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Ridgewood Photo du Jour: The Number of the Beast
This is what greeted me when I exited the M train at Seneca Avenue last weekend. First they’re invoking the Illuminati and Satan, then they ritually sacrifice a minivan. Methinks I might have been all wrong about Ridgewood: it is QUITE an interesting place.
Miss Heather
Ego and Hubris on Ebay
Filed under: Crazy People
If anyone out there wants the cast worn by editor of The Brooklyn Paper after he broke his ankle (ouch!) last month, today’s your lucky day. What’s more, it is signed by none other than Brooklyn’s very own Marty Markowitz! What a deal! Those of you wishing to place bids for this “piece of journalistic, medical and political history” better hurry: this auction ends February 9, 2008 at 9:37 P.S.T.
The accompanying copy is as follows:
Get the actual cast worn by legendary Brooklyn journalist Gersh Kuntzman after he broke his ankle in January! Not only is the cast signed by Borough President Marty Markowitz, but all money raised
in the sale(copy editing mine— Miss H) will go towards Markowitz’s Camp Brooklyn Charity. This is a once-in-a-lifetime (hyphen abuse— Miss H) opportunity to own a piece of journalistic, medical and political history— the very cast worn by an award-winning journalist, signed by a future mayor of New York City, and written about in countless Kuntzman columns (ambiguous— Miss H)! This cast’s authenticity is guaranteed and the winning bidder will also receive a high-resolution photo of Markowitz signing the historic cast. A priceless collectible.
Wow, that’s really egotistical! Could you stick your head a little further up Marty’s ass? When you do could you tell me what he had for lunch yesterday? Just curious. I was very grateful when Mr. Markowitz pressured the Department of Buildings to inspect my apartment building after having neither heat nor hot water for six days . I even gave him a shout-out on New York Shitty to show my gratitude. But “future Mayor of New York City”? Seriously Gersh, that is a bit much.
In any case, as of 1:34 a.m. February 5th, 2008 your “priceless collectible” is worth $61.00 (plus shipping and handling). Maybe I should start shilling my dirty gently used panties and maxi pads on Ebay for charity? Not only would they fetch more money (I have a cute butt), but I suspect I’d walk away from the experience with a shred of dignity.
Miss Heather
P.S.: This is post 1000 on New York Shitty. Hooray!
Goys Don’t Want To Have Fun
One of the pleasures of the holiday season is taking the time to catch up with your buddies. Usually this entails mundane chatter like “How’s the job going?”, pet-related banter, etc. Not this year. I thought I would have the biggest bombshell of a story (being detained by the police), but this ended up not being the case. Not by a long shot. The very same day I had my little tete a tete with the police, a good friend of mine had an interaction of a distinctly different caliber. Here is her story:
It was a Wednesday night and I was walking my dog at 11:00. This is NOT a particularly spooky time of night around here, what with all the hipsters and families. True, a few years ago my cell phone was stolen out of my hand in broad daylight, but that was by bored preteens in the summer, and it was entirely non-violent in nature. I no longer try to text people and walk the dog at the same time, nor do I wear girlie sandals to walk the dog anymore.
On this particular fateful night, I looked dumpy because I’m walking my dog and don’t give a shit. Jeans, messy hair, no makeup, big winter coat, e.g; I don’t look like a hooker in any way, shape, or form. I notice a heavyset Hasid standing alone on the corner of Montrose and Leonard next to the softball diamond. There is a park right next to said softball diamond, with swing sets, jungle gyms, benches, picnic tables, and a restroom which I have never investigated. I have often seen fathers bring their kids out here at 11:00 at night. There are often other dog walkers about. Tonight, no one else is out at this precise moment, although a number of cars passed. There are many street lights on.
I hesitate, then go ahead and let the dog lead me across the street so I am within earshot of Hasid. I know he can’t touch me anyway. I am now 3 feet away. This was when Hasid asks me for the time. I say I don’t know and show him I have no watch.
