Target, I love you, but you're bringing me down

This is a conversation I had with my friend today:
E: I think I am going to get a bike this spring
Me: You totally should, I was really glad I got mine last year
E: Where do you keep yours?
Me: Um, ok...well....so there is this mute homeless man who I guess squats in the basement of my building? And he hoards stuff? Like, I threw out this chopper that didn't work and then he had it. And sometimes he has food back there and I am not sure if he gets it from a food pantry or the garbage. And then sometimes he has other stuff that he hoards but you wouldn't know why because it's not useful and you can't sell it. Anyway, I keep my bike back there. I keep it in the little back area where the homeless man who sleeps on a cot in my building's basement keeps stuff he finds in our trash.
E: Oh ok. Yeah, who knows why people hoard what they do.

I love Brooklyn.

I forgot to blog about my two year living in New York anniversary! It was the 8th. In thinking about it I was trying to think about my favorite moving to New York memory. And at first I was thinking about re-living the day I went from the hotel I was in to my friend's apartment and the cabbie threw all of my crap onto the street because he didn't want to go to Brooklyn. But then, this blog showed up and reminded me that of course I had to write about the worst day in my whole life, which is the first time I went to the Atlantic terminal target.

Unfortunately, I deleted my myspace so I no longer have the gem of a blog that I wrote back when the wounds of that day were still fresh and my tears barely dried. But I will try to sum it up as best I can, keeping in mind that the lens of experience and jadedness mars the ability to portray exactly how devastating this episode was.

To set the scene: It is January, 2007. I have lived in New York City (said as in Pace salsa commercial) for less than one week. This is the day that I move into the apartment that I will live in for my first 18 months here and although I don't yet know it, will be the scene of many stories to come.
I am extremely anxious and on edge about everything. I only have what I could bring with me on the plane, so I head to Target to pick up some essentials. My new roommate -- who I actually don't even live with yet -- has a shopping cart similar to the one pictured, that I decide to take with me.

When I get to Target I get a regular shopping cart and put the old lady shopping cart inside of it and go about my business. There is an escalator in this Target with a separate entrance for carts. As I head to the second floor and put my shopping cart on the escalator, I note a wall next to the cart escalator and think to myself "Hm, I wonder if my old lady cart will be too tall sticking out of the cart and get stuck on the wall?" And then I proceed to put the whole contraption on the escalator.
Now, you may have heard me tell this story before. Or you may just have sensed the foreshadowing and are not surprised, that yes the cart does get stuck to the wall. I watch in slow motion as the old lady cart begins to bend until it is completely jammed up against the wall. At that point, the Target cart tips over, spilling out all of my carefully selected school supplies. I reach out and let out a movie slow motion "Noooo"...but there is no hope. Other shoppers look on in disgust as their own carts are victims of the pileup. Several employees band together and free the cart, handing me back the old lady cart that is now at a 45 degree angle to its original formation. And I. start. crying. And I can't stop. And I'm just crying and crying and crying. But I have shit to buy, so I am shopping and walking through the store and just crying the whole time. Obviously this is going to become my normal state. Like the girl who had hiccups for however long...I will just be the girl that cries...I will have to live out the rest of my life going through every day activities sobbing.
So, with a full cart I go to pay...only to learn that all of my credit cards are declined because my banks helpfully put holds on them due to suspect spending. Nothing changes for me though...I just keep crying and crying and I leave the store. In the melee, I have lost one of my gloves, so I walk out with one hand in my pocket and my gloved hand towing the wrecked property of a stranger (where's THAT lyrics Alanis?). It is bitter cold, but my tears flow hot and do not freeze.

Bedding was included in the many items I picked out that day that never left the store. I didn't have a bed and my new roommate had been kind enough to let me take the futon from the living room into my room to sleep on, and she had even got out some sheets for me. After destroying her personal things, I didn't have the heart to ask for a blanket. I spent the next 3 nights sleeping on the futon with just a sheet...wearing every item of clothing I had brought with me, including gloves and a hat...shivering and crying until I finally bought a blanket.

For a long time I blamed the Target experiene on my own general ineptitude. But then Fucked in Park Slope comes along with their secret cameras to help me prove to the world that the Atlantic Center Target is the worst Target in the world.

Observe:
This is Part 1.

FIPS Undercover - Worst TARGET Evah (Brooklyn, NY) from Effed in Park Slope on Vimeo.

This is Part II


FIPS Undercover II: Target Sucks (Brooklyn, NY) from Effed in Park Slope on Vimeo.


I am pretty excited for III and IV

I like to think I have come a long ways since that day two years ago. But....basically...I live in a shittier apartment in the same neighborhood with worse roommates and I still shop at that Target and hate it every time. BUT I generally move through my days without excessive tearfulness. So that's something.
And now I have a bike that a mute bum watches over.

America and Caitlin love cultural diversity

This post is basically just a series of my thoughts from the last 12 hours. I swear it's all connected.

I got the cats this litter that I don't like recently. It seriously sucks...doesn't clump, really emphasizes the ammonia odor quality of feline urine...no good. I like arm and hammer super scoop. So today I went to go get some arm and hammer super scoop. I went to the Pioneer, which is remodeling and obnoxious to go into. No super scoop. C-Town. No super scoop. The weird store next to C-Town that smells weird. No super scoop. The bodega on the corner. No super scoop. Family Dollar. No super scoop. So as I was wandering around to every store within two blocks of my apartment, I was thinking, goddammit this is what I hate about New York. I can't get my fucking cat litter. In other normal cities where they have huge grocery stores within 5 minutes of anywhere, I would be able to get all the different varieties of super scoop - multi-cat AND odor control. I ended up getting Cat's Pride...which is ok, but it's no super scoop.

