Saturday, August 23, 2008

Human Slavery or Handbag Heaven

Chinatown isn't so much about staying in touch with Chinese culture or bringing a little piece of Beijing to New York City. No, Chinatown is about selling knock-off, name-brand goods to a bunch of label-hungry white girls; and I'm telling you right now, it's fabulous.

Even before you get off of the subway, men are coming up to you with what looks like a menu and saying, "Gucci, Chanel, Coach, Louis Vuitton..." in heavily accented English. And the menu is a menu after all, its just that its a menu for handbags.

Now I've heard of these guys before. Apparently, if you follow them you'll head down some twisted alley, up a fire-escape and down a hallway with rusty exposed piping to a blank, green door. Your guide will then administer a secret knock which will be greeted with a symphony of bolts and chains being unlocked behind the door. And then you're in - and what you've found is either handbag heaven or an underground gang that traffics in human slaves and illicit drugs. (I kept having flashes from Thoroughly Modern Millie, so I was pretty convinced that we would have been kidnapped and sold into slavery.)

So based on the irrational fear inspired by such tales, we didn't pursue the sketchy path that leads toward a 50/50 gamble between worse-than-death or a quilted, white Chanel clutch. Instead we stuck to the main road, which had more than enough to keep us busy.

This shot hardly does justice to the crowd on a Saturday afternoon:



Yes, most of the signs were written in some form of Chinese:



So we still managed to kill several hours in relative shopping utopia, even without making it to handbag heaven.



After Chinatown, we sort of accidentally found little Italy:


They were holding an amateur soprano competition, which we stopped to listen to. Unexpected, world-class artistic performances on every corner are just one more thing that I love about this city. The performers were very talented.
Then Michelle collected her "Dolce & Gabana" bag and I put on my red "Rayban" Wayfarer sunglasses and we skipped of into the sunset - giddy with good shopping, good times and a new-found love of cheap knock-offs.

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