Saturday, August 09, 2008

Things I do not understand

It's been less than a week since I descended upon New York, and I already have so many questions about my strange new home! I thought perhaps some of you might be able to offer up some insight. Without further ado, I give you:

Things I do not understand since arriving in New York!

1. Mystery condensation
I'll be walking down the street, making my merry way through the city, and doing my best to look tough and menacing yet captivating and approachable. When out of nowhere - BLAM! - a droplet of water will find it's way to my head/face/person. I look up - no clouds, leaking faucets, waterfalls - and so I do NOT UNDERSTAND where this water is coming from! (And let's assume, for the sake of my emotional wellbeing, that this IS in fact, water - I'm better off not thinking about the alternatives...) My early theory was air conditioning units but this mysterious moisture seems to find me indoors, outdoors, underground while waiting for the subway, everywhere! If anyone has a non-disgusting explanation, I await your hypotheses.

2. Why more people don't shop at Kmart
Or maybe they do! And maybe I am the only one who has heretofore turned up her nose at Kmart. I've always been a proponent of Target. But let me riddle you this: what is the ONE thing Kmart has that Target, sadly, does not? Two words, friends: Martha. Stewart. I was wandering the streets of Manhattan yesterday in search of affordable home goods, and becoming increasingly discouraged. I needed plates! I needed a colander! And might I remind you, I have no job! In the most expensive city in America! Along trots Martha to the rescue. Let me say this: I am a little obsessed with my new plates. OK, a lot obsessed. But look at them! P.S., that's a light silver hue - yes, folks, they are shiny! But not too shiny!

3. How one Trader Joe's is meant to support the entirety of the New York metropolitan area.
Look, I can't tell you how overjoyed I am that you're here, but there's a reason your lines are like Disneyland's. Please expand.

4.
How people function when it's raining.
This is likely a holdover from L.A., and unrelated to the aforementioned mystery condensation. But seriously, in L.A. at least we have a car to sit in when it rains like, 12 days a year. Since I've been here it's rained three times. It's August. So people in New York, what, just walk around in it?

5. Why I don't have any friends yet.

Right?? I KNOW.

6. My bathroom.
Not sure why I am paying 3x my previous rent yet must run the water for 15 minutes to get it up to "tepid". And I'm not quite sure where to store my hairdryer because there don't seem to be any spare precious inches for some sort of makeshift cabinet. I do kind of like that the only window faces a brick wall though, as that soundly eliminates the possibility of any peeping tom issue.

7. That Kevin Costner continues to make movies.
Nothing to do with New York. I've just never understood it.


Perhaps these questions will remain unanswered, or maybe they'll simply be forgotten as I come up with new, more compelling questions, like how to fit a sofa in my studio apartment. Either way, please enlighten me if you have the key to any of these enigmas.

4 comments:

B. said...

1. I think the key to this lies in your visual aid. Outside you have the hot and humid august air, then inside the air conditioners are working overtime and as the bumper stickers say, Condensation Happens. Although in that picture the condensation is on the outside not the inside...hmmm.

2. Probably because they sell expired sugar, and the lights seem brighter than the lights at Target. Good place for housewares though, as you've discovered.

3. Where I come from we have no Trader Joe's at all.

4. New York is so pretty in the rain. But one time I bought an umbrella from a street dealer and it had a hole in it. Then a street trumpeter played "wah-wah."

5. Go to the Marriott in Times Square and ask for Francesco.

6. That's the way it has to be, in order to make this a classic fish-out-of-water tale.

7. No idea.

Heather said...

man b, you are like wikianswers!

it's raining again. and I suppose you're right.

Anabelle said...

I've never been much of a Kmart shopper, but I've found that Target in LA is good - Wal-Mart not. In other places I've been Targets are not nice places - Wal-Mart much better.
just random oddity.

Anonymous said...

Mary...