From the Archives, first published in July, 2008:
You might need to be a guide or historian to find this as funny as I do, but I’ll do my best to set it up. Many of the employees who work the concessions at the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island ride out on the early ferries along with the tourists who get treated to colorful conversations. This one morning in June, the discussion touched on a fellow employee, “the black girl who be hatin’ the Dominicans,” the size of the black men’s privates, (“I be runnin away when they pull THAT out!”), the need for one of the gay employees to be a “good gay employee and not a ghetto gay” (“He be jealous if you don’t talk to him ALL DAY!”), and then it moved to a man called Bartholdi.
The sculptor of the Statue of Liberty was Frederic Auguste Bartholdi who died in 1904. This season, there were actors playing Bartholdi out at the statue, approaching me during my brief reprieve while my tourists shopped and took pictures, asking, “Have you seen my lady?” I would mumble, “Thanks, I’m good. Not a tourist. Just trying to read.” Sometimes that would work. Oft not.
Anyway, back on the boat:
Employee 1: Man, I’m gonna *&#!! him up!
Employee 2: Who?
Employee 1: Bartholdi!
Employee 3: You got beef with Bartholdi?
Employee 2: What the #&@! why?
Employee 1: Bartholdi be up in everybody’s business.
Employee 2: Naw, man. Bartholdi’s cool.
Employee 3: One of them Bartholdi’s is cool.
Employee 1: But that one Bartholdi’s a punk.
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