With New York's streets being bountiful in charisma, the set of vignettes open the door to areas outside the city aching to be discovered. Each one serves a purpose: to offer you an inside look at simple, observable, everyday moments that occur.
Weed Pizza?
After school, for many years, a group of us headed down to buy corner pizza from Bambino’s. Every plain slice was only one dollar, but toppings cost an extra twenty-five cents. This seemed like a good bargain for just a bunch of public school teenagers. Days later, my health teacher showed the class a news report of a local pizzeria that added marijuana to their products, without telling their customers. The cops immediately shut it down, after a dutiful inspection. It happened to be Bambino’s Pizzeria.
Overly-aired Chips
One large bag of an unnamed brand of potato chips is costs $1.99 by a junkyard in deep Corona. Now the Lays, the Wise, the Utz, or the Ruffles vary, but all go up to $4.99 a bag. It’s a difficult purchase for only party food, more when the amount of actual potato chips inside, compared to the air, is less than half. Many say the bags are filled to the maximum after being processed and somehow reduce when delivered. Not true, it’s all a justified government scam.
Subway Segregation
Every subway car becomes designed with a specified role to resemble the characteristics of those who ride the subway. There are the ones who ride in the going-to-be-late car, consisting of individuals who have issues managing time and planning. Those who are apart of the no-place-to-go car, usually filled with tourists or people who seeking to explore the city. Many belong to the had-a-long-day car, entailing business owners, students and workers. The majority become apart of the ambiguous car, followed with various unexpected events, comprising of a variation of individuals joined by one commonality, which is their destination. As I stand with my feet firmly eleven inches from each other, doing the typical New Yorker as I try to hold my balance, I look above and gaze towards the lights, several feet above my height. I begin to take in the smell of the newly renovated trains coming from Flushing, because only the orange and yellow-color seat trains used to come our way. The subway becomes one of the places many brochures, TV shows and movies lack to include, forgetting to convey the underground, but most of all, real and raw New York.
Sidewalk Etiquette
People instead of standing in the middle of the sidewalk, stood in the middle of the street. Rather than looking both ways, courageously j-walked while a yellow taxi wailed. The sidewalks of avenues glittered with diamond inside. This strange city became a hallow place, with people I did not recognize as the years moved along.