Hasid: Oh ok. Um, you wanna have fun?
Me: No.
Hasid: No, you don’t want to have fun?
Me: NO.
Hasid: Oh, ok. (hesitates, then quickly) You know where I can get some fun?
Me (shrugging): There is a bar up Montrose a few blocks.
Hasid: Oh. I can find some fun there?
Me (corralling dog): Maybe.This is when my dog suddenly looks up from sniffing other dogs’ pee. He notices my potential suitor and takes two steps towards him. Hasid lurches back in reflexive terror. Dog, who thinks everyone must be his friend, looks at Hasid, perplexed. I begin to lead dog away from the scene of potential fun, averting my gaze. Just before I’m out of appropriate communication distance, me makes his final offer:
Not even for money, you don’t want to have fun?
Me: NO.
I begin to lead dog briskly away, head still down. I am not frightened in the least. I am somewhat amused, but would like to end the conversation nonetheless. The Hasid stands a moment alone, puts his head down and then hurries back across Broadway with the urgency one usually has to get out of a cold, driving rain or perhaps as though pursued by invisible harpies. This is the exact opposite direction from the bar I told him about. I continue to walk my dog, chuckling to myself from time to time. I see occasional passersby. The dog is once again lost in checking his peemail, oblivious to the recent affront to his owner’s honor.
I dunno, this is pretty damn funny, but not as funny as the guy who was taking a piss on a tree right out in the open and shouting after me “God bless you, Mommy!” What do you think?
New York Shitty analysis: Ah, “East Williamsburg!”. If this chap wanted to have the kind of fun I think he was seeking he could have easily hopped on the G train, taken it the 21st Street in Long Island City and found him some. Dilettante. Then again, maybe he simply wanted a partner to play miniature golf with at The Bushwick Country Club. Alas, now we’ll never know.
I thought being detained by the police for being “a suspicious person” was pretty shitty. I have never, however, been mistaken for being a “working girl” and I take a certain amount of solace in this fact.
Maybe it was the dog?
Miss Heather
Disgruntled Williamsburg Parent Changes Tactics…
Filed under: 11211, 11222, Asshole, Crazy People, Greenpoint, Greenpoint Brooklyn, Greenpoint Magic, Planet Entitlement
but his motivations/inducements are more or less the same.
This, his latest attempt, is subtle…
and yet, more desperate. Maybe you, my fellow Greenpointers, can open your hearts and sublet your closet, tool shed or parking space so “John’s” precious children can receive a better education? One their father clearly did not receive: reading, writing, critical thinking, and ethics:
I need to move my two children from an otherwise great location in Williamsburg. but where They currently attend a dismally performing school and I wish have them to attend the school designated for this neighborhood (annotated: GreenPoint). To this end I am prepared to sacrifice as above or pay $$ to anyone who can help effect this (my latest attempt to bribe my children into a better performing school in a less “great” location).
Miss Heather’s mind is a terrible thing to waste. Especially when forced to read and correct the aforementioned drech while waiting to check out at The Garden while not wasted (intoxication makes illiteracy coupled with entitlement go down better for yours truly).
The quality of “North GreenPoint’s” schools is well known. To Greenpointers and one Gowanus Lounge commenter anyway:
why is he doing this now – didn’t do his homework before moving house?
The information that Greenpoint’s two schools were high performing and Williamsburg’s were not was already freely available before the grading.
Clearly John did NOT do his homework. Given this gent’s persistence, it begs one to wonder how many more concerned Williamsburg parents will try to lie/cheat/bribe their way into Greenpoint’s public schools.
Miss Heather
Love Thy Postal Worker
Unlike my husband, I do not tender my bill payments online. Call me ancient, call me a Luddite, call me stupid; I prefer postage stamps and paper to electronic commerce. When one forgets to pay a bill on time, sending a letter (with a check enclosed) is much more personal in my book. It makes me feel like Santa Claus. This, of course, necessitates that I go to the post office on occasion. Yesterday was one of them.
