Hey, There's a Tourist...
Shortly before my moving to NYC, my friend M. a native New Yorker residing in Brooklyn gave me a few surviving tips including this one, if I didn't want to be mistaken for an annoying newcomer:M. says: "If you want to have coffee, you go to a nearby corner deli. Go straight to the counter, and say: 'Coffee, with milk, no sugar.' No need to say hello, don't say thanks, just hand your dollar bill and leave. Don't try to be polite, don't say: hello, I'd like a cup of coffee please, with a bit of milk, I won't take sugar, thank you... There are thousands of people waiting behind you. Just take your cup and MOVE. Understand??"
Me: "uh..huh..."
And so I did, on my first encounter with the deli guy behind the counter selling his morning coffee on Amsterdam and 116th. (Thank you Hamilton Deli for your long-term service.) The only difference was that the deli guy asked me whether I wanted small, medium or large... I therefore had to enter into a deep consideration as to the appropriate size of the coffee cup. I was freshfly arriving from a country where coffee cups are as small as a teaspoon and coffee as bitter as a bad cough medicine.... What the....!!
Another coffee ordering experience, this time in Palm Beach Gardens, FL, where I was visiting my friend Ruth, a true Southerner who moved to Florida a decade ago. There we go to a Dunkin' Donuts' store along the highway, temperature as high as 100F (i.e., about 40 C), my friend all jolly and with impeccable make-up on, and me, disgustingly looking and dying of heat... I wanted my coffee, immediately. There she was, behind the counter, a nice-looking Dunkin' Donuts' salesperson smiling and saying: "How are you today???" My friend Ruth replies: "Ohhh well, than' you dear , oohh so hot' outside, 'tis ever gonna stop, my back is hurtin' ..." The coffee lady (smiling and showing her beautifully white teeth): "Sorry to hear that ma'am, I can't stand the heat either. So what can I do for ya today???" (Me: What the .... can we please stop the chit chat, just order the %%#@# coffee and leave??!!) .
The French touch: My first NY deli experience and the Florida moment reminded me of a hilarious book I've recently read (which I highly recommend for those of you wanting a truthful description of the French) written by an Englishman in Paris: A Year in the Merde,* Stephen Clarke. The narrator, a young British guy in Paris goes to a cafe and orders a cafe latte. He asks for a "cafe au lait" but he's being served a huge cup of coffee of what he calls a "combined annual production of Colombia's coffee fields and the dairy herds of Normandy," with, of course, a check proportionate to the humongous size of the drink he got. A rip-off for tourists. A true Parisian would have ordered a "creme." Not a cafe au lait.
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* Footnote: For those of you not francophiles, Merde means shit, poop but also is a popular French swear-word (e.g., if you want to sound like a native French, just say Merde in each sentence.)
Labels: Self derision, Simply coffee
posted by The Little Prince's alter ego @ 1:26 AM
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