I'm sitting in the airport after five days in Boston. And boy did a lot happen in Beantown. To recap my New England adventure I will be telling the story in themes. Today's theme, the weird things we saw Boston citizens doing this past week.
Let's start with a strange Chinese looking lady. She was standing on the sidewalk -- doing what I don't have a clue.
We came out of the subway, and as we began walking, I let out a wicked sneeze. That didn't set well with the old lady.
She stared at me and unleashed a verbal rampage in Chinese -- or Korean or whatever she speaks -- the likes of which scared the holy Buddha out of me.
I couldn't really respond, but as we walked away, she was still pointing at me and yelling in Mandarin.
There was the older short gentleman with just a rat tail for hair who was asking women out for dinner, except no women were really anywhere near him. He also seemed quite upset, I guess because he couldn't score a date for the evening.
There was the worker who yelled "Suck my dick" pretty darn loud while filling holes in the street. In his defense he had DMX blaring out his construction vehicle. Didn't really belong in Little Italy at noon.
There's the homeless of course, the one thread of people every major city has in common. You expect to be asked for change, but each city always brings a unique encounter. (My all-time favorite is still the Atlanta gentleman that followed Paul for about a mile and couldn't believe his efforts didn't lead to Paul going into a Subway -- the line was out into the street -- to buy him a foot-long.)
The top 3 strangest homeless experiences in Boston.
3. The guy who had a sign that said: "no story here. Just down on my luck."
2. The man who fell asleep on the street with a cigarette hanging out of his mouth and his finger on the lighter, which almost was at the cig.
1. The dude pushing his cart along the sidewalk, stopping in front of a restaurant with outside seating and proceeding to curse out one of the patrons. He said "motherfucker" several times as the patron tried to ignore him and we stopped to watch what would happen.
The homeless man eventually stopped yelling and started pushing his cart again, still mumbling "motherfucker" as he went.
This old man didn't do anything weird, but he's my dad's doppelgänger, so he makes this post.
It would have been one badass prank for my dad to buy tickets in the same Fenway Park section, follow me to Boston and then just sit there and watch the game while I sit there and thought "hmmm, nah, well?!?, nah" for three hours.
This has-it-all-together Bostonian clipped his nails while waiting for the Subway. Efficient, I reckon.
The shirtless black dude got the crowd gathered around him all excited for like 30-45 minutes. We only stopped because the crowd in this square had swelled so much. Must be something to see.
All he did was yell about nothing, clap and collect money. And he hustled up close to $200 in the time I watched this ridiculous street show. He went on and on and on -- like this paragraph -- and nothing happened.
Finally, after he sort of forced even more money out of the second to last white dude in this line, one of his cronies -- with the entire crowd of 200 or so people excitedly clapping and Nicole and I still trying to figure out wtf all the excitement was about, because again nothing had happened in half an hour -- jumped over five of those people lined up in the photo.
It was a decent jump. But after all that money gathering, clapping and random excitement from the crowd, that's all that happened. That felt good to get out.
In the middle of the day, we watched this guy climb a fence and enter some building through the fire escape. Criminal or normal occurrence? Dunno.
As we end our first Boston post -- hopefully several more posts to come -- here are the five best quotes I overheard strangers say in the home of clam chowder.
5. On Saturday, a young businessman passes us on the street and says into the phone: "I'm not losing my business and my job over you."
Was it a client? Lover? Both?
4. On Thursday, we were at the Boston Common public park, and a young lady admires a duck dunking his head in and out of the water. Her: "Oh my god, I wanna be a duck."
3. On Wednesday, a middle-aged woman looks at a shirt at a merchandise stand and says "what's KVP?" The vendor explains that's the nickname of one of the Boston players. "It's for Pablo Sandoval. He's called the Kung Fu Panda."
Keep in mind that Sandoval has won two World Series and got a $100 million contract from the Red Sox in the offseason.
Her: "I watch every game. I've never heard of that."
2. At the same park as in No. 4 and looking at the same group of ducks, an adorable little girl asks grandpa: "Is it fun to be a duck?"
That's her later on the mother duck, Mrs. Mallard. I swear we weren't stalking her.
1. On Friday, I'm waiting in line to pee at a library. One lady to another: "I'll just meet you downstairs, OK?"
"But I have to poo, so ..."
"Oh."
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