It’s been said that everything in the world exists at least once in New York City. And as any resourceful New Yorker knows, those looking for the world will find it on Craigslist. So after an extremely dispiriting first day in the city, during which I scoured bike shops from the Upper West to the Lower East and found nothing decent for less than $600, I knew what to do. Within hours, a sketchball from New Jersey showed up at my door with a perfectly functional twelve-gear drop-bar black Raleigh and sold it to me for $200 cash. He told me I was pretty and threw a padlock into the deal. That’s it, I thought. I’m never doing any other kind of shopping.
What else is on Craigslist? Well, this week, a posting for a missing Siberian Husky, a job offer directed at Laundromat attendants, an ad for a $25 poker table and a Joana Leunis Latin Dance DVD, someone willing to trade an Australian lobster farm for property in Florida, someone else seeking Goth models, a man interested in meeting lactating women, and 40 million other titillating propositions.
And last week, the following:
Hep you help me
Life has been nothing but surviving the big city - 10 hours a day 9-to-5 job and Chinese takeouts.
It is good, but certainly nothing I would have said, "this is what I want to be when I grow up" when I was 10.
So, here I am, trying to see if there is anything I can do for this world.
I don't have special skills or much time, but I'd like to see if there is anything I can help - one good deed a week.
Please drop me a note if you have anything needed a hand. I will do my best if I can help.
I'd like to be part of the solutio and hope this will also make a difference to my own life.
Location: manhattan
it's NOT ok to contact this poster with services or other commercial interests
I liked the unaffectedness of the language and the whimsy and optimism of the writer. So I invited myself to dinner. “Call me when you get out of there,” ordered my sister. “They caught the latest Craigslist killer, but who knows?”
