FREE BOUNCY RIDES...in a station near you

I took these pictures on April 25th on the L Train. It was the kind of encounter that makes you remember why you fell in love with New York in the first place. I didn't ’t know why that guy decided to wear a blue duck/dolphin suit, head included, offering free bouncy rides on his lap, on a Saturday night. He wouldn't say it. Maybe it doesn’t even matter. It´s the kind of thing that brings life and laughs into a usually silent train ride. The comments of passengers went from 'he’s a pervert' to 'he’s the best'. As you know, opinions are endless. The girl sitting on his lap is my friend Alessandra, she cracked herself up, me too. It was the funniest ride I ever had on the subway.


Days later, surfing the web, I found out that the duck/dolphin belonged to Club Animals, an only- in-New York-type of thing that "has embraced childhood, and the time when what was valued most was fun, horseplay, and experimentation without worrying about reality", as they explain in their web. Club Animals calls for "a regression from adulthood. Obama said that now is the time to put off childish things, but we could not disagree more. In these times of job loss, government bailouts, and even a potential Depression, Club Animals has turned from adult concerns of money and finances and concentrated our minds on to those of children". They WILL BE GIVING FREE BOUNCY RIDES AGAIN on Thursday May 14th at 11pm on the Lorimer stop of the L train, just because they feel like doing it. Among their 'philanthropic' projects they offer the Human petting Zoo and Fish 'N' chicks. Don't miss their hilarious manifest!

p. d: The main purpose of this blog is having New York, American life and culture as the center of my posts. I said I would try to do it as foreign journalists used to do this job: using their eyes and their ears, walking the streets, talking to people, because the Internet is making journalists forget about physical reality, and that's not right. Of course, there is so much life online that we could spend our days just surfing the web and talking about what we found there. I have done it myself, it seems unavoidable sometimes. Still, as much as I can, I like to write about what I can experience beyond my computer screen. Many of those experiences will never make it either into the newspaper I write for or into other traditional press. It's a matter of how to look.