|
|
|
good places to publicly urinate in Manhattan
Saturday, February 23 2002
This was my morning to walk Sally, and as usual it was too late for me to take her to the Long Meadow, so I walked her through the Vale of Cashmere (where off-leash dogs are still illegal but mostly tolerated). The big drawback to the Vale is the sheer number of human feces hiding like Easter eggs in seemingly every clump of bushes (usually indicated by the tell-tale streamers of toilet paper). I've developed the habit of urging Sally along whenever she pauses in the woods anywhere in the vicinity of Grand Army Plaza. But I've long since learned that telling her no and making a fuss have absolutely no educational impact whatsoever. People have been trying to teach their dogs revulsion since the dawn of time, but there's no known case of a dog ever learning it.
While Gretchen was out showing her friend Colette all around Manhattan, I opted for a more hermitlike existence. But in the evening I tried to go see some punk rock thing Jami had told me was happening in Tribeca. Unfortunately, though, when I emerged from the subway station at Canal Street, I was under the impression that the place I was looking for was near Broadway. Unfortunately, though, I was making a classic blunder of Big Apple neophytes, not being mindful of the fact that Manhattan has three different Broadways, not one. So I ended up walking all through Chinatown on the east side looking for West Broadway when (and of course it seems obvious now) I should have been over on the west side.
At first I thought I might be able to find the right Broadway, but when that proved impossible, I settled just for finding a place to piss. This wasn't easy, since the streets were full of people and policemen and there weren't any darkly-lit nooks to duck into. Eventually I settled for a well-lit driveway. I knew I'd come to the right place when I smelled how badly it reeked of stale urine.
Another offensive smell assaulted my nostrils in the Canal Street Q subway station: the penetrating acridness of vomit. I guess an unusually large number of barely-functioning drunks catch their trains there.
For linking purposes this article's URL is:
http://asecular.com/blog.php?020223 feedback
previous | next |
