A.D.Z. in the L.E.S. – Part three

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More rain this morning. Whoever said I'd brought the weather with me was right (it must be shit again in England by now). Cooked a Ruby Murray (Chicken-Bicken recipe in the London chapter of The Urban Cook Book) last night for my English mates who live here and now I'm feeling the after-effects, so all good in the hood!

Forget mickey mouse watches, the only thing I buy today is a $10 umbrella. As I dodge the wet I spot a familiar-looking rat running across an old drinking fountain on my way to have lunch with veteran skater Rodney Smith (Zoo York/Shut). After checking out his killer store (158 Orchard Street) he takes me to an equally killer Chinese restaurant called Congee Village. Rodney is an old friend and I was honoured to have him as one of the original talents in the aforementioned book. Major respect to the pioneers - always. We chill and chat about skate shoes, skate brands and skaters, whilst chowing down on hot and sour soup, snow pea leaf with garlic and beef fried rice. Best Chinese I've eaten in NY. Ever.

More rain on the way back and I leave Rodney to shoot something for Fuel TV. I schlep along Bowery to interview Rob from A-Life for the new book. On the way back home, still raining, I pass a grubby FuBu-clad Bergie taking a shit in the rain between two parked cars. A scared looking middle-American couple are sitting in one of the cars, waiting to back out of the parking space. The wife gets out of the car to see what the person (who turns out to be a woman) is doing behind the car and when she clocks the act in progress she backs away: a pure New York horrorshow moment. I do not even think about getting my camera out and just keep walking, not really believing this shit (literally). Maybe I wasn't the only person to have a curry last night?

Round the corner, a big gust of wind totally rips my fancy-schmansy umbrella apart - the spokes end up sticking out like fish bones and I have to dump it in a bin and look for a cab. When it is raining in NY you can never get a cab. Fact - ask any local. I squelch home and dry myself off and begin to type these words up, hoping for a brighter day tomorrow. And not just the weather.

Still on GMT (that's my excuse and I'm sticking to it) so I grab a power-nap and when I wake it's still raining (a motif is emerging). No-one wants to treverse too far and so I go downstairs with my English crew of reprobates and eat in Jule's Jazz, which our apartment is directly above. Now I might be provoking some kind of debate here, but I'm not really a fan of Jazz. Sorry, that's an understatement. I fucking hate it. It has been said that Jazz is the last refuge of the talentless and after an evening meal sat slap-bang in front of some free-form jazz trio, I can faithfully say that this statement is correct. By now it's about 2.30 my time and I'm starving and begin to let my guard down a bit. People start to dance to the syncopated rhythms and, for the second time today, I can't believe this shit. I eat my steak frites (I forgot to say it's a French Jazz establishment), drink my tap water and bide my time. At least I don't have far to go to get to my bed.

Night night...

King Adz is HUCK’s roaming street culture reporter and the author of The Urban Cookbook: Creative Recipes for the Graffiti Generation.

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A.D.Z. in the L.E.S. – Part three (text) by King Adz is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.