The Broadway Shopper

Months ago I wrote about how New York City is the self-proclaimed World Capital of Everything That Ever Was or Will Be, from fashion and finance to street litter and rats. So as the holiday season approached, it came as no surprise when my new civic brothers and sisters began to ask me if I was excited about spending my first Christmas here in-yes, you guessed it-the Christmas Capital of the World. (After all, who could possibly put on a better celebration of the birth of Jesus Christ than the world's largest expatriated populations of Hindus, Muslims, Buddhists and Jews?)

Needless to say, I was a bit skeptical. New York City did seem to have its own special brand of Christmas, albeit a more confrontational, heel-in-your windpipe brand that smelled more like daily chicken halal with rice than cinnamon and eggnog. But the Christmas Capital? C'mon.

Little by little, however, I started to come around. I mean, you've got the tree and the angels at Rockefeller Center, the window scenes at Macy's and Saks, Miracle on 34th Street (not to be confused with the Rangers' Stanley Cup win in '94) and more outrageously overpriced merchandise than you could cram into a Staten Island landfill. Yes, New York was beginning to look a lot like Christmas.

And since Christmas is still about giving (yes, that is the extent of my naïveté), I was determined to share what the Christmas Capital of the World had to offer with my underprivileged friends and family (they live in Chicago) by bringing home something for everyone that couldn't be found anywhere else-an authentic NYC gift.

So I headed directly to Macy's to drink in the spirit of the season and fill up my sack of goodies. But what I found at Macy's didn't feel like Christmas at all. In fact, it felt like an elbow to the kidney, which is what I received upon walking into the store. The World's Biggest Store (self-proclaimed as usual, in true NYC style) was more like the World's Biggest Jostle Fest, and all of the merchandise looked like the same old shit you could get at any department store-just more expensive. Unfortunately, Saks and Bloomingdale's offered nothing but the same.

Discouraged but not defeated by this lackluster selection, I racked my brain for where I might find truer, more distinctively New York gifts. Where did New York's heart beat the loudest? Where was its spirit most vividly expressed? That is where I would have to find my gifts. I could give my friends nothing less.

Inspiration still had not found me by the next morning, as I made my way to work on the 1/9. It was a short but perilous walk from the 28th Street station on Seventh Avenue to my Fifth Avenue office-mostly due to the hordes of card-table merchants who lined the street each day, competing with the wholesale shops. The lineup usually began promptly at Sixth Avenue with a few guys selling Keds and Nike knock-offs, but on this morning a new vendor had joined the fray. On a very small table, a lone middle-aged woman had placed one Snickers candy bar, one Three Musketeers, one Fifth Avenue, one pack of Juicy Fruit gum and one bag of almond M&Ms. She had no boxes of additional stock under the table behind her. It was as if she had simply walked out of a convenience store with these items and laid them on a table. I looked at her incredulously...and that's when it hit me.

The real New York City had been right in front of me all of this time: card-table row, on Broadway between 26th and 72nd Streets. This was it. I mean, what epitomizes the spirit of New York City more lyrically and completely than block after block of society's most marginalized hustling each other over heaps and heaps of what has to be the most worthless shit on earth?

In just a few moments, my mission had gone from seemingly impossible to startlingly simple. Picking up little pieces of New York for everyone would be as easy as walking up Broadway. No shops. No department stores. Just street vendors. Oh, my friends were in for some treats.

Of course there were pros and cons to this approach. The cons had to do mostly with ambiance. Macy's had been a disappointment, but the Christmas spirit out on Broadway made the mad cattle barn at Macy's seem like a Perry Como special. Sure, the chestnuts were roasting out here-but they were being roasted by a man who was vehemently screaming what must have been a string of obscenities in Pakistani at another man who may or may not have been his brother (although he was wearing a Santa cap). The other drawback was the less-than-flexible return policy being outlined by most of the merchants. While Macy's had gone to the trouble of printing countertop signs explaining which documentation you would have to present for exchanges, the predominant policy on Broadway was usually summed up rather succinctly with a hand-printed sign exclaiming, "NO REFUND!!!" I would have to choose wisely.

As for the pros, well, they were simple: the shit was cheap, there was plenty of it, and none of it was being endorsed by Howie Long (soon to be "TV's Howie Long"). At least not yet, anyway.

So I set off at roughly 11:30 p.m., determined to satisfy everyone on my list. Walking north across 28th Street, I encountered a T-shirt stand featuring mounds of slogan-emblazoned tees, nightshirts and caps. The subject matter of these punchy messages ranged from the religious ("Relax, God Is in Charge") to the ridiculous ("I Love New York"). The breadth of the selection was staggering. Shirts imprinted entirely with replica $100 bills. Hats that read "World's Greatest Dad." Knee-length fluorescent nightshirts featuring drawings (not pictures) of the Statue of Liberty. They even had a separate section of Subway Series paraphernalia, just in case the one person remaining on earth who wanted Subway Series gear, but hadn't yet purchased it, happened to pass by. From this treasure trove, I limited myself to one item, but I left confident that I had found a gem: a T-shirt with the simple declarative statement, "When God made me, he was just showing off." Four bucks. This was going to be fun.

Moving up into the 30s, I passed a number of tables featuring assorted headgear, sunglasses and more faux Keds (unfortunately, I didn't know my friends' shoe sizes). Also on offer were numerous sets of gaudily patterned bedsheets, a fact that I found particularly disturbing. In your mind, could you ever get them clean enough?

