Having lived in NYC since I was 17 and having passed the bonafide 10-year mark of living here I consider myself a “New Yorker”. I know where to get my morning bagel with my just-right coffee. I felt like I had managed to successfully integrate a continual wonder at living in this awesome city, with the street savvy to remain relatively safe. I’ve been known to boast to my friends all the precautions I take to make sure I don’t get into sticky situations, everything from never leaving with a stranger you just met at the cocktail destination of the night, to never letting your girlfriends leave alone with that stranger either. For the most part my precautions have paid off. Until they didn’t. Coming from Cobble Hill my aunt and I boarded the R train on our way back to Manhattan, and excitedly chatted about our new hair cuts. We were towards the back of the train, but not in an empty car, in fact given it was a weekend / off hours there were a surprisingly good number of people in our car (~10-15). When out of the corner I heard a man yell, ” are you laughing at ME?!!”, I didn’t even register that he was talking to me, even after the second time he yelled it. Only when his bag with sudden violence knocked my-just-right coffee out of my hands, and swung around for a second and third time did it finally sink in. He was hitting me with his plastic bag of trash, and I was paralyzed with fear. My aunt leapt up, pushed him away from me and started yelling at him to leave me the F!#$*!! ALONE! The fog in my mind began to lift with a new fear that he might turn his anger on her — barely thinking I grabbed her hand and told her “we have to RUN!” Not that there was anywhere to go, I discovered after throwing my body weight on the door separating the train cars and frantically turning the knob that the door was “locked for emergencies”.
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I’ve always been stingy with my yoga clothes. I sweat in them after all, and besides being stretchy and “pretty basic” in terms of appearance I didn’t have many more requirements. Not that I haven’t looked. I’ve longingly perused Lululemon, marveling at all the goodies they come up with to put in their clothes. I’ve also rifled through the sales bins in yoga studios, and inspected their racks. I rinse and repeat this just about every 3rd time I visit a studio. But I’m always dejected after seeing the price tag, and couldn’t make the leap to actually justify the often $75+ pants that I would just sweat in for an hour and a half. Besides, I told myself, how much of a difference could it make? I’ve recently discovered thanks to the generosity of the people at Hyde Yoga that it does make a difference.
