Dirty Water Dogs
Posted by beehive on 29 Apr 2008 at 09:31 am | Tagged as: Uncategorized
After coming out of the Whitney on Saturday my friend and I decided that dirty water hot dogs from the guy on the street - cooked in the same water all day long - was what we should grab to eat.
What happened during the next three minutes was one of those New York moments that could only happen in New York.
“Four hot dogs please.” (Yes, I said please - I try and be polite always)
“Yeah, four hot dogs.” My friend said.
“Eight hot dogs! Oh boy! You two are going to each eat four hot dogs!?!” The hot dog vendor said shockingly. As if he wasn’t going to dare allow us to each eat four hot dogs for safety concerns.
“Yes”
“Yes?”
“Okay eight dogs coming up.”
“Actually just two each for four total.”
“Sure thing. No problem. You want anything on them?”
“Ketchup on two, and radish on the other two.”
“Sure thing.”
“Oh my God, you need to look to your right immediately!!!” I said to my friend.
“Oh my…”
The hot dog guy looked too, as out of the blue a guy was walking with his wife/girlfriend/whatever. They were both well dressed and sane looking, and yet the guy had his head wrapped up, like, seriously, completely wrapped around with two different types of bandages as if he was walking around a VA Hospital on the set of a Vietnam epic war movie. It was awesome, and he totally didn’t appreciate my pointing his “look / style” out to anyone.
“Oh my God, that was awesome!”
”Hey, I want a drink too.”
“What are you thinking?”
“A can of Nestea.”
“You two want something to drink?”
“Yeah, a Nestea and a Sprite, please.”
The hot dog guy reached in and pulled out a can of Nestea from his ice box. On it the three of us could all visibly see something that shouldn’t be there. None of us were sure what it was, and the hot dog guy was going to do his darn best to get that strange thing unstuck from the mouth area of the can.
The hot dog guy got in real close to the mouth of the can and blew as hard as he could. He then repeated this twice more without succeeding as we watched his spiddle fly out of his mouth hoping that he wasn’t going to actually give us the nasty spiddle can of Nestea.
“Hey, can I have a straw too?” My friend asked before hot dog guy was able to finish his public arts project titled, “Skeeving Out The Customer”.
“Straw? Yes.”
The hot dog guy seemed genuinely offended by someone not wanting to put their mouth on his spiddle to drink some tea. He finally blew the thingy off, and then realized that he really shouldn’t have done that, and that he wasn’t in his backyard in the middle of New Jersey able to be going “HAAAAAAA” on all of the hot dogs or cans of beverage and getting away with it.
“Oh…ummm…here you go. You get a different can.”
“What do I owe you?”
“Let’s see. Four hot dogs, a can of Nestea, and a bottle of Sprite. Uhhhh, 8 bucks.”
I handed the guy a $20 bill and as the guy handed me back $12 he said, “It’s actually uhhh $8.50, but whatever.”
So, in closing, I’ve learned that either flirting with a street vendor or having him do gross things to products in front of you is the way to the better deal. Which one did the trick…?
The street hot dog vendor is often a highlight part of the visit for the bands that I meet from the european countries when they come over here to perform. They just love the whole idea of it which makes me think there is money to be made by selling them over where they come from.