little brother turned out to be great. I think yours will too.
Francie: Did you see _Two brothers_?
Me: Nope.
Francie: Did you see Spiderman 2?
Me: Yeah, I liked it!
Francie: Me too! OK...pick a color.
Me: Um, yellow.
Francie: OK, on the chart I made, that means your husband is going to be a cook. And you're going to die of cancer!
Me: Oh...ok!
Francie: And you're going to have 3 children. Do you like apple pie?
Me: I do.
Francie: My mom and I made an apple pie together. It was really good.
Me: Mmmmmmm.

Good morning, Starshine

Yesterday's Adventures:

#1: EAT MUFFINS FROM BLUE SKY BAKERY. Submitted by Adrian Tomine, Optic Nerve Comics,
part-time Brooklyn resident, and part-time O'Connors drinker.

Blue Sky bakery is on 5th Avenue in Park Slope. It looks a little like an old-timey ice cream parlor. I ate a muffin for Adrian, and then I ate most of the other things they had too. I staggered out swollen and sleepy. My brother once complained, after I had eaten the last brownie in the pan, "you're a pastry whore."

#2: On the way to the bakery, I fulfilled the following submission: WALK AROUND THE BLOCK WITH YOUR CLOTHES ON BACKWARDS (submitted by David Greenberger).

I was wearing a t-shirt and running shorts, not really a backwards stand-out. When the very nice lady at the bakery asked what I wanted, she followed it by saying, with sweet concern, "Oh! Your shirt is on backwards!" I said, "Yes, so are my shorts!". She didn't know what to say to that. It occurred to me as I strolled toward the Tea Lounge, that on a street where I recently saw a man wearing a garbage bag and a pink vinyl shirt, backwards clothes will be overlooked. So I told the guy at one of the delis, as i bought some water, "My clothes are on backwards." He said, "backwards, forwards, you gotta do what you want to."

The rest of yesterday's adventures arose spontaneously, suggested by my friend Sean Howe, and by me.

#3: (at Prospect Park) "OK, let's play that we have to stay in the shade all the time."

Even at a park, this was not especially easy. An auxillary rule had to be made that we could take three large steps to get to the next patch of shade. I couldn't stop laughing. When we reached a point where there was no shade down the path to run to, I pretended to die a horrific blistering death in the sun. As we walked toward the nethermead, I told Sean that I had been the Wisconsin state champion tree identifier in junior high. And that I had worn my gold medal to SCHOOL the next day, thinking that everyone would admire me. Sean said, "I was a dork in junior high, but I wasn't STUPID!" The walk became a preoccupied one. Sean was quiet because he was worried about moderating a discussion last night for a panel of authors that wrote essays for his book. I was preoccupied thinking about where I would live if I was homeless (Prospect Park, in the summer) and then preoccupied by creating ice cream recipes in my mind (how can I incorporate gingersnaps without them getting soggy?). We walked on in silence until we decided...

#4: "LET'S GO ON THE PADDLEBOATS!"

And we will, maybe next week. But it was getting late, and it was hot. So then...

#5: "Let's eat icies!"
Eating icies is the best thing about many summer days. When I was a kid, we were allowed to eat one popsicle every day, on the back patio. We loved banana, rootbeer and blue raspberry. In the hot sun, they would drip sticky juice onto our knees. In most of my earliest memories of my brother, he has popsicle blue lips and blue teeth. If you were really unlucky, a chunk of the popsicle would break off and land on the bricks, where it would be mobbed by ants. Which wasn't so bad because ants are interesting. Now it's years later, and flavored ice is still a huge part of my summer. Uncle Louie G's stands are scattered around Brooklyn, including at the Brooklyn Cyclones stadium. Uncle Louie G is a quiet, kind man. He sits on a bench outside the Union Street stand a lot of the time, and his yellow hummer with the license plate ICES is always parked nearby. There are more than thirty flavors at Uncle Louie G's. The peach has real peach chunks in it. It tastes like summer.

Louie G made some good summer suggestions a few weeks ago, which will appear in future updates.

*These adventures typed while listening to The Doo Wop Box Set, Volume 1 (with thanks to Matt Raphael).

Everything is everything

Yesterday's agenda:
HAVE CONVERSATIONS WITH THREE STRANGERS. Submitted by a guy sitting on a stoop at 3 a.m. on my walk home from the Union St. R train station.

#1: 6 year old I went ice-skating with yesterday (part of a camp class from Berkeley Carroll).

kid: Help me, lady!
me: Here, hold my hand!
kid: (frustrated) I can't even do this!
me: You're getting better and better. Keep trying.
kid: My legs won't stand!
me: Here, I'm going to hold you up.
both: AAAAAAAAAAGH!
kid: We fell on our butts!
me: Ha ha ha!


#2: Guy on a bench in front of Ozzie's coffee.

guy: It's gonna storm tonight.
me: Yeah.
guy: I can't find my umbrella. I think I left it at my sister's house.
me: I think I left mine at a movie.
guy: Movies are so expensive now.
me: Yeah.

I always fall for that one...

Today's agenda:

#1: Buy a pack of tic-tacs in every borough.
Submitted by Christian Scanniello, web designer, Washington D.C..

#2: Eat ice cream for breakfast, lunch and dinner.
Submitted by Caterina Megan, Brooklyn 9 year old, who would like you to know that she made up her own pseudonym and that it might one day be the name of her future daughter. Who will be born when she is 30.


Staten Island gets taken care of, right off the bat. I like Staten Island, but it's not easy to get around without the car. I don't even leave the ferry station. The first pack of tic-tacs (cinnamon) are from the newstand right there. I'm on the next ferry back 45 seconds later. Everyone on board looks exhausted.

