so I got a new phone

fedex tried to deliver it to my apartment
but I don’t believe they tried very hard
after three tries they decided to keep it at their facility

so I went there to get it

I left directly from work

this was a mistake, on many levels, this was a mistake

I went to the south Bronx, at night, to a warehouse district while being dressed in my work clothing (or as one of the locals said ‘like a social worker’). When I got to the dark, deserted, sketchy neck of the woods where I was supposed to find fedex, I found… nothing… very distressing

while looking around I saw a fedex truck of in the distance, and I followed it. On a back road I found the fedex location and even before stepping into the place I was looking at cars in the parking lot wondering if I could catch a ride out of the Bronx

upon walking in and getting in line, I asked the guy in front of me if he happened to have a car and would be going towards the subway or back to Manhattan. He said he was, and asked where I was headed, named my hood, and he said he lived on the same street as me! He in fact lives on the same block as me! After we got our packages we went out to his car where I meet his son and we than drove away.

So, the least dangerous part of my night was talking to strangers and hitchhiking… the most dangerous part was going to pick up my phone.

now I have my phone
and it’s pretty awesome
I can sync my calendar with my google calendar
and play music and sudoku
and make phone calls
and do text messages
and since that’s what I wanna do with my phone, it’s rather nice to be able to do ti

I should not have gone to the Bronx at night in my work clothes
but it was interesting
in that it taught me to realize, in part, why I’ve been dressing the way I have for years
clothing is armor
and my cargo pants and grungy t-shirts give off a tough vibe
they give the impression – that I’m not the best target to mug
my work clothes give off a different vibe
a vibe that’s appropriate at City College for a staff person to have
but not a vibe appropriate for wandering the South Bronx alone
and in all honesty
it doesn’t matter what I was wearing, I should not have gone to a warehouse district at night in the south Bronx
in fact nighttime warehouse districts visits are probably best avoided in general, unless one is accompanied by a at least one, but preferably many, burly friends