Crusaders featuring Randy Crawford – ‘Street Life’
After parting ways with Rafi Kam last night leaving the Gordan Voidwell / Mickey Factz / Das Racist / Freddie Gibbs show at the Highline Ballroom I caught the Brooklyn bound #4 train. It was half past 1am which is still relatively early as far as NYC streetlife goes.
While waiting for the train on the Union Square platform this shorty walks past me. I sort of laughed in my head like “uh oh, lil’ mama speedin’ with no brakes on”. I say this to myself whenever I see something wayward in the streets. This is because after uhdeen years of seeing this shit I know how it goes. I don’t really pay shorty too much mind.
Once we get on the subway shorty sits directly across from me and then proceeds to lay out on the seatbench like she is going to sleep. Dayyyyum lil’ mama. Let me find out you are homeless? She looks too clean to be a bum like that though. Not that she looked clean, but she didn’t have the grimey luster of someone who regularly slept on subways. I switched my attention from the Blackberry Brickbreaker program to the image capture function.
I snapped her picture.
Shorty asked me if I was taking her picture. I told her I was. I said that you never see someone as cute as her laying down in the subway. It was always oldheads and washed up peoples. Never really no one young, good looking and well dressed. Shorty had it in her mind that I was complimenting her and then she just opened up.
She was laying down because she was bored(?!?). She had just left the Bronx and she was thinking about going to Webster Hall, but she didn’t really know if she wanted to go there, but she still wanted to hang out and get some drinks. I asked her how old she was to be getting drinks. Lil’ mama def looked statutory status. She said she was 21. Ha. So was I. I’ve been 21 for the past 19 years.
I asked her what she was trying to get into tonight. She reiterated that she was looking to get some drinks somewhere. I asked her what she liked to drink. She shrugged her shoulders. Hennessy she offered. I asked her what she knew about Hennessy. I don’t even drink that shit I told her. I caught myself just before I started sounding like someone’s parent which I’m not. I’m not out here to save this chick either. She is on her way and she is going to find the things she is looking for. Will she be able to handle it when she gets it? Maybe, but prA’li not.
This was the type of shit that I would scrape after leaving the club. It was just this simple. Some little piece of group home shit that didn’t want or couldn’t go back home. I had a little one bedroom apartment in Corona back when I was 17yrs old. A lotta these type chicks fell through to drink 40 ozs and puff an el. It doesn’t stop internets. The cycle of life, death, desperation and redemption in the city stays on repeat like my iTunes player.
If this were twenty years ago then you already know the outcome. Instead I went home to my lady. I didn’t even ask shorty her name. I didn’t want to know it either. For all I know she could be my daughter.
Dallas you could shoot the new rocawaer ad campaign
It’s a funny thing when you realize just how much your reaction has shifted in the face of such a demonstration.
Wild story.
#1. “grimy luster” excellent oxymoron.
#2. My wife is either on Facebook or that effin’ Brickbreaker. A brother can hardly get loving these days. Damn Blaxberry…
#3. This is one of those situations that shows that all the bullshit we go through in life actually serves a purpose. Wisdom. Lucky for her you’re a wise man, not a predator. God bless her though. Nonetheless, she will find what she’s looking for, we all do. Hopefully after that, wisdom will impart itself on her @ that point.
“If this were twenty years ago then you already know the outcome.”
hmmm . .. what are you trying to say?
damn, D. That’s Real Talk.
maturation & progress. we dont have to ever be growed up – but growth is a beautiful thing.
Wise words and sharp image, masterfully delivered
The night’s the time to see what’s what
Does Charli Baltimore know her kid is riding around on the subway making eyes and random bloggers?
40’s comment >>>
And shout out to the ten henny and diet cokes I consumed in the span of a few hours at Atlantic City…there’s still hope for us henn rock drinkers. I haven’t sprawled out on the NYC subway yet though. I’m not that brave. That’ll be the day I show up at an AA meeting.
dp lying he got a blowski hahahahaha. nah just joking i have been there before not that i was to old to get with the chick. it was the point i knew her since she was young. it was like seeing your lil sister all of a sudden grown and faded. i don’t know what she was on but weed don’t do that to you. she was jumping around with a shirt to tight and a skirt to short. eyes glazed over yelling that she just wanted to have fun. i tried to take her to her cuz house but she was not having it. i could have just took her with me but she wanted to have fun.
