Adventures of Urban Life

Irene Martinez

Activity 1: Flaneur

This weekend me, my husband, and child went to South street seaport. My son loved the water and viewing the seagulls swoop by while I started to observe the people around me. On my left there was a Caucasian women with an Asian child in the stroller. Which I would assume she was a nanny and is taking care of the child while the mother was shopping or at work. He was maybe 2 years old eating a mixture of fruit and vegetables, and I wonder only if my child could have done the same. On my right there was an elderly women tossing bread to the seagulls. Which I felt was a good idea, but not if it isn’t allowed to feed them. We sat there for a good hour, watching my son running and chasing the seagulls, while I started observing more the Caucasian mother. She was a mother in her mid twenties, wearing orange and beige stripped shirt with black tights and beige uggs boots. She was reading a Lindsay Mckenna book. She wore sun glasses. While the child was in his stroller eating from this plastic green and yellow container that had varies of fruits and vegetables cut into pieces the right size for a toddler to be eating. Underneath the stroller was a purse, star bucks bag and a pretzel time bag. Then I started to observe the elderly women. She was probably around her 60s. She had a yellow livestrong bracelet on tossing pieces of bread onto the ground so that the birds and seagulls could eat. She really didn’t do much just toss bread. The only thing that I found interesting was the way she was dressed. She wasn’t dressed like any ordinary elder person. (although I don’t know what an ordinary elder person would look like) but she caught my attention. She wore a black long skirt with tiny holes it looked like a pattern, but it wasn’t. Her shirt was tucked into her skirt so I couldn’t see it. But she wore a long leopard print mink coat. Which I felt she needed some fashion sense. After the hour, we got hungry so we went to eat at subways. Which the line was extremely long. So we decided to head back into queens and grab a bite from someplace that didn’t have many of people shopping. Because i can't stand the tourist. But thats another issue.