Kids These Days

I.           

Cinco chicos, skinny, speaking rapid-fire Spanish are checking the map. They are extremely stylish, with tight-fitting hoodies, jeans, khakis, and black North Face packs hugging their backs. Three of them have pools of shiny black curls exploding from the back of their heads, all of it finely conditioned and sparkling under the fluorescent lights. One of those heads of gorgeous hair is tucked under a pristine white wool cap, and it slightly enshrouds a bright white diamond earring. The faces on their watches are enormous, like square and circular medallions from royalty of the Middle Ages.

            They spot a man at the end of the bench playing a Chinese violin. Their Hispanic bravado is boiling over as they nod suggestively to each other, grinning widely one moment, responsibly regaining their cool the next. They move closer to him, one by one replacing each other in the front of the expedition all the while speaking as fast as the A express hurtles from 125^th street toward this station at Columbus Circle. Nonetheless, they observe the instrument intently, and noting the rhythm, they focus, covering their mouths with their hands like the B-Boys did before them.

            With an adequate amount of time to study, one of them finds a moment in the rhythm of the whining ribbon and jumps in. His lips are pumping back and forth, creating gusts of sound. Inside his mouth, a tongue is clicking with alacrity and pockets of air are built up and dispelled. By sucking his bottom lip deep into his mouth and letting it go with a pop, he makes the sounds of a whirpool draning. His homies are feeling the beat, insecurely biding time before jumping in with freestyle lyrics, but their train arrives. Beatbox nonchalantly taps one of his friends on the shoulder with the back of his hand and walks toward the slowing train.

II.

Three girls sit are sitting on the train. Let’s call them A, B, and C. A and B hold fake swords, one resembling more of a scythe and rather unrealistic in it’s obvious wooden make-up. B and C are wearing funny hats which resemble Anime characters: one is pink with a wide toothy grin and one is white with a black mouth smiling but stitched closed. C and A are holding shopping bags advertising the upcoming game, Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars. A wears a sweater with a logo from the popular bloody post-apocalyptic video game Gears of War. B wears a sweater with the name of the intense metal band System of a Down. C wears a very puffy black fishnet stocking skirt over jeans and steel-toe boots. She also has white hair. They are all African American teenagers.

“I swear if that notion pops into my head when we go back uptown, I’m going to KILL you!!!” A says, loud enough for everyone to hear but with enough good nature not to cause alarm. A Batman doll is poking up out of her sweater, like a mini shi-tzu she’s trying to protect. C buries her head into her over-sized puffy skirt but looks up to smile sheepishly at her friend.

III.

            My curiosity and need for accurate information in what is bound to be a terrific story overwhelms me. I approach the Hispanic homies and ask them where they’re from.

            “D.R.” One says, with sufficient reservation.

            “Were you gonna start free-styling back there at that station?”

            “Yeah, yo, you wanna hear?” Immediately Beatbox busts back into his swerving sounds. People around us perk up at the unusually impressive rhythm and the kid with the diamond earring starts to spit Spanish lyrics so fast you’d think they didn’t mean anything if you didn’t know better.

            “Oh my god…” says B.

            “Do those hats resemble any actual characters?” I ask her, crossing from left to right, culture to culture.

            “No, at least I don’t think so”, says C, still hugging her billowy skirt.

            “Where did you guys get those bags?”

            “The Con, from yesterday”

            I should have known, the New York Comic Con had just ended the day before. A paradise for girls like these who certainly don’t fit in many other places unless there’s a virtual avatar involved.

            I return to the Dominican Republic and make the embarrassing assumption that these guys are tourists. The essence of bravado and enthusiastic revelry isn’t hard to spot in flashy, wealthy tourists from South America, but apparently I haven’t been to the Bronx recently.

            “No, we live here,” says one of them.

            “I’m go-een to go to de high school the next time” another one says, playing the silly, slippery immigrant.

            They all exit at West 4^th street.

III.

            A wonderful falsetto leans up against a pole in the center of the train. Bouncing with soul, passion and modesty it wavers and drops, lifts and pierces. He makes his way through the car haltingly, with his chin held high. He sings proudly but without too much projection; his voice far from fills the train. He is not asking for money.

            “Your bag is open”, he says to a fellow passenger, and exits.

IV.