It took me an hour to get the wherewithal to make the trek. This was not due to innate laziness on my part. Rather, I simply needed sixty minutes to achieve the proper Zen state to cope with the quest that laid before me: dealing with my fellow post office patrons. In the clarity of 20/20 hindsight, I assure you it was time well spent.
Ever since the powers that be saw fir to divest of the Polish speaking employee at good ol’ 66 Meserole Avenue, my postal service experiences have become much more provocative, entertaining and time-consuming. Yesterday was no exception. Upon entering I beheld:
- A line of people winding all the way back all the way to the entrance. This is not difficult to achieve given the post office is very small and only has three “teller” windows. Nonetheless…
- I am certain the lengthy queue was exacerbated by a 50-60-something Polish woman (wearing a leopard print hat, older Polish women LOVE leopard print) blathering something incomprehensible (it was English, I think) to the postal employee helping her.
- The postal employee helping her is Vietnamese and speaks with a distinct accent, thus adding to the multi-cultural hilarity. I have dealt with this postal employee before, and although I can easily understand her, I am certain someone with a very tenuous grasp of English (at best) would not. It should also be noted that this employee is hardly going to win any “Miss Congeniality” awards anytime soon. Then again, if I had a customer call me a “chink”*, I would not exactly be Miss Happypants either.
- Given points 1-3, I elected to use the postage machine. This too entailed waiting. The old codger in front of me was mystified when the machine asked him if he wished to conduct another transaction. I shit you not, he looked to the left and right of this machine. Had he been able, he probably would have looked behind it as well (to see who was inside asking him this vexatious question). It was like something straight out of Candid Camera. He finally gave up and walked off.
And that, dear readers, is when I got my turn.
Be nice to your postal workers this holiday season, my fellow Greenpointers. They might be civil servants, but they are also human beings. If you had to deal with all the bullshit these people did— day after mind-numbing day— you would not be a ball of sunshine either.
Miss Heather
*Yes, I saw/heard this with my very own eyes/ears.
The Bathroom Drama at Hunter College Continues!
Filed under: Crazy People
It would appear that the shitty saga of the Hunter College dormitory bathroom has taken a new twist.
Sherry writes:
…Unfortunately this saga of shit continues: The offender has moved bowls for her bowel movements (from the last stall to the first), prompting the Note Maker, finally identified, to make another note.
As some of you might have noticed, today’s installment of the Greenpoint Ten did not feature a motivational poster. There is a very sound reason for this seeming oversight on my part: I think the Hunter College phantom non-flusher needs one instead.
Make it happen!
Miss Heather
A Very Greenpoint Missed Connection
What ever happened to propriety!?!
I exclaimed to a friend of mine yesterday upon being forced to listen to yet another self-absorbed hipster yammering away on her cell phone. There is no device that has utterly eroded what little sense of privacy or decency humanity had left like the good ol’ cellular telephone. People feel entitled to talk about the most fucked-up shit imaginable anywhere nowadays. My buddy Beatrice at Casa Mon Amour once heard a woman screaming to a friend of hers about getting gonorrhea from her boyfriend. Right on Franklin Street on an otherwise lovely Saturday afternoon.
If I ever caught a venereal disease I certainly wouldn’t advertise it. Greenpoint is a very small world. Word can and will get around. Sort of like bedbugs.
Which brings me to this gem discovered by Bedbuggers on Craigslist. The powers that be have since seen fit to pull it. Shame on them.
I had bedbugs, you had herpes – m4w – 29
Reply to: pers-xxxxxxxxx@craigslist.org
Date: 2007-11-29, 7:27PM ESTDamn, I wish I had that converstation to do over again. We met at Boulevard Tavern where people were wishing Harold a happy birthday. We both had a little too much to drink, and began discussing “deal breakersâ€. It just so happened that this was a day or so after I awoke with what felt like mosquito bites on my arms and shoulders, and I told you that I thought those might be bedbug bits. You told me that you would never sleep in a bed that had bedbugs or with a man who slept with bedbugs and I, offended, told you that I would never sleep with a woman who ever had an outbreak of herpes. So then you stalked off, leaving me with my PBR to wonder how an evening that began with such promise could go so badly.