Then it's up to Jackson Heights for kulfi, delicious Indian ice cream. I wander around looking in at the wedding shops with fancy saris, jewelry shops and Pakistani restaurants. A variety store has a handwritten sign in the window "BUY A PRESENT FOR YOUR MOMMYDADDY". I find a newstand with kulfi, and buy a cardamom flavored bar with almonds (breakfast). It's excellent. So good, in fact, that I buy a pistachio one on the way back to the subway. The second bar is Rajbhog brand ("taste of the east") and when the kulfi is gone, the stick underneath has a 718 phone number printed on it. I buy a pack of orange tic-tacs from a Pakistani sweetshop, and also some unidentifiable candy, from a refrigerated case full of neat little rows of squares. The candy was really good: spicy and sweet and chewy. The man behind the counter was SO eager for me to like it, it seemed like my whole reaction to tasting it would either validate or dismiss Pakistan. I told him I loved it and said, "If I ever go to Pakistan, I'll get some more." He said, "No. Do not go to Pakistan. Just come back to my store."

After Queens, I head over and up to 231st street, for some Bronx tic-tacs (green) and some gelato (lunch). I gave the green tic-tacs to a homeless guy on the subway platform.

Back to Manhattan. I buy white tic-tacs at K-Mart. When we were small, my little brother and I played games in which white tic-tacs had medicinal or magical properties, and sometimes both. I distinctly remember, when he was about 5 and I was about 10, "prescribing" him a few white tic-tacs and him asking, "So I can fly now?" and me saying, "Yes. And also your strep throat is cured.". Ice cream dinner is at Cones, on Bleeker. I get almond cream and dark chocolate. Dag. Their ice cream is so good. I'm so absorbed in eating it that I don't notice the rain has washed a lot of it onto my jacket. A little girl walking by with her mother points at me, a grown-up living the third grade fantasy of eating as much ice cream as you want all day long, and wearing a lot of it too, and says, "she made a mess".

Back in Brooklyn, I buy the last pack of tic-tacs at a deli on my street. Pulling out the ice cream stick from my first stop, I dial the number for Rajbhog. A woman answers. I say, "Your kulfi is really good. It's delicious." There's a silence and then she says, quietly, "thank you," and hangs up.

Watermelon killer, car counter

Today's agenda:

1.) COUNT ALL THE RED CARS THAT GO BY IN HALF AN HOUR, submitted by David Greenberger, of Duplex Planet.

2.) PASS OUT FREE WATERMELON TO PEOPLE WALKING BY, submitted by Todd, the only other person in the theater when I saw _Napoleon Dynamite_.

Originally, I planned on doing both at the same time, but the watermelon is hard to manage, even before it's cut up, so I can that idea. I buy the watermelon on the way to lunch at Tom's restaurant in Prospect Heights. I sit it across from me at the table, which the waiters think is hilarious. I get apple pancakes. The waiter wants to know what the watermelon wants. He brings a glass of water for it. "Water for a watermelon!," he jokes, and we both laugh like fools. I planned horribly for the watermelon. I didn't bring anything to cut it with and nothing to serve it on. I finagle a plastic knife from a guy at a bodega, but I have to buy some lemonheads to get it. I get the watermelon over to a good corner on Underhill near two public schools with playgrounds, so I think people will come by. Sure enough some kids come over to see what I'm doing. I offer them some watermelon. One of them says, "we got to ask". They run off. In a couple minutes I see them coming around the corner with two women. The women don't look especially happy. At that moment, I remember that there was some kind of bacterial food poisoning outbreak at a school in the midwest that was traced back to unwashed watermelon. I didn't wash my watermelon. In fact, I somehow got cinnamon butter on it at Tom's. I start to sweat. I can see the cover of the Post: "WATERMELON KILLER TARGETED CHILDREN". Or "BROOKLYN TEACHER GETS AN 'A' IN MURDER". And then the kids' Moms are there. "What are you doing?", one of them asks. She's not angry, but she's far from happy. "Do you live around here?" I stammer that I live close to there. I tell them that I'm on my way home from Tom's, which seems to put them at ease a bit, since everyone in the neighborhood knows and loves Gus. Then, ridiculously, I add, "Watermelon really has a lot of water in it". One of the moms says, "Hunh." It's clear they don't want their kids eating my watermelon. The little girl, about four, has been winding herself around her legs while I talk. She kisses my knee. The moms don't tell her to stop; in fact, they do seem even more at ease. Kids have a good sense of who to trust. We talk about schools, teachers, watermelon, sunburns, garbage collection, car alarms and anxious children. The kids and I talk about soda, the summer, and I tell them a little bit about what it was like to be a kid in Wisconsin. One of the boys in the group of kids asks if I want to ride his bike. I look at the Moms. The laugh, and the one that I assume is the mom of that kid says, "Honey, if you can fit on it, you can ride it." I can't fit on it. Well, I can, but it creaks in an about-to-fall-apart way and my knees jut way up into the air when I peddle, like a clown bike. But it's SO fun. I leave the kids listening to my ipod and ride down to the next block and back. There's something about riding a bike when you're a kid that you can never quite get back again as a grownup, but this is so close. When I get back, one of the moms has bought three coronas in the bodega. She holds one out to me. "Could we get in trouble for just drinking these out on the sidewalk?" I want to know. They laugh at me, "No one is gonna care!". I try to pay them for the beer, but they won't let me.

I try to give some watermelon to squirrels, but they ignore it. So I eat a huge piece by myself and throw the rest away. My fingers keep sticking to my ipod on the way home.

I walk back over to Park Slope to count red cars, on President Street. A woman comes out on her stoop to ask if I'm OK. I tell her I'm counting red cars and she says, "They say people that drive red cars tend to speed" and goes back inside her house. It's a quiet block. In 30 minutes, only six red cars go by. I wave at each one of them.