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| Broadway, Manhattan, NY |
All everyone seems to be talking about in New York, and I suspect in the rest of the US too, is the weather. Unfortunately, not in a good way. So temperatures have reached 108 degree F on some days in the last week and the National Weather Service has issued notice of a heatwave!
I seem to be the only one not complaining. I mean, c'mon, if you've spent half your summers in Nagpur, where 108 would be considered normal, and at 90, people would positively be celebrating; and the other half of your life in Bombay - the city which defines global standards of humidity, you can barely think of heat as an reason to be depressed.
So on Saturday when I stepped out of my apartment, I was pleasantly surprised to find a crowd gathered around a stall at the summer fair on Broadway. I'll pause here to tell you a bit about the fair. Do you remember Friday canteen in school? (or maybe we were the only ones who had it!) where a bunch of people come together, put up a stall, sell their wares, and everyone basically has a lot of fun? Well, that's what summer fair at Broadway is all about - a weekly fair that happens every Saturday, on...err...Broadway, which to me means that I don't need to walk more than 5 steps out of our apartment building to soak in the summer joy! There's good food (strawberry and nutella crepe! slurrp!), lots of discount shopping, games and music! On the last one, is what this post is actually about (okay so I took a while to get here). Back to the crowd I walked into.
What you see in the picture is what was in front of us. Just that. An eclectically dressed man, behind a desk with music cds, most of which I haven't ever heard of, and an amusing shop display that identified his wares as "Sexy Soul Oldies"
Nothing so interesting about that you say. I agree. Except that this Sexy Soul Oldie got a bunch of heat-frustrated, sweat-dripping, drained-looking people rocking like I've never seen before, other than at live concerts! And the only method he employed was to have fun himself. Put on some foot-tapping music, classics I believe, and danced away like there was no tomorrow. Naturally, everyone around got gathering, tapping, singing, snapping their fingers, etc. A little old lady even did a jig prompting 'sexy soul oldie' to get to her and do a duet. That's when the crowd really let go. I kid you not, there were like 30 people, right there, in the middle of the street, all ages, although mostly older ones (assuming they came from the same generation as the music), jigging, twisting, foot-tapping, clapping. It was a sight! I wish I had a better video than the one I do now. I've uploaded one to FB anyway for those still curious. It was taken right at the beginning when he started so the enthusiasm still hadn't built up as much as it did later. But for now, I'll let this picture do the talking! Here's one for All the Sexy Soul Oldies out there!