OK, first of all, I got rid of most of my bedding, washed the rest in very hot water, encased the mattresses in vinyl encasements, and brought in an exterminator. He is convinced from the pattern and number of bites that it was a SPIDER that got me, not bedbugs. It’s been six days since I last got bit, and if there were bedbugs there, I’d have been bitten every night since. Didn’t happen, so maybe it was a spider or a mosquito. No matter, the place has been cleaned and sprayed, so there is less chance of bedbugs here than wherever else you might choose to end up. As far as the herpes crack goes, I don’t know if you have it or not, but I use condoms, and you could use valtrex, so why should this stop us? I felt a connection with you, a real one, a surprising one. It isn’t often that a man like me, living in SoHo with all those pretentious artist types, managing a mutual fund, gets to meet a girl with your look and sensitivities. I think there is something there between us worth pursuing, and we should not let the false possibility of bedbugs or blisters get between us. Write back. I want a mulligan.
* Location: Williamsboard/Greenpoint
Thanks but no thanks, Williamsboard. We Greenpointers have enough bedbugs and at least one case of gonorrhea already.
Miss Heather
Canine Chicanery
It has come to my attention that Curbed recently dissed Bubbles’s lack of reward money for her return. That’s because Greenpoint peeps are generally nice people who will do good deeds without financial “encouragement”. In any case, if Bubbles the Greenpoint Pit Mix met the lost Williamsburg Boston Terrier she’d eat him (or her) for lunch. And take a $2,500 dump later.
Greenpoint is teaming with mean dogs. Or that’s what the local signage would like me to believe.
Exhibit A: India Street
Not only did I fail to find a dog on the premises, but the phallic imagery made me laugh. Dilettantes.
Exhibit B: North 14th Street
Professional, yet uninspired and boring. Once again, nary a dog to be found.
Exhibit C: Meserole Avenue
I am not going to mess with the person who made this sign. Maybe there is a Rottweiler behind that door. Or maybe there isn’t. Do I feel lucky to find out? No, I don’t.
Miss Heather
Oh My God!
Today is going to be a pretty quiet day here at New York Shitty. Among other things, my husband was called to go into work at 10:00 p.m. last night and didn’t get home until 6:30 this morning. That said, I want to give a shout-out to Queens Crap for giving me a lot of blog love last weekend. I would also like to thank them for giving me the biggest laugh I have had in a very long time.
I’m speechless. Well, almost speechless: perhaps if the Super at the Astral makes enough money with his little pornography photography enterprise he will be able to afford these select digs in Floral Park? For reasons I cannot explain, this house somehow makes me think of him.
Miss Heather
Photo Credit: Queens Crap
G Train Glory, Miss Heather Style
There’s a new kid on my block (literally). The blog in question is Err(or)Ink and follows is an excerpt from one of her posts:
The “Save the G†coalition wrote, “The number of riders per year at G-only stations has increased from 8.6 million in 1995 to 12.6 million in 2006, according to the Metropolitan Transportation Authority†on their blog.
I watched one of those 12.6 million riders cut each and every one of his toenails while waiting for the train to leave Court Square on a weeknight evening.
I walked down the first flight of steps on the Queens bound entrance to the Greenpoint Avenue stop on the G train to notice some person had defecated on the landing between the other flight of stairs.
Those are two of my most memorable G train moments. What are some of yours?
I considered posting a comment to the above post but soon realized it would be a novella. So here it is. My favorite G train moments, in ascending order of importance (to yours truly). As Britney Spears once said:
People can take everything away from you
But they can never take away your truth
But the question is…
Can you handle mine?
