Today’s soundtrack: the things that I used to do
Today at 12:02pm: the six-train is my reading room



On foot, and I hit the intersection at a strange moment.

A taxi is reversing down Mulberry. A Chevrolet is pulling some kind of crazy U-turn on Broome. I stop short on the curb to avoid getting hit by the hack and I’m too tired to curse.

The two cars have colluded to block in a third, a large white SUV with tinted windows that is now stuck in the middle of the intersection. A police cruiser brings up the rear, closing the box on three sides. The truck is pinned in.

The taxi’s front doors open, and a burly Chinese cat wearing a grey hoodie and jeans gets out of the driver’s seat. With his hand on a large silver automatic strapped to his hip, next to a pair of dangling handcuffs. I thought NYPD standard issue was Glocks, I guess the DT’s get to pick their own shit out.

His partner gets out of the other side of the taxi, covering the SUV on the passenger side.

The Chinese cop keeps his hand on his gun, eyeballs the SUV driver, then yells to the cop blocking him in from the back.

“I thought it was ‘black male,’” he yells. (The SUV driver, visibly nervous, is white.)

“It is ‘black male,’” the other cop yells back. “‘Black male, white SUV.’”

“White male, white SUV,” says the Chinese cop, indicating the SUV driver in a we’re-wasting-everybody’s-time tone of voice.

Yellow cop, yellow cab, I’m tempted to point and add, but clearly I am the only one who will find this funny. Plus it’s only medium funny and if I’m gonna get shot for making a joke I want it to be really funny.

“Wrong truck,” yells the other cop. He gets out of the cruiser, approaches the SUV driver and apologizes to him. The Chinese cop shakes his head as he and his partner get back in the taxi. In a moment all four cars disperse.