If I Lived in New York City

I haven't walked the streets of New York City since I paid my daughter a visit there in 2004, but I suspect it wouldn't be much of a different experience now. It wasn't much different for me in 2004 than at my first visit, in 1965. So, I imagine you can still find photocopied announcements posted randomly at eye level around the city inviting anyone and everyone to

Come See
Sephalie Bane-Todo
Only Appearance This Month
at the
Electric Danger
Sandwich Experience
305 East 5th Street
Thursday, June 17, 2004
4pm to closing
Low Cover Charge
and
Free Whores' Ovaries
(Hors D'Oeuvres)

New Yorkers are acutely attuned to the 'artists' among them, in all media, and love to be the first among their friends to speak the name of the soon-to-become famous person who just may become the next David Sedaris. Until that person becomes famous, he or she can be found cruising the little eating and drinking spots, arranging venues for her blood-on-pizza-box paintings, or his strolling-minstrel-history-of-North-Korea-in-12-tone songs. Some, such as David Sedaris, whose work I appreciate, stretch the limits but keep one toe inside the circle of conventional expression, thereby standing a better chance of attracting the sort of backing (publisher, promoter, investor) who will one day help them reach a broad audience outside Manhattan and become rich.

If I lived in New York City, I would most certainly be a single person, since I would be too poor to support a family on $50,000 a year, or even to support a wife, in a place where a low monthly rent is $10 a square foot. (Who owns the buildings in New York City, anyway? Corporations? Who lives in them? Corporation-haters? Why?)

So I'd be a single person, trolling, no doubt, for a connection with someone now and then. So maybe what I'd do is make my own poster:

Come See
Lonicera Tatarica
Only Appearance This Week
at the
Bread Kettle
Garden and Café
215 East 5th Street
Thursday, December 29, 2011
2:30pm to closing
No Cover Charge
and
Great Bread Samples

Beforehand, I'd attend a few of the legitimate scenes and see what kind of people show up at what venues in which neighborhoods. Once I've chosen the best neighborhood and shops for the type of person I'm attracted to, then I'd choose a cozy but clean store-front eatery in that same neighborhood. Naturally, I'd give my fictitious performer a name calculated for intrigue. And I wouldn't need to ask the shopkeeper's permission, since he would not realize that the posters are going up and all I'm really going to do at the appointed date and time is go sit in there, like every other patron, and wait for the announced soon-to-be-famous person to appear.

I would be checking out the faces in the shop, minding my own business, appearing to wait expectantly, and choosing the person whom I would approach at the right moment.

When the audience begins to grow restless at being stood up -- about the time two or three people have asked the shopkeeper where he or she is, this Lonny Cera -- I would approach my chosen stranger and strike up a conversation about the missing not-quite-celebrity; maybe propose that we go together to the one around the corner which is supposed to start in a half hour or so.

That's what I'd do if I were an under-employed, poor, single intellectual living in voluntary confinement in New York City.