I had the best introduction to New York working for the US Government in the Census. My boss is Reggie, titled in my phone as Reginald Rap Star, AKA Barshem. "Do you know what it's like to be number 1 in Canada? I can't even walk the streets without gettin' mobbed!" Check out his number one hit titled "Thug Rain". He also thinks I should be a hand model, he knows people you know. Favorite moments with Reggie include him tossing several hundred dolla bills on the diner table and then whispering to me he never leaves home without a thousand bones in his wallet. And when a child accidentally called his phone and he had a three minute conversation "Are you a little baby? Why you calling me little baby?"
Reggie was promoted to a different position, meet the new super, Siobahn Meow. A man who underwent a sex change, is obsessed with cats and frequented the Howard Stern Show. Siobahn's answering machine finishes with her purring into your ear. She takes her job way too seriously, which she was chastised for after her enumerators called the Census office repeatedly to complain. She gets the numbers in though.
Honorable mentions include Paul, a Russian Jew, who is living off the royalties of dvd sales. He created a how to dance video which gives you club moves. Madeleine Rowan held the record for the youngest chica in the poker world series for a quite some time. Her wikipedia entry has recently been deleted. Gay Ky Liu, who goes by Gary and also by Liu BUT NOT BY GARY LIU, keeps his fingernails long for fun and enjoys reading the Census Handbook in his free time.
My enumerators included: Vanyoska Gee, a film producer, dog lover and major talker; Gilda Konrad, a comedian who I'm pretty sure purposefully places red lipstick on her teeth, also a talker; Sally Tan who starts each sentence to me with "Hi, Chelsea" regardless of how long we have been talking and whose personality bears an uncanny resemblance to Ms. Swan from Mad TV.
In addition to the wonderful people I have mentioned and who I have sincerely grown to love (besides Siobahn), I have sat on the couches of many apartments in Alphabet City. I admired the book shelves of the man who organized by color, longed to be the hippie beauty in her light splayed studio and shared tea with the gay paraplegic who decorated his modern place with hundreds of images of Audrey Hepburn.
These streets will inspire you...
