How I should have put the New York is expensive criers in their place
Last week I saw a performance art piece at P.S. 122 called “The Money Conversation.” Normally I hate art, but I was getting in for free, and I knew that the performer was giving away her entire life savings of $5,000 to the audience (hence “Money” in the title), so it seemed worth it.
She was a dancer, so I thought she’d be prancing with wads of cash in her hands, tossing money here and there as she spun and flipped. Instead, it was an experimental piece with her making weird “beep bop boop” noises, writhing on the ground, then handing out money. First she started with $20 dollar bills, she moved to $50 bills, and eventually she was handing out $100s to people.
The audience had to work for it, though. No participation meant no money. That’s why I didn’t get anything. I sat front row and center, but I just stared curiously, never cracking a smile or interacting with her in any way. I don’t regret that for the most part (nor am I proud of it), but one thing about the audience really annoyed me, and in retrospect there was a point when I could have got them pretty good.
Here’s what annoyed me… The bulk of the performance was the dancer listing off some dollar amount and then asking the audience what that was. For instance, she would say, “Here is fifty dollars. What is fifty dollars?” Then someone in the audience would respond. “Fifty dollars is a blender,” or something like that. Then, inevitably - every single time - someone would gasp at how cheap the hypothetical object was and dispute it. “$50 for a blender? Not where I shop!”
Every time! Because, you know, New York is so expensive in every respect and there’s no way around it.
“Here is $500. What is $500?” “Rent in Queens,” someone said. Gasps. “Where?!” someone else shouted in disbelief.
Hello! My rent was $550 in Williamsburg and I only had one roommate! Granted, that was in 2002, but today my rent is $600 in Greenpoint, which isn’t far from $500, and probably in a nicer neighborhood.
Someone who seemed as annoyed as me shouted out “a pack of cigarettes!” when she said “What is $1,000?” But nobody got the joke. “That’s not right,” she scolded. I was actually surprised nobody chimed “aint that the truth!” in his defense. Guess that one went too far.
Okay, but the opportunity I missed. At one point the performer said, “Here I have $80. What is $80?” “An unlimited subway pass for a month and a magazine,” someone in the audience said. A monthly unlimited pass in NYC is objectively $72 no matter where you get it, and his answer assumed a pricey $8 magazine, so nobody argued. I wish I had, though.
“Wow, $80 for a month on the subway?! No freakin’ way! Not at my Metro Pass machine! Where on earth did you find that deal?!”
5 years ago