Wednesday, April 15, 2009

A Tour of East Williamsburg Bizarro Businesses, Episode 3

Oh you know you have been missing this segment of my blog...

So today in America is the day that you have to file your taxes. My parents accountant still does mine, cause I am useless like that. Aaaanyways around New Years this new tax place opened up on Graham:

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Sorry for the far away picture, I didn't want to startle random hipster guy hanging out in front. So its a little weird enough that its a tax place but also a travel agency... I get it, real estate is expensive, let's bundle several businesses into one storefront at once, cause once you find out what your refund is going to be, how about blowing it all on a trip to Atlantic city (Caesar's Express busses leaving daily)? Sounds good to me, though I'm gonna blow my refund on... rent, probably. BUT the real hilarity of this place lies in their promo people who have been stalking the Graham subway station (and Lorimer, it seems, where the below photo was taken), in the following outfit:

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Not like this could ever be a good look for anyone, but it really was sad... there they were, through snow, sleet, and rain in their ugly draped blue velour schmatta (yiddish for "rag," my mom loved using this one to describe the clothes I would wear in high school during the punk rock years) and foam Statue of Liberty hats handing out $50 coupons for your tax preparation. They even had blue tarps to wrap around themselves for when it rained, so basically they ended up looking like crazy homeless people with novelty Statue of Liberty hats. People took note of them for the first week or two, but after that, everyone, including myself, made their best attempt to ignore them and their coupons. I would pull out my phone or look down at my ipod as I exited the train station, hoping that I would not have to make eye contact with the Statue. Please, no, I don't need a coupon, LEAVE ME ALONE!!!!!

Today I snapped a farewell picture of the Statue guy (most of the time it was a woman) as I am hoping April 15th will be the end of his reign haunting my train stop. Goodbye, Liberty tax guy, I don't know what you did to deserve having to stand in the snow in that outfit for three months but I hope that it paid off.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

You nailed it. I'm going to miss Portland's little statue guy as well. We always crossed the street when we saw him but he felt like a bff.
Godspeed, foam headed tax men everywhere. I hope you can afford more schmatta. (umm, best word ever.)

Rachel said...

weird you had one too? amazing.