            A high school kid bustles down the car, which is crowded. It’s not so crowded that it’s not maneuverable, but one might have to suck in a gut to pass by or duck under a tall arm to proceed. He stops at a door where a girl is leaning, tapping her foot and inspecting a nail.

            “Whatsup wit you?” He asks with a sneer.

            “Leave me alone”

            He sucks the roof of his mouth and turns to another girl, and before he gets a chance to say anything, his previous encounter pipes up.

            “One day, God is gonna strike you and fuck you up”

            “What?!”

            “I don’t wanna talk to you no more” She cuts it off and returns to her nails, tongue stressfully running against her teeth.

            The boy returns to the shorter girl, the one with less brimstone, and starts talkin’ Gospel, about somebody who’s not ready to testify, about church and the angry one pipes up again.

            “You don’t even go to Church” He retorts. She makes an attempt to prove her faithfulness, talkin’ about Saint Lou’s, but this is my stop and the F train is right across the platform. I transfer.

V.

            A white boy, green hoody, dirty powder blue PUMAs, giant headphones around his neck with clouds of puffy red hair sits perpendicular to two girls. The girls are sitting next to each other and engaged in a very serious argument for his sake.

            “You’re a hipster”

            “No, YOU’RE a hipster”

            “You’re a hipster”

            “You’re a hipster”

            “YOU are a hipster”

            “You’re taking a photography class”

            “She plays acoustic guitar,” she appeals to the boy.

            They’re both hipsters, wearing all black. One of them is wearing brown cowgirl boots, but the other carries a big blue bag from The Strand, packed to the seams. They return to the original subject, Super Smash Bros., a landmark video game that lets you play as characters from across Nintendo’s great history.

            “Kirby keeps eating me and spitting me out, man” One of the girls mimics swallowing a giant puff of air and *pop*.

            “And that guy, Falcon” With vocal clarity and power, she mimics a masculine voice, “FALCON PUNCH!”

            The girls get up at their stop, say bye to the boy and exit the train, their voices echoing down the platform.

            “You’re a hipster”

            “You’re a hipster…”

            He returns his headphones to his ears and sensitively slides to the end of the row, keeping his legs together and his bag close to him all the way down.

That Story

A woman is standing tall, but leaning against the pole, which her shoulder is practically gripping because she is so deep into her Raymond Chandler novel. Her i-Pod ensemble: pink.

            Next to her a, couple sits, staring into different parts of space. The woman, her hair in a soft brown wave, pipes up, excited but intimate.

            “I love that story” She’s bringing up a tender memory. It’s very close and very dear. It may be more striking to her than to him because his calm gaze turns to a merely polite smile and his hands continue to grip each other.

            “I love that story, it’s such a great story…” she continues to pour out details of that familiar story, the one that reminds her of friends and nights in much-loved restaurants. The retelling of the story has occurred in lipstick rimmed wine glasses over delicately scooped portions of chocolate mousse cake. The story is illuminated by dim atmospheric lighting and small white candles in glass bowls. The story can’t be told too many times and it’s never too late in the evening to tell that story, no matter how embarrassing it might be.

            “I just love that story” she says and falls back into silence, gazing beyond the CUNY ad. Someone on the train sneezes.

(crushed)

Her black hair pouring down in ribbons over her black earbuds, everything about her is dark. Not exactly 76% cocoa dark, but definitely unmolested by almonds or nougat. In her left hand is a bright yellow bag of Lay’s—50 cents, no ruffles.
She is chewing slowly, very slowly.
She is mesmerized, watching the knitter sitting next to her. She is concentrating stiffly, her needles sometimes colliding with intended effect, sometimes missing by mere particles. She is intuitive nonetheless, building her yellow wool wall during this routine ride on the L train.
Her neighbor watches, eyes large, curved chip on a slow entry-course to her mouth, wide, waiting.
A man in a green crushed velvet blazer enters the car and walks down towards my end. His blazer is misbuttoned, and his hands’ hanging heavily in his pockets only intensifies the effect. Instinctively I want to tell him—it’s like when you’re walking down the street with your backpack wide open; you’d want someone to tell you.
But he seamlessly loops around a pole, hands remaining in place and walks back halfway down the car. He rests against a different pole, looking up at the digitized information bar: The next stop is 3rd avenue.
I wish people did that more often; give you something unexpected that jars you just a little bit from your routine L train ride. I look across the car and see a scruffy man with long black hair and a nose ring and I think “That doesn’t do anything for me. You’re not creating anything that might make me think different about the one moment. Get out of here”.
Green (crushed) velvet walks down to the opposite end of the car, and for a moment I think “He’s going to go back through the doors. He hasn’t found anything here, and so he’s going to go back and look for something else. Wow”. But he turns around, again, of course.
He comes back to my end of the car, passes me, and arrives at an empty seat. He inspects it before sitting. He inspects his nails. He is sitting across from the knitter and her watchful neighbor, but the neighbor has stopped watching.

