Norlos

today i came closer to Justin Bieber than i ever thought i would. i’d ridden my bicycle up to lincoln center and, because it was raining, i grabbed the subway back downtown to my office.

as i was standing at the corner of 34th street and 6th avenue waiting for a green to cross 6th next to Macy’s, everything seemed pretty normal for herald square during the peak tourist months…clowns to the left of me and jokers to the right.

(an aside…one of my coworkers, who just moved to NYC last year, told me shortly after she started that she hates the stretch of 34th street between 7th avenue and 5th avenue because of the tourists. i was like, “you were one of them up until last month.” personally, i actually kind of like the out-of-town weirdness that occurs in those blocks.

one day, a couple months ago, i was just walking from the subway to work, when i approached a tourist family of four who were walking hand in hand and blocking the sidewalk. foolishly expecting them to break their hand holding in the face of another pedestrian, i kept walking. there was no breaking of the link, though, they just wrapped around me and all of a sudden i was in a group hug.

when i managed to extricate myself from that disconcerting physical interaction with some foreign strangers, i looked at the street guys selling tickets to the tourist buses and the empire state building who were watching this entire rigamarole and just said, “what the fuck?”

they laughed with the knowingness of people who have to deal with that craziness all day.)

anyway, as i was waiting to cross 6th avenue, an unholy wailing went up to the left of me. it was then that i remembered the obieberamaclypse that was happening today.

suddenly i realized that i was closer to Justin Bieber than i had ever expected to be. i had no idea about the shit that went down, though…