Here it is. My Greenpoint truth.
1. Two out of three subway masturbators I have encountered (to date, hope springs eternal!) selected the Crosstown Local as their venue for “flogging the bishop”. For the sake of brevity I will limit my discourse to my first flogger, as he holds a special place in my heart.
After visiting some friends on Green Street, I hopped onto the G in hopes of hitting the L and playing in the meatpacking district. I was dressed to kill. Apparently, one of my subway patrons agreed: as I was putting on lipstick I noticed he was making repetitive jerking motions. Thinking he was simply scratching his balls (because that’s what men do) I glanced his direction. Nope. He was massaging his kielbasa.
I looked around me. There were no women whatsoever, only 12 men. Twelve very angry men, as I soon learned. I stood up and announced to my fellow G train patrons “Hey everybody, this guy is jerking off!” Shortly thereafter, one 50-something African-American dude laughed his ass off and yelled:
Dude, you’re sick! Hey, check this shit out!
Over and over. Soon his fellow XY chromos chimed in: public humiliation is an equal opportunity destroyer. That humble subway car became a monkey house. MY monkey house. And Mister Weiner Schnitzel tucked his angry little kielbasa back into his pants and bolted at the next subway stop: Nassau Avenue.
It’s the small victories that make life worth living— and trust me— this dude’s schnitzel was something to sniff at. 12 out of 12 male subway riders told me so.
2. I went to a good friend’s wedding last summer. I presume him to be a friend because I attended his wedding and he has seen fit to still speak to me. Dry weddings are unheard of in my philosophy. Ask my husband.
Taking mass transit home from Corona, Queens was an education. Thankfully the feeling was mutual: my fellow travelers had not seen a blue haired woman before and I got a crash course in biblical discourse.
When you’re tired and deprived of spirits nothing lifts one’s spirits like listening to a dude telling his homies that he’d a slit “a homo’s” throat while holding a copy of the King James Bible. On the G train at Court Square, no less.
Mike: Yo, check out that dude with the Mohawk. He’s fucking HARDCORE, nigga!
Traveling Companion: Heh, heh.Mike: You don’t see dudes like that anymore. Look at these other people, they’re all faggots!
T.C.: Yeah, they’re taking over.
Mike: They can do what they want, but if one of them touches me in the shower I’ll slit his fucking throat.
The wedding vows my husband and I attended earlier this evening had a quote from Corinthians in it. That’s what the minister said, anyway. I wouldn’t know. Being an atheist, my husband has a pretty good command of the Bible so I turned to him and asked:
Is that from Leviticus?
He answered to the affirmative. Such is our life— fuck love, respect, commitment and all that slop. Our relationship is a low rent (but high wit) remake of Topper.
3. Before moving to Greenpoint I lived in Kensington. In order to secure my apartment in Greenpoint I had to deliver several cashier’s checks to a real estate office which happened to be located off the G. My journey back to my soon-to-be former home entailed taking making the G(auntlet) to the F. And in so doing, I learned a valuable lesson:
- If a subway car has one person in it, it is for a very good reason.
- Human beings are very cruel creatures, as am I.
I was one of two dozen people who filtered into this curiously vacant subway car. And once the G started ambulating to south Brooklyn the reason became apparent: this car smelled. BAD.
How one homeless person can make a space unfit for human transportation amazes me to this day. Everyone, myself included, bolted to the front seeking egress to the next car: the door wouldn’t open. What’s more, the residents in said car, our ticket out of shitville, were laughing their asses off.
At Broadway, we bolted into the next car. And a new batch of neophytes bolted into ours.
As the mighty G headed towards Flushing Avenue we laughed as these people clawed at the door. The panicked expressions. The desperation. The smell. The hilarity.
This cycle repeated itself all the way to Smith and 9th. And as I took this, my last trip, on the F train I realized something: I found my home.
Greenpoint.
Miss Heather
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