DC Metro

            “I’m never leaving New York again,” I say to my father.

            We had been stuck on a DC Metro for the past half hour, due to a door malfunction.

            The train conductor commanded, “Please step back from the doors” and “Customers please assist the attendants” over and over again. Apparently if there is a malfunction at a single door, they cannot isolate and override that door. Furthermore, they cannot isolate and override the car that that door belongs to. Finally, they cannot isolate and override the train that the car is connected to. Therefore that train had to end service.

Most of the DC Metro stations bring you to a massive, hideous tunnel, all of which are identical. They are lit from the bottom, giving it a sickly feeling. At the outer edges of the tunnel, huge fluorescent lights cast ominous shadows about the huge divots that “decorate” the over-sized half-pipe. The only other light source is at the very center of the tracks; light is cast from underneath a steel grating. The platforms are dangerously dim, and looking down through the vast emptiness of the gray tunnels gives the idea that you might be in a disaster movie.

The escalator only intensifies the experience. Scaling down into a steep concrete tunnel, the sounds of rubber against steel echoes like injured whale calls. As one passes the lights, the reflective shadows feel like someone is coming from behind you.

I take out my notebook to jot down this unpleasant experience, when a train shoots through the tunnel. It disrupts the emptiness I feel so disturbed by and stops a few yards past me. I run ahead, past the last two overcrowded cars and dart onboard, and my misanthropic DC Metro experience is suddenly flipped on its head.

Code Pink has taken over the car! Code Pink is an organization of (mostly) women who demonstrate with power, ingenuity and persistence against the Iraq war and future wars. I used to receive e-mails from them constantly, showing their progressive intensity and have always been quite impressed. They have had a field day with the Bush Administration.

Today, fully decked out in pink hats, buttons (Delegate for Peace), signs (Out of Iraq), and big foam hands with two fingers up instead of one, they are singing a raucous melody that perfectly befits the wild energy of the can-can.

“Oh, yes we yes we can-can

Bring our soldiers back-back

Torture we say no-no

Tear the prison down-down…

“What do we want? PEACE!

When do we want it? NOW!

Who’s gonna bring it? OBAMA!!!!

“We can end the war-war

It’s what we voted for-for

Bring our soldiers back

Da da da da da da da…

They exit the car to parade through the streets and leave behind a small mess of pink feathers and glitter. A little black girl with red ribbons in her hair darts across the train to retrieve a couple of those feathers. An animated Australian man takes a photo of her with his i-Phone.

“You are so cute, sweet heart! Would you smile for me?” A short-haired white woman behind her, who seems to have adopted responsibility of the adorable little girl, says “Don’t be shy”

She smiles, but mostly at the feathers in her hands.

“Say Ohhhhh” a group of rowdy Australians joins in “BAMA!!!!!”

“How come I didn’t get a picture?!” an excited little boy says. He’s got red ribbons tied around his wrists.

“Say it!” the photographer says, aiming at the boy aiming for attention “OOOOOOOBAMA!!!”

They exit at the next stop, but not before telling me that the ribbons say “Obama, keep your promises for peace”

 

 

No Pants Subway Ride 2K9

            I board the 6 train from the nippy Spring street station and grab a seat. A fellow across from me in orange and polka dots gives me a glance. Down the car, a couple of Nike donning kids says “What the hell?”

            “Buddy, your pants are off!” One of them squeals in a wacky falsetto. A few more passengers enter in plaid, thigh huggers and simple stripes. A photographer is among them with heavy-duty equipment. She begins to snap some photos.

            “This is Astor Place”, the feminine mechanized voice says. As the door opens a man with suit, tie, glasses and briefcase is in a tight pair of Spiderman undies. It’s the No Pants Subway Ride 2K9! The 8^th annual event, organized by Improv Everywhere had a great turnout, despite the weather.

