42 Broadway
Well we've gotta lotta lotta lotta hard work today
We've gotta rock at the government center:
Oh make the secretaries feel better
When they-a put those stamps on the ledgers.
And they've gotta lotta lotta great desks and chairs
Uh-huh, at the government center:
We've gotta make those secretaries feel better
When they-a put those stamps on the ledgers.
-Jonathan Richmond (& the Modern Lovers), "Goverment Center"
Anyone attempting to do business in NYC must learn to love 42 Broadway. To be precise, the 5th floor of 42 Broadway -- the Department of Licensing and Consumer Affairs. Today the God of Small Rules smiled upon me, and that certainly helps.
All of the business that occurs in the city eventually passes through this department, and it runs like a well oiled machine. Get in the line, ask your question. For most business, you get a slip with a number, like at a butcher shop, or a Jewish deli. The guy behind the desk is as quick, and as smoothly polished, as anyone at a deli counter. Sometimes your question gets answered so fast you don't even know what happened, and by the time you remember your follow-up, you have wandered away from the counter and have to get back in line. It's OK, though, because he keeps the line moving fast.
Next, clutching your ticket, you head into the next room, where there are vinyl-covered chairs and the bureaucrats sit behind three walls of plexiglass windows. A female computer voice calls the numbers: "Now serving /number/ /one//ninety//eight/ at window /eleven/. Now serving /number/ /one//ninety//eight/ at window /eleven/." Some of the bureaucrats are impatient and punch the button repeatedly, six or eight times before the person can even get to the window.
There is a TV on NY1, which some people watch fixedly, even though ninety percent of the programming is repeated every ten minutes. Some people doze (we watched a really cool woman sleep like a hibernating bear while her young daughter climbed all over her), some sit more or less alertly, others stand at the island in the middle of the room, reviewing instructions for getting licensed for a horse-drawn carriage or filling out forms to be certified as bail-bondsman. There are other rooms off the main one, one for fingerprinting, another darkened, for reasons I don't yet understand (although I love the crinkly-eyed woman who is its mistress).
There is a column against which photos are taken. It goes thus: you wait until your eyes glaze over, then they call your name, you stand in front of the column, they shine a blinding light in your eyes, wait and wait until the exact moment you've slipped into a hypnotic stupor, and then photograph you through an inch of plexiglass. I can't wait to see how my picture looks.
People are remarkably well-behaved. They wait patiently, holding onto their dreams of selling home-made candles on the street or opening a restaurant, carefully keeping track of their papers. Some come with briefcases, some with manilla envelopes, some with accordian folders, some simply clutching them loose in their hands. Some people are there on their own behalves, others are smooth middlemen or lawyers in sheer dress socks there as agents of unseen powers. Some find what they are looking for and some find only frustration, but they are all in the game, and to me, they are all lovely.
Today I was lucky. I'd been sweating bullets all weekend because my license (my personal Vendor's ID License) has not arrived yet. I need that license to get the license for my cart from the Health Department. I have already put off Ali, who holds a permit (which I also need in order to get the license for my cart), for the month it took to get the cart built. He has not seen any money yet -- in fact, he is losing value on his permit -- and he has extended his trust to me, a complete stranger he met only once, all solely on the strength of my word. It is hard to believe, and if I had to ask him to wait another two to three weeks...well, it was going to be hard. I stayed up for almost two hours last night figuring out with Molly exactly how I was going to tell him if I had to.
But I have been saved the difficulty. The lovely (and impatient) man at window number 10 told me what I was hoping to hear: for the purposes of the Health Department inspection, the receipt for the license was enough. Calloo callay! Frabjuous day!
And later on I got to make the happy call to Ali -- we are a go. The cart will be finished by Monday, he can call the Health Department and set up an appointment for the inspection as soon as Wednesday. It rolls along!
Posted by Sam at May 29, 2003 01:24 AM
