These guys take orders from the dude on your five-dollar bill.

Today’s soundtrack:
I would surely
surely lose a lot
Today at 5:12pm: trying to stay away from sneezy people on the subway

In midtown I come across an ATM vestibule stuffed with suburban kids in high school band uniforms, trying to get out of the cold. The St. Patrick’s Day Parade brought a grip of unfamiliar types into my daily path, from Team Band to the Irish (Eye-rrrrish) tourist with the thick brogue standing on line* at Citibank.

* (Here’s a question for you: Everyone I know says “standing on line,” “waiting on line.” But a friend of mine claims that everyone outside of New York says “standing in line,” which in all my time in other places I have never confirmed to be true. Is it? Anyone?)

But the strangest group I saw hanging out in front of the bank was a large posse of white men dressed in full Civil War regalia, right down to their wool shoulder shawls, leather pouches and handmade boots. All of them had musket rifles tipped with bayonets. Apparently the rifles get heavy, because when these fellas are on break (from whatever the hell it was they were doing), as I saw them, they form their rifles into teepees to avoid carrying them.

Is that an actual Civil War practice, to stand your rifle up and lean it against two other rifles? Seems like a bad idea to me. I mean you don’t see S.W.A.T. doing that. I can picture all of the muskets falling over, then there’s a loud retort, then three people get shot in the foot with a steel ball the size of Ron Jeremy’s testicle.

So anyways I’m standing in front of the bank, wondering how best to ask these guys to restage Antietam, when suddenly a thought occurs to me:

“White privilege” is typically associated with big things like living in desirable neighborhoods, or the ability to become the President of something, anything. It’s typically not associated with marching around midtown Manhattan dressed up like Larry Storch from F-Troop, but strangely enough, this is a form of white privilege too. I mean they are never going to let, say, a thirty-deep grip of black men stand in front of a bank, in disguise, with bayonet-tipped rifles, holiday or not. Something stinks in midtown.

Anyways, I’m sure that’s the last thing on the minds of these guys standing in front of the Chase in their 1800s army wear. But strange as it sounds, they’re lucky in probably more ways than they know.



*Update: Thanks to everyone who responded on the “in line” vs. “on line” thing. I say “on line,” and provincial as I am I’d never heard anyone say “in line” except to refer to skates.

After the first three people wrote that they say “in line” I was going to call them barbarians, but now I see that most of the country, and apparently Australia and England, says it that way. And since they invented the language in England I’m guessing that’s the right way to say it. Which is interesting. Or should I say onteresting.

So, I am the barbarian.

I also do not say “go to bed,” I say “go on bed.”

Okay that last part was a lie.