Bumming Around
By Michael Domino
By Michael Domino
use for bumming around, such as “sightseeing,” “tourism,” “window
shopping,” “taking a long walk,” or wandering around. I prefer "bumming
around."
It's fun to bum around with a friend, but I usually bum around alone. Bumming
around, for a writer, is a good thing because you just never know what you'll
see, or where you'll go or, who you might meet. Normally, I don't think about
writing while I'm bumming around, but the next day I oftentimes realize that I
had an experience worth writing about as the sights, sounds, and smells gel
in my imagination.
Yesterday, I was bumming around Manhattan with my friend Jeff. Jeff and I
have bummed before and he makes a good bumming around partner. We
decided along the way that we would go to a hip new museum that recently
opened up on the Bowery near the Lower East Side. When Jeff and I were
kids, there were no museums or restaurants or trendy coffee shops on the
Bowery. The Bowery was a dangerous and nasty place filled with Bowery
Bums, used restaurant supply warehouses, and cheap hotels with prostitutes
and drug addicts hanging out in doorways. The Bowery was a place to be
avoided for fear of your life and not visited for fun and sight-seeing.
The New Museum is a cool looking building with its floors arranged like
uneven, stacked bricks five floor up and the only marking on the windowless
structure is a rainbow lighted sign saying "Hell Yes."
The exhibits were strange and hard to figure out, but we studied them the
best we could and sometimes Jeff came up with a possible meaning behind
the odd arrangement of materials. Other times I saw some significance, and
we usually agreed that each other might be correct or sort of correct.
We left the New Museum, and Jeff told me that an old single-occupancy hotel
had recently been converted to an upscale place on the Bowery. I tried hard
to imagine a place like this existing in the old Bowery, but my mind was still full
of memories of when I was 12, bums coming up to my father’s car to squeegee
the windshield, toothless and drooling and muttering. We kept our windows
shut and door locked.
They did a good job fixing up the Bowery Hotel, and its warm wooden first
floor was filled with European tourists that were looking around trying to
figure out what to do next. There was a great roaring fireplace in the lobby
and soothing paintings of country scenes on the wall. I looked around for old
vintage black and whites of the Bowery of old, but saw none.
As we walked through the old hotel, I, unlike the tourists could hear echoes of
Bowery Bums arguing drunkenly and puking in the hallways. I could see
ghosts stumbling through the lobby, filthy and dirty, with the haze of
alcoholism hovering over their prematurely aged and beat up tattooed and
scarred bodies; faces with bloodshot eyes and sores and bruises. With the
voices in that place, I was certain that I would never get a restful night in the
Bowery Hotel.
Jeff and I both agreed that this was a good stop along our bumming around
day in Manhattan.
Just outside the hotel, and to the south, was a real single-occupancy hotel
with four bums standing in front of it. They were drinking from paper cups, and
I doubted that it was coffee as they swayed back and forth on rubbery legs,
unfocused gazes looking out to nowhere.
I said, "Jeff, look! Real bums on the Bowery." "Yeah", he said, “right next to
the renovated Bowery Hotel with all the Euro tourists." He chuckled.
"Maybe they’re actors. Maybe the biggest attraction on the Bowery is the
bums and soon they'll all be gone. If they are, in fact, real Bowery Bums they
might even be considered celebrities, one day,” I said. He laughed in odd
agreement.
"Maybe we should ask them for their autographs, no kidding," I ventured. We
discussed the probability from a business perspective that once all the real
Bowery Bums were gone through gentrification of the neighborhood, actors
might be employed to play the role of Bowery Bums, in costume, sort of like
Disney characters in Disneyland. We took that concept one step further and
imagined Pimp and Hooker characters walking around Times Square to give
the tourist a sense of what Times Square was like before it got too got
cleaned up, before the Disney Store and Hershey Bar Store, and before the
main attractions were neon signs and colossal underwear advertisements.
Jeff and I passed the real Bowery Bums without getting their autographs as
we continued strolling south, passing stores selling used meat slicers,
stainless steel ovens, and commercial pots and pans.
We decided that this was a good way to walk because down there and over
that way might be something else to see.
(Any references to Homeless people as "Bums" are purely for literary
intent and to take the reader back to a time and place when people with
a variety of social and health problems we merely referred to as Bums)
shopping,” “taking a long walk,” or wandering around. I prefer "bumming
around."
It's fun to bum around with a friend, but I usually bum around alone. Bumming
around, for a writer, is a good thing because you just never know what you'll
see, or where you'll go or, who you might meet. Normally, I don't think about
writing while I'm bumming around, but the next day I oftentimes realize that I
had an experience worth writing about as the sights, sounds, and smells gel
in my imagination.
