The REAL New York Experience

If you've ever been to New York you may have noticed the street venders on the sidewalk selling things; perfume, souviners, purses etc. Well when we got off the subway in China Town an Asian man whispers to Mel "I show you designer purses!" He flashes a picture of some designer purses and says "Come." Mel follows him and the rest of our group follows her across the street, down anther sidewalk and then he opens up this dirty old door that leads upstairs. "Come quickly." He says. Meanwhile we are all saying to Mel "No! Let's GO!" "Come now or I get other people" he says. Mel insists that she will not go without her family and she grabs us by the arm and shoves us through the door "We are all going!" she says. My mom and I give eachother looks as if this may be our last good-bye and I keep close to Cort. As we are walking up the dimly lit staircase I notice how it looks as if it should be condemed but there is a tatoo parlor off to the side and we go up another flight of stairs. I was about to loose it and turn around when all of a sudden several women with stuffed black garbage bags pass us on the way down saying "It was really worth it!" We are all still quite scared especially when he unlocks a door, funnels us through and then locks us in. The rooms are all falling apart and dimmly lit and he takes us to a very small room with tons of purses. Some of our group purchase a few purses but they wanted us to make a purchase within a few minutes so they could bring more unsuspecting victims. I tried but to no avail could get them down to the price I wanted to pay so they said it was time for us to go.

So then it became the "mission" of eveyone else to "help" me get a purse since everyone including Cortlynd had bought at least one purse if not 15! (Cynthia) By the last evening Cynthia with her charm bought a cute green purse for me for the price I wanted to pay! Yeah!

Later in the trip we notice that "others" sell purses on the street from a bag at night. We were walking back late one evening when a guy whispers agian to Mel. How do they know that she will say yes? She follows him around the corner out of the light of the business and behind an electrical box on the street corner. He looks around for cops and opens up his bag of purses. A few minutes later a cop car drives by and he gets pretty nervous. We thank him and pull Mel away. She just laughs at both experiences and says "I just wanted you all have the REAL New York experience!!!