Smoke Damage and the Elusive Cornover.

Note to Craigslist shoppers: There is a reason why people vending their used furniture take the time to mention that its coming from a non smoking home.
Yours truly industriously discovered a table, chairs and buffet on craigslist for $200 and free delivery. You already know the last part sold me. Do I want to rent a truck or locate a mover and schlep things from fucking Weehawken to Brooklyn? No, I dont. So, On friday morning, after I finished giving BL (thats Barely Legal, the adorable young guy who used to barista at Animals in Seattle with Carrie, I thought I told you everyone in Seattle has moved to New York) a haircut, three hiliariously questionable guys, puportedly from queens rolled up in a huge brown chevy van with Pennsylvania (?) plates with my new table, chairs and buffet on board. i was suprised at their appearance as the email of the vendor on Craigslist that i had communicated with was justamommy95@blahblahblah.com. The ringleader, Mr. Justamommy I presume, was a heavy, sweaty balding ponytail white guy. With him he had two very young, very thuggish looking kids who couldnt have been even 20. One was latino of unknown origin with an incming baby moustache of black fuzz, and one was african american. Neither was able to put aside their apparant differences even for the good of a smooth moving experience. As they were wrassling the buffet up the stairs, they were arguing loudly with each other, "whatsa matter witchu?" "Nothing man, youda won witda praalem!" "Naw man you been beefin, you betta quit!" "Yo, you know what my praalem is? Ima fucking tell you!" Which ruckus caused Sweaty Baldo to shoot them the look of death and they shut right up. I had no idea what their relationship to each other was and I dont care to think about it further. Altogether they had the spatial gift of a rhesus monkey, so as I watched them try to muscle the round table through the narrow doorway at the bottom of my stairs, I realized that A. the table may not fit anyway B. If it does, its going to take some really graceful planning and manouvering so as not to bang up the walls on either side of the stairs, which my preshistoric albanian landlord will have a heart attack about and charge me up the arse for and C. even if i could plan it out they won't listen to a word of my guidance because i am not a man.
So, in the intrest of having them out of my house and back on the road to Queens or whetever rock they crawled out from under, I told them to just put the table down and I would figure it out myself later. Justamommy looked at me like he wasnt sure that I could figure anything out, be it now or later, and admonished me to the effect that he had told me we would have trouble with the table. Thats alright, I'd rather have hours of trouble with the goddam thing on my own than another moment of trying to keep a straight face with Hood Rat Moving Co. Inc. present. Which leads me to the moral of this cautionary tale: the smoke residue. I spent the evening lysol disinfecting the chairs and table (after I took the thing apart in the foyer and brought it up the stairs in peices, very heavy peices) and scraping off what must have been thirty years of tar and smoke residue off the formica. I went through an entire can of lysol and roll of paper towels doing it. The color of the furniature appeared brown (and sticky...) when I got it, but it turns out its actually a light beige with wood grain! The towels looked like I had been wiping out the inside of a well loved and rarely cleaned outhouse toilet. Those of you who are still smoking, STOP IMMEDIATELY! Think of your furniature! It was amazingly gross. Now they're all really cute though and the chairs are actually quite comfortable. Then I showered (necessary after the disassembled-table-up-the-stairs struggle) and got on the F to Park Slope to go see some Jazz with Mahdis' friend... my new friend I guess! It was pretty seattle-y. But enjoyable. Then we went to Smiling Pizza and ate a spinach roll. It was good. It was open is what it was. Everything is open all the time. You can eat, drink, dance and buy groceries almost all night if the mood strikes. That alone makes New York 10 times cooler than Seattle. What doesnt make NY cooler than seattle is a phenom I've now seen twice and if it gets a third sighting I may be forced to call it a trend: The Cornover. A cornover is a cornrow comb-over. I first saw it on the lower east side after a daytime gin and tonic with a friend (an underage one which meant we were relegated to a smarmy blue moon style tavern that, save the light over the pool table was completely dark and inhabeted by 40yrs+ men and a fat black lady with dreads who didnt stop talking the entire time we were there. Apparantly they dont ID.) In any case we were walking back to her enviably centrally located apartment in the village when I saw the older balck man with the sherman helmsley hairline whose dedication to braids was so intense that he had two (only two!)rows braided from one side to the other over the shiny dome of his head depending only on the length from the sides to make it over the hairless expanse. It was outrageous. And i might have forgotten had i not seen it again while visiting Sarah at columbia and eating at a memorably mediocre restaurant called Toast: where all things are toasted, on like 125th and broadway. this time it was a white guy with the more vampire style M shaped recession and an equal loyalty to the timeless cornrow tradition. So ugly, so so ugly.
Im going to dance class in about 45 mins, my first one since I got here! A little nervous, but I've got to get right back on the horse. Ill let you know how it goes.