            At Union Square, a flood of pants less folk board the train. A young couple uninvolved in the event enters haltingly, glancing below the belt. Their hesitance causes a slight block-up and a passenger in black silk skivvies behind her says, “Excuse me…”

            At 23^rd street, a middle-aged Chinese woman enters, bewildered. Black silk sits next to me and begins to knit. A fellow in Jack-o-lantern boxers asks a friend “Do you know the spread of the Colorado game?” At 33^rd street, the car is packed with fruit-of-the-loom, hairy legs, trained thighs and packages. I look up and notice black heels leading to exquisite fishnet stockings and underwear one might see at a Burlesque show.

            One woman inconspicuously opens her green trench coat to reveal a fancy design over her unmentionables with mere strings over her thighs and buttocks. She pauses to consider how wide she’ll reveal herself. She bumps up against me and I take a moment to ponder how our personal space is altered when heat from the human body has an effect. She has a bit of razor burn, though…

            Two hefty fellows enter at Grand Central. They don’t seem bemused, but possibly annoyed, actually, at the prospect of a practical joke. After all, some might have to go to work today, or visit a loved one at a hospital, or go shopping for a colostomy bag.

            Somebody gets stuck in the doors at 59^th street and almost loses their hat. It causes a lot of commotion but she and her crew finally board safely. They continue their conversation about a scene in a film when they notice the scene around them. They start to laugh.

            “I love this country”

            “Fantastic…”

            “It’s so stuffy in here, I’d take off my pants too”

            A man across from me in snow boots, jeans and a gold earring looks about him incredulously. A Mexican man with a shopping bag stands stock still, suspiciously eyeing the legs around him. Another man down the car has not glanced up from his recently purchased copy of the World of Warcraft expansion

            I reach down to take a clementine from my bag and wonder if Razor Burn is nervous considering how close I am to her crotch. I peel the clementine, eat it, tear a hanging thread from my black, blue and silver silk boxers and exit the train.

(Check out this article in the daily news; i’m in the 2nd photo, a bit hidden though…)

Jokesters drop their pants and take a ride on the subway for laughs

for more photos go to Improv Everywhere

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            A tall young man, grinning from ear to ear ambles down the train. His black coat hangs off his large rectangular frame, it’s bagginess hanging wide around his hips. He compulsively wipes his face and brushes his nose, as though his inimitable gladness is inappropriate and is causing some sort of messy discharge. Groping forward along the bars through the sparsely populated car, he seems to be is running on delightful imaginary interactions, probably due to a mental deficiency.

The tongues of his shoes are tied down and out, popping like a welcome gesture. He passes by me, blinking hard and shaking his head—unable to knock his happiness away. He paces back and forth across the car, stopping at the doors once or twice to move around the endlessly entertaining joke in his head. He taps his jacket pocket, which rings out full of change.

He crosses once again to the doors, which are about to open at Dekalb Ave. they part, but he stands, essentially frozen in his hilarious moment. He rubs his forehead and a woman with a colorful scarf approaches him, attempting to board the train. She has no chance of passing his doorframe-sized body, but he zaps back to our world and exits while she enters.

The doors close and he stands on the platform, lost in pleasure. This is only momentary however, because as the train begins to move again, so does he.

**********************************************************

Puffy, faded lime green coat and fuzzy hood, i-Pod to match, she is obviously troubled. As the train arrives early this morning, she bustles her way on, taking a seat—we’re lucky, this train has a few open ones. But this seat doesn’t quite do it for her. She rises and moves directly across to a different one.

            “No, not the middle seat”, she says before heavily rising and finding the right one, just next to her first pick. Terribly chunky and insensitive to those around her, she digs into her purse to retrieve the i-Pod mini, which along with its ear buds uncannily matches her coat.

            I’ve seen her before, or rather, heard her. Riding home one night, a troubled, un-self-conscious moaning and yelping filled the train car. It was a-rhythmic and on occasion resembled words or phrases. When I left the train, I caught a quick glimpse of the bright pastel green jacket and matching i-Pod buds coming from a bush of tangled black hair.

            Today she continues with the same cawing and discontinued moaning. Sadly, she’s disrupting the otherwise peaceful early morning commute for many, but she is very much lost in the world of her music, chin tucked into her collar and eyes fixed on a single point. She clutches the i-Pod at a distinct angle, close to her head as though to maintain a specific radio frequency.

