Remembering some people I met once
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Guys I've Run Into at the Onion Square Smell Museum
The woman who sang "I Will Survive" over and over every Friday and Saturday from 7pm to 10pm.
Incense man. He was doing burning the incense to cover up the weed smell but it definitely purified the area of bad spirits as well. Now that weed is legal, the ghosts have returned.
The guy who handed me a book of poetry and demanded 20 bucks for that. The person who wrote a poem for me for free, and told me the people selling tchotchkes were her coworkers. The free poem was way better.
My friend was playing chess with one of the chess guys. A businessman walks up behind us and offers my friend the unsolicited advice that "you've gotta keep your shit together."
The Hare Krishnas are chanting, the Lubavitchers have their mitzvah stand ready to go, the Jehovah's Witnesses are standing forlornly next to a rack of pamphlets, and an evangelical guy is shouting into a loudspeaker about burning in hell. A well-dressed man is standing next to an easel that says "POLL: WHO IS RIGHT." I tell him the Jews are right, and he tries to convince me that the Bible is "self-validating."
I told a Chabadnik that I would do any mitzvah for him if he could look up the address of the restaurant where I'm supposed to meet my friends. "Don't do it for me," he says, "do it for HaShem." He gives me the address, but his zoomy pre-teen son tells me not to eat there if it's not Kosher.
The woman selling tote bags that said, "have a shrimp day" and "green a little bean of me." The woman selling soap right across from the tote bags who could not stop thinking about what "have a shrimp day" could possibly mean.
The man who sold me discounted duck fat after my previous duck fat had spoiled when the freezer broke.
The nineteen other people sitting on the lawn playing Pokemon GO who brought down Registeel in 10 seconds flat and made sure there were lures all around us so we could all get the best Pokemon around.
A fellow spotted lanternfly enthusiast who bragged to me about her kill count after she saw me stomp on one.
Bonus Episodes from Other Squares in Downtown Manhattan
The 3 people who got kicked out of Madison square with us at 1am when we were all trying to catch the same caterpie.
The guy with the cone on his head who induced a majestic game of follow the leader with skateboarders, scooters, cyclists, pedestrians, and me (using a wheelchair).
Probably a hundred people in the fountain on a hot day.
The people who declared the fountain an "autonomous zone" and camped out there in 2020 (the water was off all that summer).
The marxist reading group. The free piano lesson.
The woman who followed me around and asked why I was lying when I told her I wasn't carrying any cash (I wasn't).
The guy who explained to me the price trends of various drugs within the park.
My cello quintet. A doo-wop group.
Approximately one million cops for one hard-sleeper.
A hand puppet giving me free advice. (None of it was as useful as "keep your shit together".)
A guy who let me make him a vaccine appointment for later that week.
The person or people who put boobs on every single one of the hundreds of snowmen that had appeared within 8 hours of the first snow of that year.
A woman who thought it was totally crazy that I had blue hair and my friend had pink hair and we were sitting next to one another.