City Survival Tips

Ginseng is the truth. Fuck Red Bull.

Give homeless people cigarettes, if you want free drinks later that night. Good Karma.

Make sure there are aren’t any cockroaches in your ice trays when you make that lucky girl a vodka soda back at your house when you get in from the club.

When no means no, it’s best to just put on your pants and go.

My thoughts on:

Dealers

If they start sending you texts about the forty-five dollar special they have available at three o’clock in the afternoon, delete the number and snort some baby powder before you get the urge to ruin your life.

Cleaning

If some fool you live with tells you that he didn’t mop the floor in six months because it “doesn’t bother him” move out.

Rich Girls

Love them because its hard to. When you’re down they’ll be there–with there boots in your face paining for a lick. Hate them because its easy to, and no one is going to look down on you for doing it.

Poor Girls

Love them – or else they’ll rob you. Either that or they’ll have you getting arrested for something stupid like stealing blush from the Mac store. Hate them because sometimes they won’t spot you on that forty, and at the very worse, will want some of yours.

Knives

Pack the ox, especially with the stock market crash. For a while there wasn’t anything to worry about and you didn’t have to carry illicit street weapons. I’m about to carry a toothbrush with a razor instead of bristles. Get with the program if you want to keep that PowerBook on a dark night in Brooklyn (yes Willamsburg included). Knives are so in (your chest if you’re not careful) right now.

Free Lunch

Gone are the days of robbing the Whole Foods buffet. There are too many hood fools that don’t want to loose their jobs that are watching you eye that dumpling. Be real about it, and get tight with your local bakery so that you don’t starve. Come through at closing, and you’ll get hooked up with all the bagels and muffins no one else wanted. You’ll be happy you have them when lunch time hits and you’re pulling it out of you’re bag at work. Don’t even have to clock out.

Cock-blocking

When you see this happening my best suggestion is to do it right back. Here’s a scenario:

You are at a bar chatting with a new lovely lady fully entranced by you. You notice a former prospect arrive, former because she made it abundantly clear that you would be better as “friends”. She is compelled to come over and say hello; which she does in a very physical and distracting manner. Abruptly get up and get her a glass of water citing that we’re just friends and maybe she had too much to drink. Continue your conversation with a now further intrigued prospect.

Male Cock-Blocking

Take homie outside for a cigarette. Ask him how he gets so many girls. Badger him about how good he is with the ladies. Make him start thinking about all the times he’s scored and why he’s the man. When that cigarette is over he will be so jazzed up that he’ll either ruin his calm block on your girl, or will be so psyched on himself that he’ll go talk to some other girl.

Trees

Don’t get caught up in smoking wack bud. Point being, you will stay on your couch and eat all the deli snacks you bought after you broke that five on a Dutch. Your stomach will soon feel like its been pumped with sugar plastic and you will most definitely be constipated. Don’t get caught up in that “bomb ass haze” either. Before you know it, you’ll be too paranoid to swipe your metro card. Everything in moderation

Stealing

That age old rule about stores before people is what it is. Unless you’re Robin Hood you don’t really need to go through that girls bag at a party. Just get drunk and have fun. Besides, she’s most likely down to distract the cashier while you throw clothes out the door to your mans with the duffel.

Getting over on the MTA

This is hard because we all know how old Chinese men ruined this for us. What I could suggest is calling in to the number on the back of Metro cards to get the MTA to send you receipt vouchers in case you need to commit some fraud on your expense report. Also faking sick with an urgency to go home because you lost your wallet could get you a free ride if you’re patient plus insistent.

Check for your wallet without checking for your wallet.

Crowded places and city streets are where pickpockets do their thing. You might think that the day is going fine but you can be pressed on Broadway still to this day. When those odd hats that looked like African cloth came out, a friend of mine was buying a couple on Broadway and when she was putting the hats back in her enormous bag one of them spotted the opening. Streets is watching. Down the block, she felt tussling and thought it was just after-school Broadway traffic and shrugged it off with a shoulder and some elbow gesticulation. When she got to the subway station there was an immediate about face at the turn-style to the ATM, somehow the remaining change had evaporated and her thoughts condensed as she put two and two together.

You have to know where your money is. If you don’t other people will.

Plug both of you ears at a chirping or hissing sound nearby in a metropolis so as not to make the following action awkward. Rub the back of you neck to feel your wallet in your chest pocket with the inside of the opposite elbow. Don’t relax if it is still in place. That sound is a pickpockets’ signal.

Running for the Subway

When you run for the train you are taking a chance. They’re not lying on that poster when they say that you are putting yourself at risk for an accident. What is more, the trek between tunnels before you run for the subway is an excruciating part of your daily routine if you are walking from the F to the 2 on 14th, or from the A to the 2 at Port Authority. Nevertheless you see people do it, some skillfully, others clumsily. Mostly just silly out of breath people keep trains in the station. Being a Native New Yorker, I’m one of those people. The train is not leaving without me on it if I see it from the top of the staircase. A situation to avoid however is running for the train during the winter months. Now, there is slush everywhere in December, that means skidding. You can easily miscalculate your step and slide straight into the opposite door of your entrance and find yourself lying on the floor of a subway car in the sludge of a thousand shoe bottoms, legs akimbo. Not to mention all those important files in your briefcase are slowly disintegrating in the grime you’re wiping off your face.

Make sure you are careful not to exude too much entitlement – a la punching the train for taking off without you. You and you’re swollen had will be the silent laughing stock of the platform, the trains’ occupants, and the car conductor peering out of that queer little window. No matter how late you are it is never a good idea to physically express your concern for punctuality. When you get fired for being late, you’re insurance will not cover anger toward inanimate objects.

Survival tips for the warm season coming up:

When you don’t get let into a bar because you’re ID is fake.  Make sure to tell the bouncer that he’s a piece of shit no matter how big he is, he’ll respect you and so will the people in line behind you.

Get beer in Brooklyn, 7 Eleven on 23rd, or some other deli but whatever you do don’t buy anything at LimeTree deli on 9th and 1st.

Steal toilet paper from the Apple store when you’re hard up for cash.

Take your shoes off in 10 minute intervals for a total of forty minutes every day during the summer.

Drink one 22oz beer really fast in the sun before you go skateboarding.

Keep extra deodorant at work and your girls’/guys’ house.

Plug in you shaver, phone, and iPod as soon as you walk in the door because when those shits die you’re assed out.

Don’t call your dealer more than two times when you’re buying anything, it shows you’re understanding.

When you really gotta leak and you’re underground its best not to hesitate.  By the time the cops come out of that shady little door your piss will have dried up.

Make sure that you drink lots of water when you drink and do drugs on Fraturday.  I doesn’t hurt to actually relieve yourself if you’re going to be in the bathroom all night anyway.

MAY – JUNE

• Citronella coils and oil
• Pocket Tissues
• Beer Opener Key chains
• Focus group you life away
• Stock that cabinet with Trader Joe’s Merlot it will be hard to come by soon
• Buy Bamboo in bulk
• Keep extra socks in your satchel
• If you don’t have a bag go easy on the socks
• Seltzer is cheaper than water at the supermarket
• Bright green and white outfits
• Sushi lounge lunch special on Thursday, free  wine in the 20′s, then my open bar something before the house party

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