The students headed off to the conference. Lawrence and the men were planning on visiting a camera store so I opted to be passed off to my new roommate and tour guide, Gila. Gila, a New York expert, and some other mothers were planning on purse shopping in Chinatown, and despite my lack of interest in that I tagged along. I was sure glad that I did.
There were seven women and one student in our bunch. The eighth grader with us was not part of the UN, but was going to Russia so she and her mother had come early to New York to join the rest of the international group. Gila and two of the other ladies were apparently not newbies when it came to shopping down Canal Street. First we went into the subway to catch a train into Chinatown. Right from the start Gila led us downstairs and had us walking across the yellow line through the throngs of people to get to where we needed to be. I kept telling her that I had been instructed and warned about this type of activity, but she laughed all of that off and got us on the correct train.
From the subway it was a short walk to Canal Street, the main strip of Chinatown for shopping. I had no idea what to expect and started off very naive just following the women and soaking in the atmosphere. It was not as crowded as I expected.
Both sides of the street had little, narrow, long areas considered "shops" that stood side by side with one end open as the entrance. Each shop was full of tourist stuff like jewelry, clothes, hats, purses, belts, etc. There were also little vendor carts outside these areas up and down the street selling specialized items such as scarves. I thought we were going to be going in and out of these stores and vendors, but that turned out not to be the case. Instead we hooked up with one of the many women that stood around outside these shops whispering, "Coach? Gucci? Chanel?"
I had no idea what to expect when I started out the day with these women. I do not own a designer purse. I would rather not have to carry a purse, but can't unfortunately fit all my stuff into my pocket. I went along for the experience, not knowing what that experience would be. I was totally clueless when this woman began whispering designer names to us, but two of the women were experts apparently because they stopped next to the woman and spoke, out of the sides of their mouths, "Louis Vuitton?"
The woman, a little thing around my age or older, was dressed in a wool coat, black pants, and sturdy, black walking shoes. She carried a designer bag herself and once we stopped and asked the magic question she turned into this operative on a black ops mission. She looked around and motioned for us to follow her down the street. We lined up like little ducks and waddled off after her matching her quick stride. We went down the street, crossed to another street, and suddenly she stopped and put her back up against a brick wall. We stopped too and she shook her head wildly. "You keep going. Down street." We did what she told us, walking down the street to the corner where a young man waited for us. He too was dressed in black from head to toe and he carried a phone in one hand and a walkie talkie in another hand. He asked us, "Louis Vuitton?" and when we agreed that we were Louis' biggest buyers he motioned with the walkie talkie for us to go around the corner. We turned the corner and HOLY SHIT there was our little woman standing waiting for us. It was as if she walked through the brick wall. She was now carrying a cell phone too and she motioned for us to continue following her.
This went on for quite some time with us following her, crossing streets, stopping, going past her to hook up with another woman or the young man, turning corners to find her once again. As we walked we noticed that we were no longer anywhere where there were people or where we knew where we were. That's about the time I realized we were doing something that might not be legal. I was horrified...for about two seconds, and then I got caught up in the operation. Eventually we hooked back up with the young man who led us to a building. Outside the building were two men in black standing on either side of the entrance. They asked us the magic question once again and we answered correctly because one opened the door and rushed us inside.
It took awhile for my eyes to adjust to the darker inside. All the walls were covered in colorful draping of some sort and incense was burning. We followed the young man down a hallway. There were entrances into what looked like massage rooms, some full, some empty. The empty rooms had women sitting outside the entrance in chairs reading or playing with their phones. About every five feet or so were more black clad men standing with their backs against the walls surveying us. I began to get a little nervous and tried to recall all of the television shows I watch that might give me insight into handling what might turn out to be a nasty situation. Nothing came to mind until the young girl with us began freaking out saying she saw this once on an episode of Elementary and why were we doing this? Then all of the horrors I watch on television came rushing into my head.
We got to the end of the hallway, turned right, walked down another hallway and came to a door, a wooden one that was closed. Again, two men stood at attention on either side of the door with walkie talkies. They opened the door and I relaxed as they shoved us into the room. It was a small room with the walls draped and then covered from ceiling to floor with purses, purses, purses. What relaxed me were the other women in the room, women like us, trying to score deals on purses. Our group broke up, as much as we could in the tiny room, into all four corners of the room to look at purses. I was the only one standing in the middle of the room wondering what the hell was so exciting about all of these purses, but intrigued now by the whole operation.
