The Ballad of the Hobo Zeppole Losers (Us)
The Way We Live Now: Hobo hamboning it up with a mouth harp harmonica happy hopeless hoe-down tune-playing, without a care in the world or enough lint in our pocket to buy a zeppole, not that we could anyhow.
Because Bloomberg might be shutting down NYC's quasi-historic street fairs! The children of our fair city may never get the chance to experience that authentic "Old New York" flavor of lemonade stands and zeppole stands and sausage and onion stands and crappy arepas stands and sock stands and handbag stands and corn on the cob stands and more socks stands, infinitely and exactingly reproduced in various neighborhoods across Manhattan, right down to the same damn sock stands.
Tragic.
What are we, the hobo kings of Queens, to think, as we traipse about in a futile search for decoratively cut mangoes and blackened, disease-covered grilled corn on the cob, as we turn to see the news ticker telling us of a $35 billion AIG buyout deal? Are we able, in our hobo-ed state, to comprehend the necessity of a $6,000 dog? And who will convince that the decline in shark attacks is not merely a smokescreen to distract us while somebody from the government steals our tent from the woods?
Familiar problems? Sure. But for a populace doubly stunned by the collapse of global credit markets and the sudden news of a citywide fried Oreo shortage, once-familiar problems take on a strange and menacing hue. One of our nation's sexxxiest former Congressmen is now running a hobo consignment shop. That's not the sort of "real news" you can just "shake off." Not without a zeppole, at least. Get away from our hobo tents, revenuers. Our eyes are now penetrating your mischievous tricknologies.
