My New York

Over the last few days.......

- I bought a burrito at a Vietnamese-owned and staffed restaurant that advertises "Authentic & Fresh Tex-Mex!"

- I stood on the subway platform and watched a band of ethnic-Japanese Peruvians play a Spanish-titled pop song by a Swedish group, using Greek instruments.

- I visited the all-Russian staffed Burger King on 40th Street where a German woman spat on her boyfriend, shrieking "Hund! Hund!"

- I bought a newspaper at the kiosk outside my building, where the friendly Indian man was singing in Urdu, as he often does when he's in a good mood.

- I rode in a taxi driven by a young man from the West Indies who had his radio tuned to a cricket match taking place in Pakistan.

- I witnessed some street drama in which a woman was screaming, " Help! Help! Please! Does anybody speak Cantonese?", because an Asian man was violently shaking his wailing toddler granddaughter, and was ignoring the pleas from passers-by that he stop.

- I followed a friend into a Sri-Lankan-owned porn shop where he looked at, but did not buy, Brazilian gay porn. Every dirty bookstore in New York is owned by Sri-Lankans.

- I watched an unintentionally hilarious local cable access Hindu devotional program, sponsored by a Queens carpet retailer which is having a "Vishnu's Birthday Blowout Sale!" I don't know when Vishnu's birthday is, so it might have been a rerun.

- I met a Japanese businessman and his Kiwi boyfriend, who suggested I stop by for a drink, "next time you're in Kyoto Prefecture."

This is my New York. I think if I lived in Middle America, I'd feel like I was from a different planet.

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