Near 31st Street a large crowd had gathered. I figured this must be where the real actions is. I peeked through to see an impressive selection of today's hottest pop and R&B hits scattered across a blanket on the sidewalk. Unfortunately, so was the vendor-facedown with the knee of a plainclothes NYC detective between his shoulder blades as another officer cuffed him. Although most in the crowd voiced their support for the vendor, I had to side with the cops. Seven bucks for the new Christina Aguilera? That is criminal.

Walking past this spectacle, I saw one of my favorite neighborhood characters lurking ahead: Battery Man. Typically, Battery Man is fairly ostentatious. "Hey, everybody!" he likes to yell, waving a shrink-wrapped briquette of Duracell batteries in his hands. "Battery Man's here! Battery Man will take care of you. Eight batteries for a dollar. Double-A! Eight for just ONE DOLLAR! Who needs some?" Tonight, however, Battery Man was keeping an uncharacteristically low profile. Perhaps he was spooked by CD Man's arrest and subsequent rough treatment.

Slashing my way through the throng of holiday shoppers in Herald Square, I figured I'd have to put my shopping on hold. But huddled in a doorjam on the north corner of 34th and Broadway, I saw another opportunity in waiting. A very inconspicuous individual was holding a cardboard box filled with videocassettes of movies that to my temporary surprise were still in theaters. Then I remembered the infamous Seinfeld episode in which Jerry videotaped movies with a camcorder for a mentally imbalanced bootlegger. My heart leapt. Not only could I bring 90 minutes of Hollywood magic to a friend's life, but by purchasing one of these illicit tapes, I could take yet another step in my evolution into a true New Yorker.

Gleefully I rifled through the selection. Charlie's Angels. The Grinch. Road Trip. All the hits. After a brief interruption, during which the shop (the flaps of the box) closed temporarily on account of a uniformed MTA maintenance worker passing close by, I emerged with Little Nicky, Adam Sandler's latest attempt to trump Pauly Shore's Son-In-Law as the most asinine movie ever made. Five bucks.

Opportunities in the upper 30s were relatively sparse, but the approach of Times Square introduced a whole new category of goods. Once the domain of hookers, pushers and purveyors of peep, Times Square is now home to the largest concentration of caricaturists and photo T-shirt makers on earth (although a New York-style proclamation of this is conspicuously absent). Although native New Yorkers are still cursing Rudy Giuliani for this hideous transformation, these new wares would fit my purposes nicely. Sure, the old generation of Times Square stuff would have been preferable, but it also would have presented some challenges at the airport-at least without a strict diet and a few small balloons.

I traveled from sidewalk spread to sidewalk spread, marveling at the consistency of the mediocrity before me. I would have killed to have had caricatures made of all of my friends, but without pictures of them to give to the artists for reference, I had to settle for the pre-produced prints. On display were various NYC landscapes, including the World Trade Center and the Flatiron Building, along with Elvis in his various incarnations and a few bright-eyed sketches of Derek Jeter, who I am convinced will someday suffer the same fate as Elvis in terms of early and late career portraiture (fame will do that to a man.) As I perused the selection, I noticed an unsettling yet entrancing eye peeking out at me over a pair of penciled sunglasses. Nestled among all of these New York scenes and heroes was a black-and-white, charcoal-style rendering of The Rock, of WWF fame. It was absolutely perfect for one of my friends who, despite his 26 years and his college education, watches professional wrestling. Regularly.

A kid had already spotted the print and was drooling over it shamelessly, so I grabbed it quickly and signaled to the vendor. He wanted $15 for it, but I talked him down to $10. Ten bucks.

Making my way through Times Square, I came across a number of other vendors, brandishing suitcases filled with jewelry, fake Rolexes and other finery. None of it, however, was quite the style for any of my friends. It was close to midnight and beginning to sleet a bit. I could see some of the vendors starting to pack up. This would not do. I wasn't finished shopping. In a panic, my eyes scanned the upcoming blocks for opportunities, but I found nothing but a low-rent version of Battery Man huddled in a phone booth. This guy was offering four for a dollar (which I guess would make him high-rent), and not very enthusiastically. Caught between a rock and a hard place, I had to make the purchase; he could have been my last chance of the night. One buck, though.

I moved on through the barren 50s and 60s, examining my four-pack of Plenticell batteries (not Duracell after all, despite the identical markings). My last opportunity would be the low 70s. This was the domain of the literary-minded. Men could usually be found with milk crate after milk crate stuffed with back issues of Playboy magazine and battered paperbacks with titles like Hunted to Kill and The Message of Death. But alas, the sidewalks were empty upon my arrival. The sleet was coming down thickly, and even I was ready to call it a night.

In the end, I had a respectable haul-all for a mere 20 bucks (and of course, the subtle humiliation of carrying this crap all the way uptown without a bag in front of tourists who were undoubtedly chuckling, "I may be gullible, but not that gullible!"). I had come up a bit short on the gift count, which made me regret passing on the bedsheets after all. I thought that I could pick up some substitutes-maybe even turn it into a game by having my friends guess which items were true NYC and which were "fake" (oh, the irony!). Finding decoys would be tough, though. I'd probably have to go all the way to Beijing to find trademark infringement and circumvention of this extent and vigor. And frankly, finding shit this cheap and useless in Chicago is hard to do. But in New York, well, it represents nothing less than the spirit of Christmas itself.