Jew York City, where the Fat Boys suck Goldman Sacs for crack

Nov.09, 2006 in News to Annoy

I read an article from the Metro today that Goldman Sach’s has had its most profitable year ever and employees will see huge bonuses around Christmas (I suspect yarmulkes will be raised a little higher…..from the money under them and all). For all those wondering, the Metro is a free newspaper distributed to common folk subway riders like myself. It is much like the Village Voice minus the transexual escort ads in the back. Anyhow, I was reading it on the subway and when I stepped out of the cars, a rat came bounding towards me and leaped as if to attack me. Although it missed, I shrieked. Naturally, I was upset. This rat was no Splinter; he had no lessons to teach me. He only had non-ooze originated diseases to spread. This rat was a dirty bastard that took pleasure in my pain. After this attack, I realized that even with the hostile takeover of I-bankers and Village punk rock wannabes, New York is still grimey. Only now, it has lost its character.

We have exited the days of The Warriors. Gone are the times where you could fight someone by six stepping and popping to form an invisible fireball. Those invisible fireballs were like bullets to pride. But alas, guys use real bullets now. If I were to break out an Ipod stereo and dance the “chicken noodle soup” to settle an argument, I would get shanked — i.e. defiantly stabbed. I miss the days when graffiti was art instead of a crude penis doodle and a number on a bathroom stall — call me. Moreover, we can no longer “bust rhymes” about the greatness of food.

Of course, there is hope. I had the pleasure of taking the subway later in the day. And I was sitting next to a cornrowed puerto rican blasting Daddy Yankee’s greatest hits on his motorola phone — he undoubtedly has the words “nigga” and “son” in his daily lexicon — when in walked a homeless woman that I had seen many times before. By now, I know her routine. She bangs a drum stick on some apparatus and sings a song about how she is broke and jobless, “It ain’t no joke, for real I’m broke.” Before she had a male companion who accompanied her rhythms with an electric piano. Btw, how is it that homeless guys can afford fucking 2000 dollar keyboards and I, a working citizen, can’t?!?! But, I digress. It occurred to me that this is her job. She does the same thing, day in and day out. The pay doesn’t really fluxuate. Hence, it is a career, albeit a urine filled one. Yet, in my eyes, I have more respect for her than for her higher paid musical counterparts — ying yang twins, young dro, cameron. I have discovered a local star. If I could, I would sign her to indie record label and with that, I would bring the “realness” back to hip-hop, back to new york. But what would I call this hypothetical album?

shank tales

It would include a song from my friend who once shanked a hobo on my street corner and left him collapsed on the ground bleeding profusely. The blood was cleaned off the sidewalk the next day and I never saw that man again. Sadly, that is the new york the movies always portray. However, in today’s time, the realness includes surfing wireless internet in starbucks cafes, crunching numbers, and forcing negroes out of brownstones. New York has changed.

I wonder what the schedule is for my Jewish friends around the holidays. I could use a new watch.