nyj48: Live from the convention ...


It will be Christi Foist in the audience! That's right, an old family friend from Arizona is one of "my" state's delegates, so tonight he invited me to sit in on the opening of the convention tomorrow. Needless to say, I'm pretty stoked about the opportunity.

Politics entered the scene pretty early today, I have to say. Waiting on the subway platform at 10 a.m. this morning, I realized that several of the other passengers around me were going into the city to protest. For some reason I've gotten awfully bold about my politics in the last couple weeks, and I was sad I didn't have a pro-Republican pin to proudly flaunt in silent retort to their shirts. One woman wore a white tank top that said something about "I say NO ..." As I was wearing a white T-shirt myself, the puckish, spoiling-for-a-fight Elephant within wished I had a handy sharpie to quickly scrawl across my chest, "I say YES!" Men were staring at it all day long. Shouldn't they know they were ogling Republican rack-age?

By the time I boarded the train, I had resolved that my mission for the day was to buy a pro-Republican pin I could sport in quiet defiance.

After a mid-afternoon jaunt from midtown to MSG, however, things were looking grim. I passed many a freaky New Yorker, and some I hope were just visiting. One man carried a large globe-shaped ball and looked like a character from the Apocalypse. Another was dressed as Abe Lincoln. But possibly the most-disturbing site was a wrinkled old woman I passed on 34th St. I describe her thusly because she was also wearing a weird forest-green dress and large fishnets. Yes, fishnets. I don't know which is more horrifying: trying to guess her age or her party affiliation.

I roamed up and down the cordoned blocks in vain, querying cops and TV crew men, looking for shlock stands, finding nothing. Finally I wound up in the Pennsylvania Hotel, directly across the street on the east side of the arena. Poking my head into the gift shop, I finally found other Republicans. The woman had a large, tacky button nothing like the subtle "flair" I was envisioning — but party-friendly flair nonetheless. She said she'd gotten it at the Hilton but had no idea where it was except that I'd have to take a cab there.

Since someone else I'd asked had recommended the midtown Sheraton on 53rd St., I decided to train back uptown (cab, my ass; in this city we walk! ... or sweat in the subway). Getting out at 57th and 7th, I asked a cop where to find the Hilton. While the police presence in town is unmistakable, they're all either young or away from their beats. No one seemed to know where I could find pro-Republican stuff. I went in the direction the cop had pointed, but ended up querying several more people when the Hilton did not appear.

Finally I ended up near the new Time Warner Center at the southwest corner of Central Park (59th and approximately 8th Avenue, for out-of-town readers). Two Hispanic-speaking livery drivers debated where the midtown Hilton might be and said 53rd and 6th. Since I'd already been misdirected so many times, I went into the nearest hotel lobby just to confirm. The guy very kindly looked up the hotel and gave me the number so I could ring to confirm that, yes, Republicans were staying there, and probably selling things in one of the lobbies.

Striding out to the corner, I was suddenly accosted by a woman (with two young boys) who instantly grabbed my hand and launched into a story about how she didn't usually beg, but really needed help, and here were her boys, and she had twins back home in the Bronx but the Times Square Church (which she had visited that very day) couldn't help her till Wednesday ... I let her rattle on, trying to think.

It has struck me lately that for all my one-time talk of "building relationships" with the needy, I haven't done very well at that recently. In fact, I've been mostly coasting on those laurels for several months now, telling myself it frees me from having to give to all the beggars on the subway.

The woman kept talking.

I had $6 in my wallet, but was trying to save it for my button — which did nothing to alleviate guilt. Since I'd recently gotten the pay-out on my 401(k), I decided a little help wasn't a problem. But how? I wanted to do something that would actually make a difference — without reducing my cash flow. A deli was absolutely out, and the local pizza place — if we could find one — wouldn't be any better in payment terms.

After a bit of conversation, I hesitantly suggested we visit the Whole Foods a block away. As she cheerfully pulled her sons across the street with me, warning them to avoid some horse waste and expressing surprise when I said it was used in fertilizer (or animal waste generally), I tried to squelch the sinking feeling that taking this clan to a swank, Upper West organic grocery was a very, very bad idea.

We walked past the gleaming windows of the Coach store and I tried to act like we were not about to shop amidst a shocking display of wealth. Once inside the TWC, I directed them to the escalators downstairs to Whole Foods. The woman was all concern, directing her sons to be careful not to let their laces get caught in the machinery. She spoke warningly of some recent cautionary tale from the local tabs, but I found myself confusing the story with a toddler's death by choking on movie popcorn, and whatever lurid accidents I had read of in others' headlines.

At the bottom of the escalator, we entered the store. They were visibly taken aback by the size and the bustle and the elaborate displays. While I plucked a green basket from a pile, she went right to a nearby stand of fresh figs. To my horror, she picked one up and started peeling back the skin, with a remark on how they have them in the south. The next thing I knew, she had taken a bite and was grabbing two more figs which she handed to her sons!

Oh my God, I thought, barely two feet inside and I'm going to get banned from Whole Foods. Luckily no one seemed to notice amid the chaos of dinner-hour shoppers. The boys took one bite of the figs and spurned them, producing an instant garbage crisis. Their mother promptly led them toward a table by the seafood counter, though there was no garbage can that I could see. The sons' figs vanished and the mother continued to eat hers while I diplomatically tried to lead my conspicuous party through the store. A long, long display of fresh meats and seafood stretched ahead of us, offering little promise of the budget-friendly bag of chicken wings we needed to get them dinner on my $10-$15 allotment.

The woman asked a Hispanic employee about chicken, and he directed us to the frozen section further back. After rummaging around among the bags, we settled on a $7.99 sack of poultry. Next item: rice.

