I noticed the shoes first, probably because I was bored, hanging around with my eyes down, debating whether I should pull out a Scramble With Friends game, or my Harry Potter volume, or neither. It was a bustling evening but with chill on the breeze that made me curl into my jacket and continue to shift my weight on my feet, there under the bus stop street lamp. The shoes passing were a thick, shiny, saddle-shoe type for men in tan and taupe. They reeked of pretentious class. Then I noticed his pants were a perfect matching color palette in a woolen tweed fabric. It's past 9pm and his slacks are perfectly clean and pressed? And why does he look straight out of the 60s?
Then I realized: those freight-sized trucks parked one block over weren't construction or delivery, they were for the sets and dressing rooms of film productions. The owner of the shoes was eyeing the market I was waiting in front of. The usual harmless homeless man sat on his bucket, rocking back and forth, singing to himself and offering jovial greetings to everyone that passed by, mainly grad students at Columbia's Teacher's College located right across the street.
"Dems are some good-lookin' shoes, sir!" is what The Bucket Sitter said to The Man From the 60s. He looked down at the shoes, then up at the homeless man, offered a smile and a laugh.
"Thanks, but they're not mine, they're Wardrobe's." We happened to catch eyes at this moment, he smiled at me and I smiled confusedly back.
Was that Don Draper? I admit I've only seen Mad Men once (the pilot) and I wasn't into it enough to continue, and I probably couldn't pick Jon Hamm out of crowd, but it crossed my mind as he crossed the street. I don't think it was him, but maybe it was.
The world may never know.
This is what makes me want to start a list of my Fake-Celebrity Sightings. I'm not actively seeking celebrity faces, but I guess if you have 9 million people living on top of each other on a 12 mile island, you're bound to get some lookalikes. For instance, if I walk to work in the mornings, I habitually pass a man that looks so much like Zach Braff that I call him Zach Braff's Cousin in my head (and I gauge my timeliness to work depending on where I pass him on the street, but that's another story.) Another time, I made Jayna stop talking so I could concentrate on the man walking with his grandmother ahead of us because I was certain it was Jon Krasinski. We walked fast to be in front of them, but this was equally difficult to discern as we had to turn around and look at his face "casually". It wasn't him. I don't think. And there was a fake Mel Gibson in there at some point, and come to think of it, Friendly Homeless Man who hangs out in front of AppleTree Deli every night could possibly pass for the poor man's Morgan Freeman (no pun intended).
I guess no one gets as excited for a fake celebrity sighting as a real one, but I will continue to update you nevertheless.
Oh, and Daniel Radcliffe was on campus yesterday filming for his new movie where he plays Allen Ginsberg. All the girls in my dance class were giggling about it last night. I'm in the midst of Harry Potter (almost done with book 4!) so I'm kinda sad I missed it. Ten points will be taken from Gryffindor.
Shannon and Kathleen fly in tomorrow!
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