A Crazy and True Vignette. I Swear That This Really Happened, and That I Was Witness to it…

It was 1992 or 93. One Summer day, my then-companion and I were in the East Village, on the Eastern side of Tompkins Square Park (Avenue B, I think it is). She was in a used furniture store (a garage in which a man was selling furniture he had found on the sidewalk, in front of the garage), browsing, and I was waiting outside.

From a deli adjacent to the garage there suddenly sprang a young black man, running like a bat out of hell. Several seconds later, the Chinese storeowner burst forth in hot pursuit. The latter, in an attempt to fell the kid, leapt into the air, poised to deliver a mean-looking flying sidekick. The kid, by this time, was out of range, and disappeared around the corner. Meanwhile, the Chinese storeowner, who had hung, suspended in the air, for what felt like a minute or two, descended, delivering his powerful kick straight through the grill of a truck parked in front of the used furniture garage. His foot was stuck in the plastic grill, which now had a foot-sized hole in it, and from the base of which coolant was now pouring out onto the street. With some difficulty (and, I'm thinking, embarassment), the storeowner extracted first his foot, then his shoe from the broken grill and limped back into his store.