Maybe she was trying out to be a snail for Halloween
It used to be that fortune tellers or "psychics" would give me a come-hither look through the glass window of their shop while curling their finger in a motion communicating that I should enter. I was but a young teenager when it first happened to me, and I shook my head so vigorously I nearly saw stars. Subsequent times, I just ignored their efforts.
But for the second time in as many weeks, a psychic outside of her (I've never seen males) domain accosted me on the street. My first experience was in Brooklyn and a woman lazily pushing a covered baby stroller on the sidewalk stopped my friend and I and offered us "ladies" a psychic reading. (Together? Apart? Who knows.) Safe to say, she was promptly denied.
Yesterday, I was walking north in the tourist trap SoHo Broadway has become, when suddenly, a woman lugging a large empty container bin singled me out and asked if I would like a reading, adding, "I'm a psychic," as if those were the best credentials ever. I stared blankly at her for half a second without stopping. I wasn't trying to be rude, but it's Manhattan. You keep moving and you don't stop till you reach your destination, unless you're a tourist. That's just how it is; if you slow down, you'll get in someone's way, guaranteed. It's probability! (BTW, go to the side if you must stop, kthx.) Anyway, I don't know if she took offense, but she remarked, "Excuse me!" as if I'd invaded her personal space and got all up in her business. I simply said, "No thanks," as I was still within earshot and I didn't even slow down, with a perfect dismount to boot.
Are high rent prices pushing "psychics" to the streets, or is the raging inflation forcing people to just take up any business to make whatever money they can? However, the most bizarre thing to me in all of this is that both women were toting large, unwieldy items. Okay, the baby carriage, I understand (though I'm not totally sure there was actually a baby inside), but the empty, lidless bin, on a crowded Manhattan street, was just so... huh?
19:08 Comment! (4) | Recommend! | Categories: new york city [t], huh? [t]