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muckefuckThe Neanderthal (so named because of his skull measurements) was a year ahead of me in high school. He hosted me as a prospie at his college and did more than anyone to talk me into going there. In any case, he's an avid biker and used to ride all around the city. Once, he was biking through Cabrini-Green--at that time the worst neighbourhood in Chicago (and, thus, one of the worst in the nation)--when a cruiser pulled up behind him. The cop asked, "Do you know where you are?" He said he had a rough idea. The cop gave him the shortest directions out of the ghetto and said, "I'll follow you all the way."
I told this story to a former co-worker who liked to take Shank's pony anywhere and everywhere in the city. He said, "Yeah, I've heard that lots of times. Do you know where you are, white boy?". This is something like the reaction I sometimes get when checking out at ethnic groceries--the clerks can't quite believe that I really intended to buy what I did. Like that time at the gift shop that the woman flipped through the pages of my Chinese calendar to show me that, actually, it's in Chinese. "Is that okay?" Um, that's the whole reason I'm buying it so, yeah, that's okay. As you may have guessed from my previous posts, this still amuses me every time.
It happened again at the Korean grocery on Sunday. I put a package of songphyeng, a snack I buy every time I'm in Koreatown, on the belt and she picked it up and explained what they were. When I asked if she had Paykseycwu by the box, she immediately directed an employee to fetch one, but then, as I was paying, said, "If you don't like the wine, bring it back and we'll give you something else." I smiled and assured her that we like Paykseycwu very much and had no intention of returning it. Then she threw in a set of Korean drinking cups for free.
(She didn't question my natto purchase. Perhaps even she didn't know what it was?)
Has this ever happened to the rest of you? Have you ever had a checkout clerk turn to you with concerned look and ascertain that, yes, you know what it is you're buying and, yes, you have every intention of consuming it or otherwise putting it to its proper use?
I told this story to a former co-worker who liked to take Shank's pony anywhere and everywhere in the city. He said, "Yeah, I've heard that lots of times. Do you know where you are, white boy?". This is something like the reaction I sometimes get when checking out at ethnic groceries--the clerks can't quite believe that I really intended to buy what I did. Like that time at the gift shop that the woman flipped through the pages of my Chinese calendar to show me that, actually, it's in Chinese. "Is that okay?" Um, that's the whole reason I'm buying it so, yeah, that's okay. As you may have guessed from my previous posts, this still amuses me every time.
It happened again at the Korean grocery on Sunday. I put a package of songphyeng, a snack I buy every time I'm in Koreatown, on the belt and she picked it up and explained what they were. When I asked if she had Paykseycwu by the box, she immediately directed an employee to fetch one, but then, as I was paying, said, "If you don't like the wine, bring it back and we'll give you something else." I smiled and assured her that we like Paykseycwu very much and had no intention of returning it. Then she threw in a set of Korean drinking cups for free.
(She didn't question my natto purchase. Perhaps even she didn't know what it was?)
Has this ever happened to the rest of you? Have you ever had a checkout clerk turn to you with concerned look and ascertain that, yes, you know what it is you're buying and, yes, you have every intention of consuming it or otherwise putting it to its proper use?
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I *have* had waitrons warn me, with serious concern, that the food I was ordering was spicy. Uh, yeah, that's why I'm ordering it…
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I don't go looking for Wrong Candy. It finds me! I was tempted by the bags of burnt-rice candy, but they were only available in bulk and even I can't find a use for two kilos of [i]nulungci sathang[/i].
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Well, sorta....
It was a decent haircut -- nothing great, nothing terrible. Alls I know is that nobody spoke to me the whole time I was there.
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The worst such experience I ever had was in Atlanta ... I'd never seen ... uh, hell what are they called, those big round musky-scented grapes ... muscatels, I think? anyway a brown-skinned woman was selling them off a cart downtown near the city hall, and I went over to buy some (naive Canadian that I am). Well aparrently this was a *brown people* fruit cart, cause first of all she looked at me like - "what do you want" then I said, what are these? and she said "you got no cause to complain about them" ... it took several tries to explain to her that I was from Canada and didn't know what they were, and still longer to convince her to sell me some. Meanwhile my white companion was making like we weren't together, wandering away. When I was trying to pay her I gave her a 20 and she wouldn't take it, "you cayn't fool me wid dat.." Don't ever tell me Atlanta is "integrated" ... two cities occupying the same buildings.
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Too bad about your trying time in Atlanta. We had basically the opposite experience: We asked someone at the breakfast place near our hotel for dinner recommendations and she sent us to a hole-in-the-wall a several blocks away. The proprietress was very friendly and the food was fantastic home-style Southern cooking; it was halfway through the meal before we noticed that there no other paleskins around and on the way back home before we thought that, just maybe, walking all the way wasn't the safest choice. An acquaintance was supposed to meet us there, but when he told the cab driver the name of the restaurant, he took him to a different restaurant of the same name outside the city limits. (It wasn't stated, but I'm willing to bet the clientele at the other place was mostly Caucasian, meaning our friend had a "the white boy couldn't possibly mean there!" experience.)
The clerk offered me some advice about storing and reheating the songphyeng. If it works, then I may have cause to be thankful for my appearance!
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Back in undergrad days, I was helping run our debate tournament. The U of Toronto team bailed on our party (despite the exceptionally high liquor-to-debater ratio to compensate for the usually poor male-female ratio) to "explore the slums." Spotting a van with Canadian plates filled with white boys meandering through the Robert Taylor Homes at midnight, a Chicago police car promptly pulled them over and escorted them out of the area. I understand some pointed advice was also offered.
Years later, I was returning from a misspent night on the north side and forgot to switch from the Green Line to the Red (back in the days when the green line went north) in the Loop. So instead of waiting for the Garfield bus at the well-lit, crowded Dan Ryan Expressway, I found myself nervously waiting at the Green Line stop (which then had twoseedy liquor stores) at 2:30 a.m. Luckily, a police car passed by and, seeing disaster waiting to happen, stopped to wait until the bus came.
What caps the story, however, is that five minutes later, a U of C undergrad gets off the train, carrying a cello. He waited calmly for the bus, totally oblivious to what a moron he was.
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Moron, or just someone with a divergent risk analysis?
For years, when living in Indian Village, Nuphy and I got off at Garfield and then had to switch busses or walk to get north to where we lived. Finally, he suggested getting off at the 47th St stop and catching the bus there. I told him he was crazy because it wasn't safe, but I humoured him. We used it for two years, at all hours, alongside matronly Black women and moronic undergraduates alike, without a single incident.
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I still recall vividly a comment by the woman who conducted my alumni interview for admission oh so many years ago. Commenting on the safety issues, the interviewer (Class of '70 or so, I think) said that the campus and surrounding neighborhood were safe, but you had to be careful where you went. "There's this great Chinese restaurant on 63rd Street," she said, "but if you go there, you will be mugged. People thought they could go if they were in a large group, but no, they would all be mugged."
I never tried to find the restaurant; years later someone told me it had been closed a long time ago.
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Oh, and honey? Natto? Bleaugh. ^^;;; Seriously. I don't even know a single native Japanese person who'll touch the stuff ^_-
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