We spent only a few minutes in the room. The teen's mother tried to buy a Coach backpack but couldn't agree with the man in charge on a price. He wanted $65. She wanted to pay less. He scoffed, took the bag out of her hand, hung it back up, and quickly opened the door to usher us outside into the hallway. It happened so quickly we barely had time to blink. Once in the hallway one of the guards pointed us down the hall to a door that led to the outside. "Wait there," he said and we did. I didn't panic as I had my Iphone and these ladies, but we waited longer than we thought we would have to before the young man appeared and started us walking again down the street. We followed him and he handed us off to another young man who took us down another street to meet up with our first older woman. She in turn got us back on a busy street and handed us off to a young girl with long hair. This girl asked us the magic question and then pulled out a sheet of glossy paper with ten rows of different colored purses on either side.
"Oh, a catalog!" the teen's mother exclaimed, getting laughs from all the women and eye rolling from her daughter. The women perused the "catalog", and when one pointed out a purse that she liked, the young girl folded up the "catalog" and put it into her boot. She then crooked her finger and off we went down the street following her. We stopped at the corner where a blue van was parked and the young girl took out her phone and spoke into it. We waited less than two minutes and then the first young man we had met awhile back strode past us, dropping off a canvas bag into the hands of our young girl. She put her back against the van, opened the bag, and pulled out the purse from the "catalog". Price haggling was done and when the purse was rejected by our group out came the paper again and we did it all over again, walking to another van on another corner. When that purse was rejected we turned to leave and found our original black op, the older woman, waiting for us. She asked us if we wanted jewelry and when one of the ladies in our group expressed interest she began her questioning again. "Chanel? Coach? Gucci?" My friend said Coach and the woman beckoned to another lady standing against the wall. That woman was dressed in a long coat and she sauntered up to us and asked the magic question, the answer being "Coach", and when she got that she pulled up the sleeves of her coat to reveal bracelets of all sorts of shapes and colors.
We were watching my friend try on bracelets when all of a sudden the woman took the bracelet out of her hand and POOF disappeared. We turned our heads around and all of the ops were gone. It was as if the ground had opened up and sucked them all in and then closed back up. Down the street came a police patrol car driving slow enough to earn smiles from school crossing guards. When the car had driven past and around the corner suddenly the ground opened up and all of our black ops were back once again offering us more stuff.
It was all great fun and eventually our group split up agreeing to meet in an hour at a pizza place several blocks away. I stayed in Chinatown with my New York friend, the teen, and her mother. They wandered the shops and the vendors while I watched the other activity on the street. I was fascinated at what a well rounded operation it all was with the girls and ladies in their long coats checking out marks and then hooking those marks up with the men who leaned against walls and stood on corners with their phones and walkie talkies. We all wanted to do it all over again, but when we got hooked up again with another lady the teenage began whining. It was all too much for her so we backed off, left Chinatown, took a cab, and met up at the pizza place with the rest of the group.
We ate and then walked around the city some more until we reached our hotel. We had a drink at the bar and then everyone loaded on the bus to pick up the kids from their conference. Those of us that weren't leaving the city got off the bus, picked up our kids, waved at those on the bus and watched as they drove off to the airport heading either back to Florida or on to Russia.
Darcy and I were now in the hands of Gila and her daughter Ariel. We went back to our room at the hotel and the girls changed. We met up with another mother, Linda, and her two children, Sophia and Josh, who were also staying another day. Gila was in charge having lived in NYC for awhile. She took us on the sub to the Brooklyn Bridge.
And made us walk up the bridge so that we could see the view from the top as the sun set. It was the hardest walk that I made the entire time I was in New York. I was huffing and puffing as joggers passed by me, but I have to say that the view was spectacular.
We spent quite a bit of time taking pictures and admiring the view and just talking. The girls were excited to be doing something beside the conference so they were all over the bridge. We stayed for quite some time and then Gila walked us back down and we hiked to an Israeli restaurant for dinner.
The food was delicious! The restaurant, Hummus Place, was lively with tons of people. We ordered a variety of dishes that we shared and the adults ordered a pitcher of sangria to go with the food. We left nothing behind in food or drink. It was the best meal I ate in NY and I could have ordered another round of everything. Instead we left and went to another restaurant that served nothing but chocolate. The kids ordered shots of chocolate and chocolate pizza. The adults had coffee and nibbled on the pizzas.
By the time we got back to the hotel it was almost midnight. We showered, talked until the wee hours of morning, and slept.
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