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Face First
Deborah and Signe were both doing well selling their creations at the BUST Magazine Craftacular in SoHo yesterday and neither of them wanted to risk losing a sale by leaving their booth, so shortly after I arrived to visit, I offered to get them lunch. Although the Craftacular is billed as a “craft and food fair,” the only vendor I could find that wasn’t selling cupcakes, cookies or other chocolaty snacks, was a booth selling meatballs. “Mother’s Balls” they were called. Neither Deborah nor Signe wanted a sandwich, so I got them each an order of what was listed on the menu as, “Just the Balls.” Funny, I suppose, but slightly awkward to order.
Other than coffee when they first arrived, the only thing Deborah and Signe had to drink all day was some wine supplied by a girl at the neighboring table. After delivering the balls, so to speak, I offered to go outside and get a couple of bottles of water.
“I’ll be back in a few minutes,” I said.
The craft fair was crowded, but not more crowded than the bustling streets outside.
After picking up a few things at a nearby deli, I navigated my way back to the craft fair. Between the thousands of pedestrians shopping and window shopping on the narrow SoHo streets, and the hundreds of street vendors selling scarves, T-shits, jewelry and paintings, making those narrow streets even narrower, it wasn’t easy.
While passing the entrance to one particularly fancy store, a slim guy in a stylish wool suit with Dudley Do-Right posture, marched out of the store’s entrance as if expecting the great unwashed masses on the sidewalk to part for him. He threw his scarf over his shoulder and let out a boisterous laugh as he cut me off. Following behind him was a lithe young woman in stiletto boots taking large strides to keep pace. Although the guy had just room enough to avoid colliding with me, the woman wasn’t so well timed. She yelped as she tripped over my foot and headed face first toward the cement. She didn’t fall. In a heroic effort that nearly toppled them both, she clawed the guys shoulder and managed to salvage her modeling career. As she righted herself, she swung her head around and shot me an expression that was impossible to decipher.
My initial reaction was to apologize, but it’s surprising sometimes how quickly a second thought can follow the first, and in the instant it took for the supermodel’s hair to swish around like a shampoo commercial, my throat cramped up and an apology never came. Instead, I just held up my hand as if to say, no harm, no foul.
Every year I see an article proclaiming the streets of New York to be more crowded than ever. “It’s staggering when you think how many people are walking the streets of New York City at any given time,” A recent article in The New York Times quotes Janette Sadik-Khan, the city’s transportation commissioner, as saying. Very true. Later she adds, “With 8.4 million people, you don’t live here unless you like people.” Less true.
It might be more accurate to say, “You don’t live here unless you like complaining about people,” since that’s what everyone I know seems to do.
In any case, if you actually do like people, the Craftacular continues until seven o’clock tonight.