            I try to listen, but I can’t hear a note of what she’s listening to, as there’s hip-hop blasting from an i-Pod between her and I. At one point she barks a nearly intelligible line “No! Not for a thousand miles”, and I try to place the lyric. It rings sharply in my head as my eyes move vacantly over the novel I’m attempting to read.

            In a shocking instant, she lashes out at the woman next to her, “Could you move from that space please?!”

            “I’m getting off at the next stop”, she hurriedly replies, hiding frustration as she maneuvers her fingers through a multitude of plastic bag handles. I get off as well, and the girl comfortably shifts about, resettling herself by the space near the middle seat.

            

Jasmine

            Jasmine is reading Equus across the car from me. She and I went to high school together. She was a year ahead of me and we were generally in the same boat of being somewhat talented but rarely getting major parts. In any case, she was in the far nerdier circle of the theater geeks. We were marginal acquaintances and probably shared some awkward inside jokes throughout the hours of rehearsals. I haven’t seen her in years, and here she is, across from me on the Q train, reading Equus.

She is intensely involved in the stage play, which can be a harrowing experience. It wasn’t so difficult a read as an adolescent, but maybe such a play about terrible growing pains fits into certain times of ones life. She puts the book away, simultaneously exhausted and frantic. She leans her head back at an awkward angle, at the edge of the seat back and the closed sliding door.

Two seats down, a Chinese couple dozes perpendicular to each other, the woman sleepily shuffling in her seat. Her buckteeth stick pointedly out behind a narrow upper-lip. Her hair is streaked with a tangy blond and her head tilts back against the acute steel bar that contains a WWE SmackDown advertisement. She wakes up long enough to spit a snide remark at her companion. Perhaps she intends to stay awake, but she returns to slumber almost immediately.

The man bitterly removes his fine wool coat and stretches out across the adjacent seat. His hair is shorn short, but stylish. For some reason it strikes me far from the Fresh-Off-the-Boat immigrant he might be mistaken for if it weren’t for the fancy clothes.

From an enormous and over-stuffed handbag that reminds me much of high school, Jasmine produces a tin of beautiful trinkets. She sifts through them, examining her favorite pieces. Perhaps she does this is order to get my attention. Eventually she puts them away. She leans down very low, her chest on her knees and her head hanging in exhaustion. Her tangle of hair flips in every direction and her arm remains gripping the bar high above her head.

Perhaps she is so pained that she’s happy not to reestablish my acquaintance. But if she is, may have easily prepared this act of misery for the purpose of distraction, for “not seeing me over there”. She could use the distracted front as a cover for pleasant conversation “But aside from all that, I’m doing good”, standing strong. The sad-sack line of performance is useful in awkward confrontation, giving the other party an easy upper-hand and allowing oneself to slip easily out from the limelight of discovery “on this train, at this time of the night!”

I’m close enough to confront her without standing and far enough to be able to cut off communication comfortably. Plus, in her front of down-and-out exhaustion, she could both initiate the falling off of conversation and take my cue as relief to rest her tired soul. But I do not confront her. I only continue to write about her.

Generally, I hope she doesn’t see this post. For her physical description alone, I could get attacked pretty viciously. She could tell me off for the asinine assumptions of her mental and emotional state and she could put me on blast for creepily observing her and posting my one-sided observation for the world to see. She could even deny her very presence on that train, reading that stage play on that night and bowing her head exhaustedly in that manner, endangering my entire purpose of a non-fiction blog.

But part of me hopes she sees this, so she could respond in part, enlightening me on her feelings of the exchange. She could maturely engage the nature of this non-confrontation, which we have all experienced but rarely considered to such depths. She could even spark the dialogue on this very page, typing an eye-opening comment as you finish reading this very post.            

Off the Wall

            Coming from a terribly dragged-out first date I stood, stunned and shivering, on the downtown R W platform. Michael Jackson pined over my new headphones about his woman and how she’s got him workin’ day and night. I couldn’t exactly commiserate, considering the failure of finding a woman who seemed worth working for from sun up to midnight. Nonetheless, I clicked with the sharp pluck of those funky bass strings.

