Prostitutes Redux OR Stories from the Recession

I was awoken at 3:00 this morning by a loud fight taking place outside my building. Now, living in midtown Manhattan I do not expect pastoral silence for my slumbers. Pretty regularly, we get boisterous revellers (read: drunken bar-goers) caterwauling their way down the block but this did not sound like the type of noise typical of my neighborhood.

What I heard was what sounded like one woman loudly screaming at someone to "get out of the car!" Along with plenty of cursing and the like.

Much as Father does in the celebrated poem Twas the Night Before Christmas, I sprang from the bed, flew to the window in a flash, tore open the shutters and threw up the sash(fn1) to see what was the matter...

Instead of a miniature sleigh and eight tiny reindeer, however, what appeared to my wondering eye was two African American prostitutes and a drunken white businessman.(fn2) They were having quite the argument in and around an SUV parked directly across the street from my apartment.

How nice.

From what I could gather of the fight, the two hookers must have picked up the john to do their business in the SUV and at some point (impossible to tell when during the proceedings it might have happened) the man refused to pay. This had understandably upset the prostitutes terribly and they were demanding that he get out of the car so they could leave. It was hard to make out what the man was saying, as unlike the ladies he wasn't screaming at the top of his lungs, so I'm not quite sure what his argument was, except perhaps "I'm a drunken idiot who wants to have an argument."

How can I be sure they were prostitutes? Because at one point, after they had apparently drawn the man's ire by asking him loudly, "If you're a millionaire, where is your money? Where are your friends? How come you're walking down the street at night alone??" To which he responded (audibly, for the first time), "I'm going to take down your license plate number!" Whereupon one prostitute replied, displaying admirable logic, "Go ahead! I'm a prostitute! What you gonna do with a license plate number??"(fn3)

There were also a number of asides to the ladies by what I can only assume was one or the other's daughter in the vein of "Let it go, Mom, let's just leave!" Sensible advice but predictably slow to be heeded by prostitutes who would take their daughter with them to turn tricks.(fn4)

At any rate, eventually the prostitutes tired of haranguing the drunken lout and managed to extricate their car enough from his inebriated grasp to peel out and away.

The disheveled, suited man then took a moment to survey the surrounding buildings and, as my head was perched in front of my still mostly-closed blinds, caught sight of me. He looked dead straight at me and then slowly extended to me a middle-finger salute -- a gesture I would have though more appropriate coming from me whom he had awoken. I shook my head slowly and then withdrew for a moment. He began to stagger off down the street and back to bed I went.

It took me an hour to fall asleep again. I wish I'd called the cops (there's a station two blocks away) when I first heard the noise. It would have given me great joy to have had that man thrown in jail, though that probably wouldn't have happened.

So prostitutes again. In my neighborhood again. I was a bit groggy and at a much further distance this time, but I have to say this pair was much less appealing in both appearance and -- most certainly -- demeanor than the one who propositioned me from an SUV some months back.

I can't help but think the increasing prevalence and apparent rising disregard for stealth is somewhat related to desperation brought on by the worsening economic conditions. But maybe I've just been reading too many sob-stories in the Times.

fn1: Well, drew the Venetian blinds, things have changed since Victorian times...

fn2: My sig. other informs me that the man was British. I do not recollect this but, if true, it would lend an additional sad air to the fall of that once great people. She also says there was a significant part of the fight during which one of the women was yelling about being pregnant. I also do not remember that. Ah, how interesting to see how people's recollection of an event can differ! This is why eye-witness testimony is not the gold-standard that you might think it would be and why circumstantial evidence, though it sounds much inferior, can actually be sig. more persuasive.

fn3: This exchange immediately followed an amusing comment by one of the prostitutes to the effect of "I"m a real New Yorker! You must be from Jersey or somewhere!" Ah yes, a status fight between a prostitute and her john. I'm reminded of the tag line from the first (which lamentably was not also the last) Alien vs. Predator movie: "Whoever wins... we lose."

fn4: Perhaps they had confused this with the child-friendly version of "trick-or-treat" or perhaps the daughter was deemed to be of age to start an apprenticeship, who knows.

