I just got back from New York. It’s the first time I visited the city in ten years.

The energy astounds me. New York knows how to put me in my place and make me feel tiny. All of my flaws can be on display – like their garbage, on the street – and no one cares or even seems to notice. I spent half a day in Little Italy wearing these:

It was the best $6 ever spent.

No one said a thing, except one hustler, who called me Hollywood.

The search for fake fendis

Fake fendi…or it is real?

Did I mention I have a crazy family? Because I do. I have a mom, sister, and male cousin who decided part of the New York experience was being led down a hidden corridor and into a room lined with counterfit handbags and filled with teenagers dressed in “I Love New York” tee-shirts.

“Purses, watches,” a squat, middle-aged Chinese man says. My cousin looks at him cooly, smoking a cigarette.

“Ok, where are they?” he asks.

The man shows a make-shift catalog and says if we buy one, he’ll pull up with the bags.

This won’t do for us. We’re native Chicagoans and not naive. Continue reading →