Anyway, then I was leaving the gym this evening and I said goodnight to the security guard because I am polite and I was putting on my sweatshirt and he motioned me over. He was pointing at the tattoo on my ankle, which I got my senior year in college, of an Om. Pictured above. Mine is red. It's kind of awesome. I am actually always a little wary when an Indian or Hindu person notices my tattoo because I feel like I can't speak articulately about why I have it. It's really more representative of my made up snake and salamander religion, which I also can't speak very articulately about....but, like, I'm not Christian and I would never have a tattoo of a cross. Anyways, the security guard had an om tattooed on his arm. Fortunately, he didn't call me out on being a Hindu fraud and instead talked about how a lot of white people are into Hinduism and he thinks it's just great. Here are some other things I learned about him:
He is from Surinam by way of Holland
Holland is nice
Surinam is nice. There aren't a lot of people.
There aren't a lot of people from Surinam in New York.
He came here in 2002.
His daughter lives in Holland.
Holland takes care of its people better than America.
English is hard to learn.
His nephew may or may not speak good english.

Then I was thinking how much I love new york and the different kinds of people. Sometimes. Sometimes I miss homogeneity. So THEN I was all filled with naive pride for America and opportunities and black men as president. And then I was remembering election night and how it was kind of awesome to be in my neighborhood.
Living in a poor black neighborhood, across the street from the projects, basically guarantees an Obama landslide on my block. And when they called it, the streets were filled with people cheering, honking their horns, shouting, white people hugging black people and general elation. That shit didn't happen in eugene, I imagine....at least not where either my parents or my sister live.
The election also brought me and asperger's together because we watched the returns. I offered her some ice cream. She offered me some beer. And I was reminded of another time when I crossed cultural boundaries. When I worked at the nursing home in Harlem and everyone hated me because I was white, especially this girl I had to share the computer/janitor's closet with. But I noticed that she always read People. And then Anna Nicole Smith died. So I asked her if she had heard anything about why she died. And she offered me a twizzler.
Anna Nicole Smith and Barack Obama aren't so far apart as you might think. They both have united a country. Or, at least me with people who don't especially like me.
Yesterday Asperger's and I watched a documentary about these autistic savant twins. Which 1. was awesome. and 2. was very meta.

Also, I was reading a thing about racist jokes that people had heard since the election, and one of them was that the white house was going to replace the rose garden with a watermelon patch. And my first thought was that they were going to do that for purely gardening purposes. Because I just listened to this episode of Fresh Air with the guy who wrote In Defense of Food, and he wrote an open letter to McCain and Obama encouraging whoever would be in the white house next to replace the lawn with like a vegetable garden. Anyway. I am kind of pleased that that was my first assumption.

sunny days sweeipin' the clouds away

It was a beautiful fall day yesterday and I was walking around Brooklyn with my friend and he remarked that the day reminded him of Sesame Street. Now, the day did not remind me of Sesame Street, although walking around in Brooklyn often does. But, what it really made me think about was how much most things remind me of tv shows that I watched growing up. Perennial favorites for references are Punky Brewster and The Cosby Show. As in: Oh, I see that person took the door off the fridge when they put it out for garbage. You're supposed to do that I learned from the episode of Punky Brewster where Cherie gets trapped in the fridge and Punky and Margo have to give her CPR and Allen is no help because he was fucking around when they learned how to do it in class. Or: Oh, I love to sew but I don't think I would ever make shirts...they would end up looking like the faux designer shirt Denise made for Theo with one sleeve to long and all kinds of messed up.
As a matter of fact, if I could compare everything in my life to a tv show from the 80's I probably would.
As I get older, my other TV favorite reference is Friends. As in a recent discussion with my friend about having to go out to lunch for a goodbye party for a co-worker and ordering the second cheapest thing on the menu only to learn the tab was divided equally among the entire group so now I got spaghetti marinara and I have to pay for your shrimp alfredo. Both of us were reminded of the episode of Friends where the 3 poorest friends: Rachel, Joey and Phoebe (at the time -this was while Rachel was still a waitress and Joey wasn't yet Dr. Drake Ramore) are lamenting that they have to go out to fancy dinners with the other three when they can't afford it.
Although the ubiquitous NYC reference show in recent years is Sex and the City, I find that I can in no way relate and it rarely enters my discussions.
But here is my secret confession. The show I think about almost every day, but don't have the guts to bring up in polite conversation: Ghostwriter.
Here are instances where I think about it:
1. Ghostwriter was set in Brooklyn, I live in Brooklyn.
2: Alex's family owns a bodega which I had only ever heard of from the show. Now I go to a bodega several times a week.
3: Community gardens. I pass at least one, and sometimes two, community gardens when I walk to the gym. And every time. Every goddamn time I walk past I think of the Ghostwriter story arc in which the neighborhood is getting sick from vegetables grown in the community garden because some company had buried toxic waste barrels in the garden.
4: There are countless other instances in which Ghostwriter is brought to mind and I am too ashamed to write about them here.

So what tv shows do you find yourself referring to frequently?