SOUP TO NUTS: October Weekend Brunch Edition

Late breaking nutty bits from the Big Candied Apple… Bite-size pieces that help us put together a much larger picture of widespread New York nuttiness… Amusing, often bemusing, these odds and ends are not to be missed… Before you leave work on Friday, or after a mimosa or two this fine October weekend — it’s all good…

NEW YORK CITY WAS BETTER WHEN IT WAS LO-TECH

A New York Times writer bemoans the advent of GPS and other state-of-the-art technology that prevents us from getting lost:

WHAT we are witnessing is the death of disorientation. What is a city like New York with no walks halfway down the wrong block? With no wrong blocks? With no need to pause, take a breath and synchronize the senses with the clues embedded in the urban landscape? No need to ask questions of one’s fellow human beings? None of that subtle mixture of gratification and satisfaction that comes from giving or receiving directions that help us find our way?

Those few moments of disorientation are the moments in which we are reminded of the dizziness of this world — its irrationality, its chaos, its unexpected beauty.

Source: NY Times via Gawker
Illustration: Jon KeeGan

SUBWAY SEATING ARTIST? (OR JUST ANOTHER NUT?)

From NY1:

“If you’ve noticed some extra seating on subway platforms lately, it might not be the MTA’s doing. A Queens man has launched a one-man campaign to help people take a load off their feet while they wait for the train. NY1 Transit reporter Bobby Cuza filed the following report.”

“It’s not that unusual to find Jason Eppink in the subways carrying a chair. The Queens artist has made a habit of picking them up off the street, bringing them underground, then setting them up on subway platforms.”

Source: NY1 via Queens Crap
Photo credit: NY1

“COPY EDITORS DESPERATELY NEEDED!”

“Please apply at the New York City Department of Transportation ASAP.”

That perfectly good headline and opening line, and this photo of a misspelled street sign for Mercer Street, courtesy of EphemeralNewYork.com.

Source and photo credit: EphemeralNewYork.com

© 2008 NutsInNY.com

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Mayor Bloomberg: NY Does Not Exist Til Jess Returns

New York City is missing a nut, and vice versa.

Jess, a 20 year old NYU undergrad, loves Paris but she is homesick for New York. She writes home comparing the two cities, two cultures:

People actually amble when they get off the Metro here! If you do that in New York you get run over or verbally abused. But I think all these things contribute to an attitude that is in contrast to one that people used to living in New York have cultivated. I have no patience, a strikingly entitled outlook (I don’t care how Catholic you are, stores should be open on Sundays!), a hurried, intense way of living and an arbitrary sense of safety even in the most dangerous situations.

The no-24-hour-metro thing is a problem in the sense that I am broke and can’t afford to take a cab home every time I go out. (Not to mention it’s not like cabs swarm the streets like in New York)…

It’s not that I hate Paris: quite the contrary. I love it here. It’s just that New York has been so woven into the person that I am that the very idea of it existing without me makes me homesick. My friends here from NYU and I talk about it constantly, and Parisians or people we know from different schools stare at us like we are legit insane. Perhaps we are. We get this dreamy look in our eyes like we are reminiscing about some long ago high school romance… a high school romance with a 24 hour subway system and an intense delivery network that can allow for anything your heart desires to appear on your doorstep within the hour.

I was browsing through friends’ Facebook albums this morning and saw a picture of someone walking up Astor Place towards Broadway. I suddenly experienced this dramatic lurch in my stomach and felt like I might cry. It’s almost as if I’m in this one sided long distance relationship or something, wherein I desperately miss this place and it just ignores me and continues to spit out pollution and embarrassingly pun-laden Post headlines…

Jess et une amie a Paris

Jess, I think I speak for 8 million New Yorkers when I say it’s just not the same without you here. Hurry home!

Photo credit: Jess and Josh Talk About Stuff

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© 2008 NutsInNY.com

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No, it is you who are soft and cuddly as a kitten

Paul Gordon writes:

After picking up my wife’s dry cleaning, I boarded a crowded but not crammed N train at 57th Street to join the evening rush hour. To keep my wife’s sweaters above the fray, I held them aloft in the same hand I used to grip the train’s center pole.

We left the station and the car was quiet until a large, dreadlocked man in the seat nearest to me said to his similarly styled friend in a lilting Jamaican accent, “You, my friend, are soft and cuddly as a kitten.”

To which the man replied, “No, it is you who are soft and cuddly as a kitten.”

This being New York, no one stared or turned their heads even as this repartee repeated itself. Back and forth they went, each kindly demurring to the other. “No, no, you are the softest and cuddliest kitten I know.”

Looking for a place to train my eye, I stared at the dry cleaning I was holding aloft, and saw that the plastic bag covering my wife’s sweaters bore a picture of a small cat playing with a ball of yarn, beneath which read the words, “Prepared just for you, soft and cuddly as a kitten.”

I turned to the two men, who were smiling back at me.

“Ha, ha, we got you, man!” They clapped their hands and then, along with most of the folks in our car, burst into laughter.

