Cheap prices - Local laundromat.

The local laundromat down the street from me is run by a middle-aged Mexican couple, and to wash a big load costs just $2.75 - and drying is free!

One of the taquerias near me is also super reasonable, with a steak torta costing just $4.95 (and that's not including free chips and salsa and vinegar-cured carrots - onions - jalapeno peppers that sit out in a bin on the table).

Part of me wondering if this is Mexican immigrants underpricing things.

Addendum.

I forgot -

2 times ago the (transgender) (Latina) woman gave me a great haircut, shorter than usual, with a really mannish looking front, but the next time when I got my hair cut by someone different, the length was there, but the bangs looked boyish and that kind of weakened the whole effect.

Whereas, with the 1st haircut, I got a lot of compliments, including from my one friend from Buffalo, who told me "it makes you look you have your shit together".

So, I relayed that compliment to the woman who cuts my hair, and told her that the difference was what was happening with the front, though I couldn't explain it well.

"I want something more George Clooney and less Jimmy Fallon," I was like.  "And I mean like attitude, not specific hairstyles."

Haircut story: Gay club costume party.

The other day when I got a haircut, the (transgender) (Latina) woman who does my hair was saying that she was out at this one Alice-in-Wonderland costume party at a club in the gay part of the city, put on by some organization that puts on massive costume theme parties, where the hosts dress in extra-special costumes, and a lot of patrons dress up too.

They also hire people to walk around, in this case chiselled young guys who went around with little hats on, and hearts attached to the thongs covering their junk.

In any case, the woman who does my hair was on the dance floor, and there was this guy in green tights and a uniform and tons of small curly hair glued to his face, and all of a sudden he turned to her and her boyfriend and pulled down his green tights and spread his ass cheeks and showed them both his anus.

"It was so ridiculous," she was like.  "I have never seen anything like that in a club in my life.  For the rest of the night, I laughed like every ten minutes just thinking of it.  Seriously."

She also said she had no idea how old the guy was, since you just couldn't tell b/c of his odd mask.

"Well," I was like, "You never can tell with people, and that was probably his thing, he didn't want you to do anything, he just wanted you to look.   What would that be?  An anal exhibitionist?".

At that, she laughed.

Drain's fixed!

My clogged shower drain is now fixed.

There's 2 plungers in my bathroom that were there when I moved in: a deep powerful-looking one, and cheap shallow one with a broader cover.

Since I suspected that the deep one would have the seal break sometimes when I plunged and thus it didn't plunge effectively, I used the shallow but broader one to plunge quite a bit when the drain was clogged.

After a while, vigorous shallow plunging caused whatever it was to flush down, and now my drain runs normal.

The bottom of the shower had a layer of grime on it from the dirty water that had been sitting there for a while, but after I took one shower, it all got rinsed away down the drain.

Yet another dream of decay: Plastic window wrap.

The other night I dreamt that I was showing a friend around my apartment, and I paused in front of a window, and at that point I realized that the plastic wrap that extended across it to keep the cold out had torn in some places, and through gaps of like a half inch in a rough arc the cold air was flowing in...

Three bar night: 1st nice bikeride of spring.

Like a week or 2 ago the weather broke and I took a nice bikeride and ended up hitting up 3 interesting bars west of me, getting out towards city limits -

I walked into one bar on the outskirts of a heavily latino neighborhood and discovered it was a vestigial bar patronized by (white) working class townies.  A Miller Lite draft was $1.50, and the keg was still green from St. Patrick's day.  They had a very cute and quietly friendly bardog "Hank" that would hop up on the stool next to me and want her head petted.  The bartender gave her a shot of Jaeger and an aging (white) (Catholic) patron warned me that she was a mean drunk (he was kidding).

That same patron also told me that Chinese families are buying up homes in the area; they pool money in clans of 20+ people and swoop in to buy foreclosed real estate in cash and then rent it out to other Chinese people till the market recovers and they sell it and make a huge profit.

Also, another aging (Mexican-American) patron told me that he drives his motorcycle best when he's buzzed.

The 2nd bar that night was on the outskirts of a (black) ghetto, and was patronized by all the older (black) folks who were there when the neighborhood was good. I gave them my usual bullshit excuse about being out for a bikeride and popping in for a beer at the halfway point, and that got a 90 year old guy saying he used to bike on a Sear's bike an hour and a half in 1942 from Vicksburg, Mississippi, to Jackson, Mississippi, in order to work at a White Castle, and everyone started arguing that not only was that length of bikeride every day for a job unrealistic, but that Sear's and White Castle didn't even exist back then.

The 3rd bar that night was Latino, and I spoke Spanish with the bartender, this older round-faced woman with shoulder-length bleached blonde hair and olive skin.  She told me that domestics were $3 and imported $4, but they did have one beer for $2, and when I said I'd take that, she pulled out a bottle of Sierra Nevada Pale Ale (a really nice craft beer).  When I told her that that beer was good and should be $4, she kind of went "oh!" and had a soft, surprised look on her face, then she shrugged.

Bike chain.

My bike chain and gears are incredibly rusty, from my biking to the subway stop all winter (I'm near 2 stops, one is 15 minutes away by foot, the other 20, so I usually bike to either, as long as there's not a lot of snow on the roads).

I oiled up the chain and riding is easier, but it still looks rusty.

I'll have to take my bike in for a spring tune-up, and I wonder what the bike people will say.