A Stock Market Panic and Melon Man

Due to all the drama that is going on with the economy right now it is always an intense scene outside the Wall Street subway stop when I go home in the afternoon. Even though most of the financial firms in the city aren’t even located on Wall Street anymore the media seems to like to camp out there, probably so they can get the“Wall Street” street sign in their news shot. Every afternoon lately the news trucks with their towering antennas are lined up one by one, white and boxy along the curb waiting for more excitement to happen. I think they fully expect office workers to come jumping out their windows as the Dow plunges lower and lower. You also have your scattering of run of the mill anti-Bush, anti-corporations, anti-rich people, anti-everything nutcase protesters milling about. Today was no different, only magnified because of the historical fall of the markets today. I see people with “Die Greedy Wall Street Bastards” signs, staring down us everyday workers who are simply trying to get home in time for this evening’s back to back Jeopardy/Wheel of Fortune.

Today, being a day of extremes, I notice an even larger crowd standing around at the intersection of Wall Street and Broadway. As I try to elbow my way to the subway stairs I notice what they are all paying attention to. I pause for a New York minute (oh cliché!). A middle-age black man is standing up on a box in the center of the circle, shouting rants about the state of the economy. Not that unusual. But what catches my eye is the fact that he is wearing a black top hat with a giant half-eaten watermelon on top. Is it stuck there by glue? Is it balancing? We don’t know.

And so goes another day.