NYC Sweat Shops

You can almost always count on seeing something interesting in New York City... This past weekend my old roommate Heather came to NY with some friends so I joined them for part of the day on Saturday. I decided to drive in because I had to go straight to Cassidy's bday party up in Danbury. I've been driving in more lately to the city and haven't had any problems. In fact, I've always found a free spot on the street to park in pretty good time. Yeah - not so much this time. It took me forever and a day to get to Heather, Nicole and friends...I drove in no problem...tried to find free parking on the street..no luck - finally parked in a cheap parking garage on 62nd street and walked to the 66th and broadway subway stop. When I got there though I soon found out that downtown train wasn't stopping there...so I decided to just walk down to the next station at 59th. But again I found out that there was no train stopping there either. Turns out - there was no train until 42nd. So - I walked about 20 blocks and through New Yorks very own human zoo (otherwise known as time square) and Finally got on a train headed for downtown! An hour and a half later (after parking) I finally made it to Heather and Nicole! From the time I left my house to the time I got to them, it took me about 3 hours! That's just insane!!

Lisa, Me, Heather..and Tommy in the background.

Anyway - we got some food and walked around downtown for bit...then headed to Canal street for some crazy shopping. This was my first time doing the Canal street shopping. It's kind of a mad house. People everywhere and tons of sellers trying to sell their knock off purses, watches and sunglasses. Lisa, one of the girls we were with, wanted to look at knock off hand bags for her sister...she was looking for a cheap Coach purse. So - when one of the guys asked "Gucci?, Coach?" Lisa informed the guy she was interested.. Little did we know we would have to follow him down the street, then down an alley, around a corner, into some building, up 5 flights of stairs in a dark, graffiti filled stairwell.....through a mini sweat shop...into a small room filled with fake gucci, prada, coach, and kate spake bags, where the little chinese guy closed and locked the door. um.....What!?? yeah! It's true. Did you catch the sweat shop part??? Cause it's no joke..we walk into this room and there were all these asians sitting at sewing machines making all their knock off merchandise.

It was crazy. I couldn't believe they brought us through all that. Lisa ended up opting out of the Coach purse idea and got a couple of Kate Spade bags..One of them didn't have the whole "kate Spade" tag on it...the skinny chinese dude that we had followed informed her that he could "put one on" for her! ha! What a freakin' adventure! I didn't think i would see that. Normally you just see guys hide the purses in big garbage bags or boxes....not up in the actual sweat shop.

I so wish i would have thought to take a picture with my cell phone or something while i was in there! Oh well..next time! ha ha.

Oh - I also saw this mailbox which I thought was pretty cool....

R2D2!

Oh NYC...it's always so much fun! I really need to start going more often..you just never know what you might see.