Jocking my style.

No doubt noticing the explosive growth in my readership numbers, the NY Times Freakonomics blog has decided to crib my prostitution-economics nexus with a post discussing why prostitution is not a Giffen good.

Economics and prostitution, you saw it here first.

The discussion of Giffen goods in the post is quite good, though fairly useless as there has only ever been one found in the wild: rice among desperately poor peasants in China.

The two effects that work together to create a Giffen Good, the substitution effect and the income effect, are very useful indeed, however.

I can still remember the first time I used the income effect to explain an observed behavior. It was way back in college when Miller Lite was in the middle of a particularly fantastic run of advertising. I read an article in the Journal about how Miller was upset because despite this critically acclaimed and v. popular advertising push their product was not selling any better.

Of course, this was during the late 90's tech boom. My conjecture was that Miller Lite is an inferior product(fn1), that is people would prefer to drink some better beer if they can afford it. And in a boom everybody feels like they can afford it so Miller sales stall. And no amount of advertising was likely to change that.

fn1: I feel I should note that I do not personally view Miller Lite as all that inferior in the everyday sense. I prefer it to Bud Light or Coors Light. That said, they are all inferior in that I tend to buy nicer beers. But for certain uses, they are the best. Sports watching, for example, goes well with light beer, not so much with Guinness or Bass.

Ah city life... (updated)

So this morning at about 4:30 my next door neighbor (the apparent prostitute) had a knock-down, drag-out fight with her boyfriend. I'm talking screamed obscenities, thrown stuff, slammed doors, the works.

For like an hour. Then all was quiet for an hour or so and then the fight resumed with all of its original intensity and ended when she stormed out. She came back half an hour or so later banging on the door demanding her phone.

From what I could gather, the fight was about him cheating on her. Why a prostitute would be upset by her boyfriend cheating on her I do not know.(See update below...) I'd also love to know what the intermission in the fight was all about.

Regardless, living next door to people who are regularly up and active during the 4 am. hour during the week is growing very tiresome. Literally.

Happily, we're gone by the end of Nov. come hell or high water. Started looking at rentals yesterday. Saw some possibilities.

Update: So after conversing with my girl and comparing notes, we've decided that the girl who was arguing with her boyfriend was not, in fact, the prostitute. Rather, the boyfriend is apparently holed up at the prostitute's place and this girl found him there and was understandably upset about it. This explains her repeated screams of "what are you even doing here!?!?!?" as well as why she would not have access to the keys to retrieve her phone.

Ah, prostitutes.

What is it with me and prostitutes lately?

So my weekend was slightly weird.

It opened nicely. A friend recently competed on Jeopardy and the show aired Friday night. So a number of us gathered at some friends' house in Brooklyn to watch. He won big, we were all very happy for him.

Then we played poker in the basement (lowest-level, whatever, it's an apt., though a big one). I won. Yay me.

Heading home having had, perhaps, a beer or two too many (let's be honest: perhaps 8 or 10 too many.) I dozed off slightly and missed the transfer from the F to the 6 line to head home. No worries, though, as the F intersects with the E a stop or two later and the E actually goes even closer to my place.

At the E transfer station I missed an E by literal inches and then 10 minutes later it was a C train that trundled through. The C does not head over to the East side. But it was late, I was drunk, so I did what I sometimes do and just took it up to 50th st. on the West side and walked across.

And during my walk, I was propositioned by a prostitute. A huge white SUV ahead of me rolled its window down as I neared and the blonde girl driving leaned over and asked me where I was headed.

"Home."

"Where's home?"

"Nearby."

"Want some company on your way home?"

(Light turns on in my head as I figure out what this is... I was drunk...)
"Oh! No." (Walks purposefully away.)

