pork pie and ersatzlachs on Avenue A

Packed weekend sidewalk filled with thin beautiful young people with Ph.Ds in looking too cool for fuck. The 20-something kid in a pork pie hat walking and talking like an expert, points back to the little candy shop and speaks smugly into his friend's very expensive video camera. "What's an egg cream? Where's the egg? How come they call it an egg cream if there's no egg? I don't know." He acts like his not knowing is the candy store's problem. Not his.

That candy shop on Avenue A was the only thing open at night for twenty, thirty years when A was the dividing line between walking home to Grand Street or being a junkie and/or too poor to move away. Those egg creams were sometimes better than love. Sometimes, they still are.