Yesterday, I was bumming around Manhattan with my friend Jeff. Jeff and I
have bummed before and he makes a good bumming around partner. We
decided along the way that we would go to a hip new museum that recently
opened up on the Bowery near the Lower East Side. When Jeff and I were
kids, there were no museums or restaurants or trendy coffee shops on the
Bowery. The Bowery was a dangerous and nasty place filled with Bowery
Bums, used restaurant supply warehouses, and cheap hotels with prostitutes
and drug addicts hanging out in doorways. The Bowery was a place to be
avoided for fear of your life and not visited for fun and sight-seeing.
The New Museum is a cool looking building with its floors arranged like
uneven, stacked bricks five floor up and the only marking on the windowless
structure is a rainbow lighted sign saying "Hell Yes."
The exhibits were strange and hard to figure out, but we studied them the
best we could and sometimes Jeff came up with a possible meaning behind
the odd arrangement of materials. Other times I saw some significance, and
we usually agreed that each other might be correct or sort of correct.
We left the New Museum, and Jeff told me that an old single-occupancy hotel
had recently been converted to an upscale place on the Bowery. I tried hard
to imagine a place like this existing in the old Bowery, but my mind was still full
of memories of when I was 12, bums coming up to my father’s car to squeegee
the windshield, toothless and drooling and muttering. We kept our windows
shut and door locked.
They did a good job fixing up the Bowery Hotel, and its warm wooden first
floor was filled with European tourists that were looking around trying to
figure out what to do next. There was a great roaring fireplace in the lobby
and soothing paintings of country scenes on the wall. I looked around for old
vintage black and whites of the Bowery of old, but saw none.
As we walked through the old hotel, I, unlike the tourists could hear echoes of
Bowery Bums arguing drunkenly and puking in the hallways. I could see
ghosts stumbling through the lobby, filthy and dirty, with the haze of
alcoholism hovering over their prematurely aged and beat up tattooed and
scarred bodies; faces with bloodshot eyes and sores and bruises. With the
voices in that place, I was certain that I would never get a restful night in the
Bowery Hotel.
Jeff and I both agreed that this was a good stop along our bumming around
day in Manhattan.
Just outside the hotel, and to the south, was a real single-occupancy hotel
with four bums standing in front of it. They were drinking from paper cups, and
I doubted that it was coffee as they swayed back and forth on rubbery legs,
unfocused gazes looking out to nowhere.
I said, "Jeff, look! Real bums on the Bowery." "Yeah", he said, “right next to
the renovated Bowery Hotel with all the Euro tourists." He chuckled.
"Maybe they’re actors. Maybe the biggest attraction on the Bowery is the
bums and soon they'll all be gone. If they are, in fact, real Bowery Bums they
might even be considered celebrities, one day,” I said. He laughed in odd
agreement.
"Maybe we should ask them for their autographs, no kidding," I ventured. We
discussed the probability from a business perspective that once all the real
Bowery Bums were gone through gentrification of the neighborhood, actors
might be employed to play the role of Bowery Bums, in costume, sort of like
Disney characters in Disneyland. We took that concept one step further and
imagined Pimp and Hooker characters walking around Times Square to give
the tourist a sense of what Times Square was like before it got too got
cleaned up, before the Disney Store and Hershey Bar Store, and before the
main attractions were neon signs and colossal underwear advertisements.
Jeff and I passed the real Bowery Bums without getting their autographs as
we continued strolling south, passing stores selling used meat slicers,
stainless steel ovens, and commercial pots and pans.
We decided that this was a good way to walk because down there and over
that way might be something else to see.
(Any references to Homeless people as "Bums" are purely for literary
intent and to take the reader back to a time and place when people with
a variety of social and health problems we merely referred to as Bums)
© 2007 by Michael Domino
The Bowery
New York
Jan 19 2008
New York
Jan 19 2008
I enjoy bumming around.
The island of Manhattan is
one of my favorite places to
bum around, but I can bum
around just about anywhere,
anytime.
The great thing about
bumming around is that you
don't need a thing but your
body, the clothes on your
back, and a comfortable pair
of shoes or sneakers. I
sometimes take a pocket-
sized camera with me along
with a notepad and pen
when I bum around.
There many softer-edged
expressions which people
The island of Manhattan is
one of my favorite places to
bum around, but I can bum
around just about anywhere,
anytime.
The great thing about
bumming around is that you
don't need a thing but your
body, the clothes on your
back, and a comfortable pair
of shoes or sneakers. I
sometimes take a pocket-
sized camera with me along
with a notepad and pen
when I bum around.
There many softer-edged
expressions which people
Denis Proulx / Shangri-La Studio