50th or 51st around Madison. 12:30 at night. When relating this tale to friends, I've heard of similar experiences. Guess they want to tap the i-banker trade but don't want to risk actual streetwalking.

The next day I had a weird conversation (fn1) with my real estate attorney but that's perhaps best saved for another time.

fn1 Non-prostitute related except for the slight overlap of my next-door neighbor being a prostitute. But that fun fact has never actually come up in conversations with my real estate attorney.

Good Fences

Living in a modern apartment complex in a big city usually means knowing little to nothing of the people around you. I have neighbors on both sides of me and all I know of them is tiny little stuff based on hearing their interactions in the hall as they and their guests enter and leave the apartments. And, of course, on the rare sound heard through the walls.

The sound heard through the walls is rare because the walls between apartments in my building are thick. Like slow-witted-cashier thick. Often you can clearly hear somebody's TV turned way up from the hallway but find only blissful silence once ensconced in your own living space.

So what have I learned about my neighbors? Odd things. I'll take the one I think is less interesting first.

The apartment to the East of mine is a large one-bedroom situated on the corner. I know this because I took a surreptitious look around when they left the door open when repairing it between tenants a couple of years ago. The fellow who lives there is a tall guy. He has a large dog (black lab, I think, though I'm terrible with dog-breeds). He has a standing order for two cases of the sports-sized Poland Springs bottled water, which appear outside his door in the early morning once a month.

He went to Ohio State and I think he has a job that allows him to work from home much of the time.

The Ohio State factoid I learned shortly after Georgetown beat UNC Vanderbilt (thanks for the reminder Bill) in the NCAA tournament the year before last. I had watched the game at home with a few friends and when Green sunk the game winning shot as the final seconds ticked off the clock there was an understandably boisterous celebration. Boisterous enough, I suppose, to actually penetrate the sound-suppressing walls that my apartment is blessed with. We later went on to beat UNC which meant we would next face Ohio State in the Final Four. The evening after that win I returned from work to find a note from my neighbor taped to my door congratulating me on Georgetown's win and wishing us luck against Ohio State signed "An Ohio State Alum" with his apt. number given.

The working from home I am hypothesizing based on the fact that he orders food in every night at roughly 6:30. As I get home in the 6-ish range this would imply that he either gets home just before me and immediately orders dinner or that he is just home all day. My rare experience with being home sick or otherwise during the week seems to confirm the home-all-day theory.

So that's my Eastward neighbor.

My Westward neighbor is, I am fairly certain, a prostitute. I'm not sure if she is the same woman who has lived there for the past two to three years or if she is of newer import. (I haven't actually seen her since I began to suspect her working-girl status.) However, she routinely receives many, many visitors in the evening. This alone is perhaps suspicious but not proof of working-girl status. Nor are the many candles she lights which I can see reflected in the windows of the building across the alleyway.

Last Tuesday evening, however, I ran into one of her visitors on the elevator. He was a 40-something guy, who I had never seen before, heading for my floor. Nothing suspicious in that, I haven't seen lots of folk who live on my floor. He was polite, holding the door for me as I was carrying armfuls of stuff. Getting off the elevator, he again held the door for me and followed me out.

He headed with me towards my door. There are three other doors in that direction: my Ohio State friend, the supposed-prostitute and a currently empty apartment. Getting close to my door, he was looking at the numbers and asked me if the prostitute's door was F. I acknowledged it was and bid him "have a good night" as I was just finishing opening my door and stepping inside. His reply "I'm working on it" drew my notice to the fact that he was carrying a bottle of wine in the bag from the wine store around the corner. Given that he was a 40-ish guy and she is (based on late-night comings and goings and the timber of her female friends voices) a 20-something, it seemed odd that they would be meeting up for a date. It seemed even odder when that date ended somewhat less than an hour later and he went on his merry way.

And that, dear friend, is why I am firmly convinced that my next-door neighbor is a prostitute.