Source: The New York Times Metropolitan Diary, via Capn Design.

Read more about nuts on the subway here and here!

© 2008 NutsInNY.com

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Imported Nuts, Exhibit A

[UPDATE: Since I posted this, travelpod.com has removed this guy’s daily travelogue from their website.]

A visitor from Israel named Ayal relates the following gripping story about flying to the United States, arriving at JFK, making his way to the hotel where he’ll stay in Manhattan, and then immediately striking out for the boro of Queens in search of the laptop bargain he had called about in advance from Israel:

A train to Queens… New Hyde Park station… trying to find my store… I called from Israel and made sure they have my model in stock and ready to sell… Upon getting there a few Japanese (or something, they all look the same to me) guys welcomed me and told me that this is a warehouse and they are not selling to private customers.

I god a little angry and said I talked to them from Israel and they told me I can buy and blah blah blah… I asked for the model I want, they said the guy just went for the day and I should come back after Labor Day. At this point I got really pissed off.

After all that we’ve been through? No way, so like good Israeli I started to bitch and yell on him. After a few short minutes the fellow…went to bring me my new laptop. Now with a new laptop and no reason in the world to hurry we started our way back to Manhattan.

Just the kind of guy a few midwesterners will encounter in NYC, then return home to Meatloaf, Kansas telling folks about how rude them New Yorkers are…

Read more about nuts in Queens!

© 2008 nutsinny.com

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Maybe This Website is a Mafia Front?

After we get off work in Manhattan, my girlfriend Bunny and I walk home from the train in Brooklyn together most evenings. On the way we pass a very cute little pastry/coffee shop on a certain avenue in Brooklyn… We have often thought that we’d like to go inside for a cup of coffee and a snack, but the place rarely seems to be open for business.

One day recently we noticed a couple of 35 year old Italian Brooklyn guys sort of just standing around inside, chatting behind the counter. So we decided to pop in to check it out and get a cup of coffee. However, when we tried to pay for our coffees, the one guy sort of looked around at the other guy in a bemused way - as if he didn’t know how or how much to charge us - and he finally just smiled and announced, “It’s on the house!”

My suspicions about the place were confirmed; when we were at a safe distance, outside on the street, I whispered to Bunny, “See I told you, it’s a mafia front!”

Fast forward a couple of weeks: Bunny and I came home separately one day, she got home later than me. When she finally got home, she was carrying a bag of pastries and coffee. She excitedly told me that she had just bought the goodies from the guys at the mysterious pastry shop, and that she had had a very pleasant chat with the management.

According to her, they assured her that they were indeed a legitimate business. And they had a damn good laugh when they heard that I, her boyfriend, had speculated that they weren’t a real business, but rather a mafia front!

[gulp!]

Submitted by: Arnell

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© 2008 nutsinny.com

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Asking Directions in NYC: The 2 Out of 3 Rule

On the blog Second Ave Sagas, Benjamin Kabak discusses the notion that knowing the subway system in NYC is what makes someone a New Yorker. However, then he goes too far (emphasis added):

If someone living in the city can navigate the hot spots — the so-called Central Business District of Manhattan — without the aid of a subway map (except during the weekends), then a New Yorker that person shall be. If someone can, by and large, get from his or her local subway stop to just about anywhere else in the city, if that person would even be so bold as to offer lost tourists subway directions, then a New Yorker you will be.

The bit about offering directions to tourists is misleading; New Yorkers love to provide directions when asked, but it doesn‘t mean they know what they‘re talking about. That‘s what the 2 out of 3 rule for asking directions in NYC is for: you ask 3 people, then go with the 2 versions that sound similar. Because New Yorkers love to give directions. Or maybe they just don‘t like to say “I don‘t know”!

Read more subway news.

Copyright ©2008 nutsinny.com

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Coke Head on the L Train

WHO: Me
WHERE: L train

THE STORY: I was riding the L train standing, reading Bob Dylan‘s Chronicles and drinking a can of Coke. My ear felt itchy so I reached up to scratch it, forgetting that I was holding a Coke, and I ended up pouring the Coke over the the side of my head soaking my clothes and the floor. I looked up and everyone was laughing.

SUBMITTED BY: Rutha

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Copyright ©2008 nutsinny.com

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The Philosophy Professor and the Subway Cop

WHO: Sidney Morgenbesser (1921-2004), Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at Columbia University

WHERE: the subway

THE STORY: One day in New York City, Morgenbesser put his pipe in his mouth as he was ascending the subway steps. A policeman approached and told him that there was no smoking on the subway. Morgenbesser pointed out that he was leaving the subway, not entering it, and that he had not yet lit up. The cop repeated his injunction. Morgenbesser repeated his observation. After a few such exchanges, the cop saw he was beaten and fell back on the oldest standby of enfeebled authority: “If I let you do it, I‘d have to let everyone do it.” To this the old philosopher replied, “Who do you think you are—Kant?” His last word was misconstrued, and the whole question of the Categorical Imperative had to be hashed out down at the police station. Morgenbesser won the argument.

Source: Powerset

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