Pedicabbing and Some Other People-Based Activities

Being a pedicab driver is good because you get money. Not very much though. I figure I was taking home about $30 a day, so when the possibility of getting a job as a doorman in a high-class apartment block came up, I stopped pedicabbing. I don't know if I have the doorman job yet, so it's a bit silly of me to stop already. On the other hand, it's not like I burned any bridges; I can go back to it if I want to.

Another fun aspect of it is talking to passengers. I learned from the first day that going fast is a bad idea for two reasons: It's unnecessary - if people were in a rush, they'd have taken something with a motor. Secondly, it freaks people out that someone is getting wrecked at their command. To be more accurate, I think it freaks people out when it's happening right in front of them. There are people getting wrecked in the Nike factory in Pakistan, but you can't see them, so that's not such a big deal. So while going slowly, I met a guy who works for the Puerto Rican government and came to vist his son for the Puerto Rican parade. The portion I saw of that was ten trucks with posters for Spanish-language pop radio shows on the sides and people (mostly girls) in hotpants on top waving flags energetically. I also met a Jewish massage therapist who bought me an ice cream. Going while eating it was challenging. I got the handlebars sticky but I didn't end up rolling out in front of one of the curiously common fire trucks, so I call that a success. Another time, I met a French lady who thought A&F and its topless chap in the lobby are symptomatic of a more chill attitude to nudity among the Americans. Needless to say, I think that's complete tosh and told her as much. Didn't get a tip that time.

A few days later I did come to the conclusion that Americans are relaxed about their bodies when I went to a nightclub playing hiphop.

OMG!!!1!1

There was like a dozen couples basically dry humping on the dancefloor. And it's made all the more crazy by the fact that they didn't know eachother. Guys just walk up to girls and get stuck in. And I don't get the impression they even need to really fancy one another; they just give it a chance and see what happen. Maybe it's going on in Ireland too but I don't pick up on it because I don't go to hiphop clubs there, but I think it's not happening in Ireland because I was at a show with house, hiphop, rock n roll and dubstep the next night in Philly and there they were, hammering away at eachother again.

Abercrombie & Fail

has a big yoke of shop on Fifth Avenue. There was a manboy in the foyer with his shirt off, and people were getting photographs taken with his abdomen. The shop smells of perfume, but in a way-too-much kind of way, like a minibus to Aughagower community hall at ten o'clock on a Friday six years ago. I suppose. There's music on that makes it difficult to talk, because of its loudness. Also like Aughagower community hall at ten o'clock on a Friday six years ago. The music is horrible: the vocalist from Aqua ("Come on Barbie, let's go party") may have been heard. The staff are all gorgeous. Like I-need-to-sit-down-and-catch-my-breath gorgeous. Some of them have to stand at the top of flights of stairs dancing and greeting people. One of them said "Hey, how's it going" to me. It was a terrible moment. She should have said "Hey, how's it going?" (rising intonation at the end), but she didn't. It was flat. She'd been told in the office that she had to say that exact thing to customers, so she did. She wasn't asking me anything.

All the customers were plumper and shorter are worse-dressed than the staff. A&F is selling this unattainable dream in a distasteful, yucky way. I'm aware that most clothes (consumer products?) is about selling an aspiration, but I like to think that some of it is about the product itself. If you buy whatever random shape of jeans Topshop is flogging this month, sure, some of the drive behind your purchase is going to be that you want Kate Moss' life, but I'd like to think that it's also because you're focused on looking a certain way; trying out a style. For A&F's consumers, it's not about the clothes; they're just trying to be the staff of A&F and the people in its ads. And that's why I think it's a sorry, sordid mess.