Let me try to adequately capture the story behind this magnificent photograph that Stephan took a week or so ago in Gristede’s (it’s a grocery store in New York, for some reason all the stores smell like feet to me, just go with it).
Friday night before last: we have dinner, then go into Gristede’s to get some beer and some small Snickers bars, because we are juvenile. We take the escalator down to the basement, because for some reason the Gristede’s on 32nd and 3rd Ave is in the basement, and as soon as we step off the elevator…
There they are. This guy (pictured), who has absolutely just been transported from the film “Taxi Driver” or perhaps the year 1975, and his sidekick: a small wiry man we will now call “Mimsy,” who we recall was also rubbing his hands together and nodding at everything “Taxi Driver” guy says. Actually, we can’t really remember what the sidekick looked like, because we were so taken with this main guy. Seriously—who wears a sweat-towel around his neck when it’s 20 degrees outside? Who wears giant, Elvis-style glasses in the basement of a grocery store, and at night? Why isn’t he wearing a proper coat?
These, clearly, are just the “tip of the iceberg” questions one might have to ask to get to the heart of “What is up with this guy?”
Because this is the kind of stuff that Stephan and I (ok, mostly me) absolutely live for, I cannot stop staring at him—he’s like a Funny Strange unicorn: total commitment, unselfconsciously weird behavior a strange outfit, a sidekick, AND to top it all off, they were looking through the “$1/ Remainder” cart in the grocery store. While we’re watching them, Stephan is like “Oh my God—they’re totally working some angle, like “Yeah, see—we’re gonna buy these discounted Mrs. Freshley’s cakes for $1, then we’ll take them up to my friend Mo in Yonkers, see, and then we’ll take the profit and play the ponies.”
They abandoned their plan in the middle of this narrative and started to leave, and we scrambled to try to get our phones ready fast enough to capture him. The answer to your next question is yes, we did follow him for a few streets just to see where he went and what he was about, but I think he caught on to us, because he doubled back at some point, and his sidekick broke off in another direction. Of course, we were just following him to see where the Mayor of Weirdsville might be going on a Friday night with no coat and that fantastic outfit, but I can totally see how he maybe thought we were on to one of his shenanigans and didn’t want to share it with us.
Later, I returned to the grocery store, where I took a short inventory of what was left in the remainder bin (because it adds to the absurdity of the story). Here is what I found:
One chocolate football
Fifteen football shaped cookies
Three Boxes of 20 matchbooks
One extra large box of keirog one serving coffee pods
Ten boxes of mrs. Freshley's creme cakes (a Twinkie stand in)
Three boxes of animal crackers
Two boxes of rice pilaf
Three boxes of honeywheat caraway bread mix
This list, of course, brings to mind a raft of other questions. What angle are they trying to work with some rice pilaf and animal crackers? Is this a cover for something even weirder? Now can you see why I must carry multiple technological gadgets with me at all times? Also—do YOU see these types of people and their situations at the grocery store?
Also, I like how the photo is sort of blurry, since this guy is clearly my Loch Ness monster.