            Moments later, aboard an E train shabbily masquerading as an R or W, I played a litter air guitar—only the 3 strums that make the disco track so damn infectious. I also practiced the impossible “lean” move (featured in the retrospectively cringe-worthy Moonwalker) with the help of the brushed steel poles and the slowing of the train.

            In tune with “Rock With You”, I cruised up and down the stairs of Canal St. station, hopping seamlessly over a transient’s bag of plastic bottles. Passing by the beloved medley of ceramic symbols in the middle of the station, I arrived at the stairs of my dear Brooklyn-bound Q train platform: and that’s when it happened.

            Homie stands in the middle of the platform, joshin’ with his boy—a stylish young black man in peacoat, powder blue hoodie and Yankees cap. Homie, a tall scruffy white boy decked out in plaid winter coat and up-turned 90’s style baseball cap, sees me groovin’ up the platform.

            The moment happens a mile away, but I’m only a few steps in front of him. He’s been waitin’ for this train, bubbly off of Henny and a little puff of the sticky, buzzin’ round the platform. So a movin’ man like myself comes along and it’s like “Yoooooo! Hold up, slap me some skin, tell me where you been or at least lemme try to sell you a bridge or somethin!”, but no words are released. He’s got no time. He doesn’t even see what’s comin’.

            I fake right. I fake left. Spin move! Screen between Homie and his grinnin’ friend and keep on dancin’.

            “OOOOHHHHH SHIIIIIIIIIT!” I don’t hear the praise because the celebratory counter-culture title track is blazing over my movements. I do, however, twirl my hand extravagantly, give a low bow, and return to my position against the wall. Homie bows lower, his boy calls out to the wild night and we wait for the train.

Where Did You Get That Scarf?

My Aunt Reba recently visited New York, and after a sufficiently New York Tourist that ended with the Met, we ended up waiting for the 6 train with her friend, Maxine.

Seated next to a box of art supplies was a man of Native American skin tone, whose face and visible body was drowning in tattoos. Washes of liquid dripping all over his face and countless misarranged figures sprawled over his arms mixed with fluid designs. Maxine remarked the presence of Native American language on the streets of New York and He looked on, engaged as the train arrived.

We crammed into the car, His egg crate of miscellany causing a serious problem on the early evening Lexington Ave crunch. Reba remarked on the new R160 trains and He began:

“Where are you from?”

“Seattle”

“Oh yeah, the public transit system isn’t so great out there” He is haplessly unwinding tangled headphones in vain. “I was just out in San Francisco, they’ve got pretty good…um…trains out there”

“Where are you from?”

“Brooklyn” He says with relish. His voice is a finer gravel, crushed up by some sort of hard creative sensitivity or just roughed up by a cigarettes and outdoorsmanship.

At the next stop, the throngs stand outside the doors direly. Pressing onto the already-saturated car, I advise my charges to move towards the center of the car to make more room. His box of art supplies, however, remains a serious roadblock to the oncoming passengers. One guy remains on the platform and as the car pulls away I wonder how much this guy is “from” Brooklyn.

But I keep my mouth shut and generally stop listening, but a flash of conversation reaches me.

“So what do you do?” Reba asks.

“I’m an artist,” He says.

I still keep my mouth shut and he gets off with many others. Reba, Maxine and I get seats and I tell them it’s stuff like this I write about on my blog.

“Yeah, there’s just time when the energy on the subway is just off the charts”. Maxine says the 2^nd half of this to some guy’s ass, who inconveniently blocks the comment to my Aunt, who is across the car. Some Guys Ass has plenty of room to move around, but it’s not until at least three awkward-glance-exchanges that he moves.

The R160 continue to impress Auntie Reba, and she wonders aloud “I wonder whether those voices are computerized or recorded by people”

I theorize that they are computers but Maxine is of the school that they are human voices.

“There’s a contest, actually”, I hear from next to me. Guy Reading the New Yorker continues “its New York AM radio. The male voices give commands, while the female voice gives information”

We marvel at the proven energy of our particular subway car while smirking at the gender notions of this bit of news while a recently arrived straphanger asks Some Guys Ass, “Excuse me, where did you get that scarf?”

Politicians is Funnies

Scrawled on a Late Night Service Change notice for the L train at Bedford Avenue (in purple marker):

 

Why is service being changed?

Because the city of NYC has no money b/c we had to pay for Giuilliani’s extra marital affair.

 

Haha! Politicians is funnies!