shit on the streets is crazy, but not as crazy as whats goin down in my brain

            Sometimes it is important in life not to think of everything as a conspiracy to make your life difficult and boring; but to take every random experience and see the deeper meanings and ironies hidden beneath the surface. In Ian Frazier’s “Gone To New York” the author accomplishes the masterful feat of turning everyday meaningless experiences into important anecdotes about the meaning of life in New York City from the 1970’s to the present day. Whether discussing the nature of the shape of the island of Brooklyn or talking about devices that grab plastic bags out of tress, Frazier takes a humoristic yet passionate approach to explaining life in the big city. His essays talk about the important shit, and I purposefully use the word shit, that no other author that I have read has chose to attack as important topics. He puts into words the daily parapraxes that New Yorkers experience and does so in a way that is both passionate and absolutely hilarious.

            Being a New Yorker from the beginning, as I was born here, I have toiled in the unbearably hot summer day, I have heard about the disgust of the gowanus canal, I have taken a bus to Jersery and witness the glory and pride that America has manufactured in our never ending goal to “advance”. I see Frazier as a man who was just bored and feeling funny one day, and decided to write about the ridiculously ridiculous unheard of experiences that one encounters in a day simply walking the streets of Manhattan. One sees more and experiences more in New York than any other major city in the US and maybe even the world. Nothing happens in other places in the United States, but in New York there is an infinite amount of absurdity occurring just outside ones doorstep and beckoning them to come outside and just live. Frazier has inspired me to write down just a few of these incredible images and experiences that have happened to me in the few years I haved lived in this wonderfully disgusting city.

1. The always present stain of puke on St. Marks Place as I walk to class or just about anywhere.

2. Bums passed out with their pants down who sometimes like to sleep in the vestibule of my apartment

 3. The disgusting people who walk into head shops to get tattoos of nautical stars and other stupid bullshit that they don’t realize will be on the body for the rest of their life

4. birdshit all over the place

5. trash everywhere; sometimes good trash that ends up becoming your furniture

6. people bumming cigarettes left and right---not saying I’m not guilty of this

7. the snake man in Washington square park

8. public displays of affection that sometimes evolve into full blown sex acts in parks-specifically Tompkins square---might have been guilty of this as well

9. sex on rooftops

10. sex

11. people staring at you in your apartment----just after you stared at them

12. feeling uncomfortable on the subway, not because of it being crowded, but because you’re a white jew with a fro

13. urinating in public---getting a ticket for public urination

14. smoking weed and doing just about anything else that involves narcotics in Washington square during the summer—no comment

15. lastly walking into a freaking corner story buying a pack of cigarettes, a roll of toilet paper and a vitamin water---and walking out unable to pay your rent