This unfortunately involved traveling past a mini-deli display devoted to seafood, where the mother snagged a few raw shrimp for herself and her sons. Trying desperately to keep emotion from my face and yet not ditch the little party altogether, I headed for a back corner in search of the bulk section. However, when I came upon an African employee, he told me this Whole Foods had no bulk section. He led me to the end of the aisle (even further from my lollygagging charges) and around the corner to an aisle a couple over. "Thanks!" I said faintly and inched back to the end of the aisle to see if the family had followed.

The children dodged trollies as they came to watch their mother make the rice selection. After a bit of hemming and hawing (brown rice was rejected as something she did not know how to cook), we settled on a 3-pound bag that cost $1.49.

"Anything else?" I asked. Seasoning.

But this was Whole Foods. God forbid they should have the "Sassoon" seasoning she usually bought (made by the Goya brand). We inspected the rows of bottles, an array of shiny, pricey labels for exotic herbs found by the Spice Hunter. The woman shook her head. Then, before I knew it, she darted around a corner in search of the clerk. The next thing I knew, she had found the African man, whom she proceeded to treat rudely as she asked for help. As he came back over to point out the seasoning offerings, she muttered something behind her hand to me about how "Africans think they're better than us." But she was black herself! Alternately shocked and horrified by this unexpected racism (my own latent prejudice had been chief among my worries), I wondered how to expanding the escalating crisis.

Her behavior was so poor that as the man walked away he started talking to her in his dignified way about how this was "no way to treat people." Now we're going to get thrown out for SURE! I thought. "Thank you very much sir!" I said, but I'm not sure if he heard.

Trying to move the little party toward the exit without acting as if I was horrified or shamed by their behavior, I asked if anything more was needed. No.

Nothing, that is, except a few more pieces of shrimp which she snagged as we went by the mini-deli again. While we were nearing the base of the escalators, the woman dropped part of a shrimp. Undeterred by its contact with a Manhattan floor, she picked it up. I couldn't bear to keep watching, but I don't think she left it on the table that we passed.

As if the fig stand and the seafood deli weren't bad enough, the checkout line (which is always very long this time of night) stretches back through the expansive take-out dinner section. We're talking cart after cart of savory, gas-heated entrees designed to become impulse dinners for the weary Manhattan grocery shopper. I tried not to imagine the disaster this presented.

Luckily the woman was more focused on the line, which stretched around several corners. "This is the line?!" She started grumbling not too quietly.

"Oh, we only have three items," I said brightly. "We can get the express line." And in fact, there was a Whole Foods bouncer directing overburdened customers away from the express line to the longer regular line. One shorts-clad woman was trying to argue that her basket really qualified for express. But there was no beating the bouncer! "That looks like more than five items to me," she declared. Sure enough, the basket was overflowing with boxes and cartoons. Smug to see some person committing worse crimes than I was guilty of (aiding and abetting indiscriminate disregard for what was doubtless a no-sampling policy), I took my place in the express line.

The mother seemed so ill at ease that I suggested she wait for me upstairs. Whole Foods appears to have a particularly bad line policy if you've never shopped there before, because all customers wait in the same line, and then employees direct you to the next available cashier. Things actually move pretty quickly, but I could tell that the family might not be up for such drama after everything else they'd seen in the store.

As she was taking her sons to the exit, the woman called back to me: "Here! You don't have to wait for this one!" Embarrassed at having to admit we were together, yet forced to project, I called back, "No! It doesn't work that way..."

Five minutes later or less, I made my way up the escalator with the $11-something sack of chicken dinner. It crossed my mind that the family could have vanished. But really, why would they suddenly leave me with rice and chicken and a bottle of Old Bay?

Reaching ground level, I peered desperately around the elegant lobby, hoping to see them. As I headed for the glass doors, I saw the woman, apparently having a conversation with a security guard. We both seemed relieved to spy the other, the mother and I.

As I approached holding their dinner, she began instructing the boys to say their pieces to me: "Say 'thank you'! Say 'God bless you'!" But I felt terrible about such a response to what I meant more as compassion than a paternalistic act of charity (or such I hoped were my deep-down motives). And I was disgruntled about her terribly rude treatment of the African man.

I handed her the bag, and she repeated thank-yous as the boys chimed in obediently. "If you want to thank me," I said firmly, "next time be more kind to the Africans." She started to protest, but also acknowledged that God requires us to love all. "But they think they're better ..."

"If you want to show your thanks," I repeated, "try to be kinder to the Africans." Her response was still half-hearted but I knew she was also convicted by my (hopefully gentle) admonition.

"Have a good night," I said. As I walked away, I heard her say to the boys, "Now that's a nice lady." Emotions welled to the surface in the form of a few sudden tears as I grappled to understand the bizarre, farcical shopping (and mini morality play) just transpired.

My steps took me southward, and I calmed down a bit while refocusing on the pachyderm button-a-thon. A few blocks later, I tried the cell phone of my Arizona friend again and reached him (earlier I'd been forced to call my parents in Vancouver — yes, that's Canada) to have my mom log into Yahoo as me and recover his cell number from an email). "Hey, since you're unemployed, want to come to the opening of the convention tomorrow?" he asked.

My head spinning, I made arrangements just as I arrived at the midtown Sheraton, where some of the delegates are housed. Here, at last, I found my button. It was a hard choice: big pins and small, red pins and blue, generic pins and year pins, pictures of Dubya and Laura. After hemming and hawing awhile, I finally settled on a small blue pin that said "W is for Women." That should stick a flower in the Democratic guns, I thought smugly.

I gave the woman three dollars and headed into the dusk.

posted @ 11:04 PM on Sun - August 29, 2004 remark! Email |  as quoted:
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