@the ambassador i fall out on the train drunk all the time and then wake up right when my stop comes like magic. i only missed my stop one time i was to busy pissing between the train cars to many beers man. that night i was hanging with my “lighter” friends they drink that P.B.R. like it’s water.
LOL @ 40
@ NAT
PBR is beer flavored water…
Ain’t laying out on the train like that a ticket? I’m not gonna go into my escapades(no Janet) on the subways, but I will say Whodini wasn’t lying. The freaks come out at night.
I know man i will never drink that stuff again. any beer that is cheap no matter what part of the city you are in. you gotta know it’s some crap
@don i sit down at a end seat wrap my arm around the bars. it secures you to one spot hahahahahhaa. when i was done off of jager bombs them joints taste like rootbeer to me had like 10 in a row on top of what i had already. i was laid out on the 6 train like that shit was my bed kicked the shoes off to but i had my friends with me. they took care of me
DAMN DP u put dat chick on blast!!!! LMAO.
I know I’m getting old when I don’t thirst out no baby drawls anymore
yo NAT I hear you on that beer pee. I, too, suffer from that same thing. Makes me avoid beer. Plus, unlike liquor, beer leaves me with one hell of a headache if I drink too much of it. but falling asleep and still catching your stop? yo that’s talent. hats off to you my friend.
Always enjoy these drops DP. Never been to NY(but i’ll be heading up there to meet the wife’s fam in August), but the way you describe it makes it sound similar to Chicago, and reminds me of some of the shit I used to get into.
jager bombs
^ Yikes
I would stay snapping the neck and hopping off the train @ Myrtle Ave f***ed up.
Popeye’s FTW
The Popeyes on Myrtle right off the J is one of the grimiest popeyes EVER. I had to stop fuckin with it, especially when they’d run out of mac and cheese and shit like that. I’ve def walked in there a few times with a cup of liquor still in my hand, sippin while in line haha. Now I stumble in drunk to Mr Kiwi’s..you know, to treat my insides better. or something like that.
damn DP, killed it with the ending, that was some oedipal type shit
my bro lives near myrtle two more stops on the M to knickerboxer or is it knickerbocker shit i know when to get off.
@Don stay away from jager bombs they taste like rootbeer they are evil
I effing love Bushwick
Another good drop D! My heart kind of aches for her. She’s a child, out late, on a subway bench…
U a better man then me… them spanish bx shorty’s are a niggas kryptonite.. especially the ones who got to much pj living in they systems…i woulda been all over that…
yo if dat chick is 21 call me uncle cam
Dope drop. New York stories for real.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_qH2mPNRO8Q
She’ll be lucky if she makes it to 21 at that rate.
You can see the loneliness in her eyes. She’s lucky that you tell your tales with the pen without dipping in the ink.
Great piece Man!!
^^Word. I kept thinking about her eyes. I’d seen those eyes. Then it hit me, my bro-in-law’s BM has eyes like that. Sad. Angry. Lonely. Those “group home, foster kid” eyes that never change, no matter how happy or sad.
dope piece!
@ amb
word is bond I would double up on the popcorn shrimp, go across the street to Shorty’s and cop that vanilla to roll something down vernon on the way to marcy. Bushwick by the old muslim community?
@ NAT
I used to go to that JHS behind Burger King. Does Knickerbocker still be flooded with the mamis? I copped all of my adidas suits on the ave back in the 80’s. My homie back in the day used to live on Dekalb Av & Knickerbocker. The park over there has always been serious.
Word is bond I don’t miss it. I remember it, don’t miss it…only been a year plus
“them spanish bx shorty’s are a niggas kryptonite”
^ C/S
A hunting in
NYAmerica.@Don yeah they still over there. that burger king is pure evil. they pump that burger smell into the air makes you want one. once you step foot off the train.