The Unbearable Banishment: Schoolgirl outfits in Times Square

Wednesday, August 31, 2011

Schoolgirl outfits in Times Square

I was on my morning slog through the middle of Times Square and stumbled across this delicious scene.


My goodness gracious! At at 6:25 a.m., no less! I think they're a singing group. When the photographer stopped to adjust his camera, they practiced a few dance steps. That sure woke my ass up. Can anyone explain the proclivity in Japanese society for sexed-up schoolgirl outfits?


At the risk of sounding like a filthy, lonely old rotter, which I am not (I don't think), I'm going to publicly admit that I find this provocative to the 10th power. I felt creepy starring. But if you're going to stand in the epicenter of the Crossroads of the World dressed like that and practice dance moves that resemble a stripper grind, I can assure you that you're going to be starred at by lonely, old office drones on their way to work. Duly warned. I run across stuff like this all the time. New York: Expensive, but not boring.


* * *

My current gig has me in a 10th floor corner office on 6th Avenue in the 50's. My windows face north to Central Park and east to the Museum of Modern Art. I love midtown. Its where the action is, baby!

You'd think that being ten floors above the Avenue would offer some peace and quiet but you'd be mistaken. Sound waves bounce off the surrounding skyscrapers and travel upward. You can hear quite clearly what's going on at street level. Taxi cabs with horns blazing sound like they're passing just outside my window. This would make most people grind their molars but I consider it part of the symphony of the city.

I am only occasionally bothered by this one dude. A street musician. See him down there by the lamppost?


He's one of these guys who sets up a drum kit using plastic paint buckets, pieces of metal, an overturned soup pot and some bins from the post office. His drum sticks are two thick pieces of wood.


He's very, very talented. He's also relentless. He can play for HOURS. It looks like he makes a pretty good buck and, as far as I'm concerned, he earns it. He plays his ass off. But it sounds like the playing right OUTSIDE my WINDOW. We are thinking of taking up a collection to pay him to stop playing.

* * *
Recent article in the New York Times:
9/11’s Post-Traumatic Stress Still Haunts

At least 10,000 people in New York, like Dr. Margaret Dessau, have post-traumatic stress disorder, and while many were emergency responders, others were witnesses.
Really? You witnessed it and are still traumatized? The 10th anniversary of 9/11 is coming up. Ten years and you're still not over it? There are people in this town who wear their suffering proudly like a thorny crown. They won't be denied their anguish. My apartment was less than a mile away so I speak from the position of someone who was a participant. It's time to liberate yourself, my poor, suffering fellow New Yorkers.

Hey, London! Berlin! Calling all cities who have been flattened by bombs! Were you still moping about ten years after the fact? I'll bet not.

Just watch how politicians distort and use the 10th Anniversary of 9/11 to rationalize their own radical nuttiness. It's going to be SICKENING.

30 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

"I don't wanna work, I just wanna bang on my drum all day"

that's me, if i had talent... and an audience!

August 31, 2011 at 7:39 AM  
Blogger Sausage said...

Damn Daisy beat me to the punch..
now I have to figure out how to get scantily clad Japanese dancers/models to appear in my town.
I am not a creeper...I am not a creeper....
ps. when living in gotham who the hell needs coffee?

August 31, 2011 at 7:45 AM  
Blogger The Unbearable Banishment said...

daisy: That's cool. Just not outside my office window, okay? [Todd Rundgren is underappreciated, IMHO.]

SF: Seeing that first thing in the morning is not necessarily a good thing. While most men would appreciate it, all it did was frustrate me and accentuate my status as an office drone. I can turn practically anything into a negative! It's my superpower.

August 31, 2011 at 8:09 AM  
Blogger LẌ said...

I am dreading the upcoming political and media 9/11 bathos-fest.

August 31, 2011 at 9:19 AM  
Blogger Ponita in Real Life said...

Just stating an observation here, but Americans (that's the royal "you", so to speak) are very good at hanging on to something for absolutely ever and bemoaning the bad that it was and how it has so horribly affected whoever was involved. They are all stuck in the past, locked in that moment of time and unable to move on. ("Oh poor me/them/us!") It's sad, it's really very sad.

As far as the Japanese sex schoolgirls go, that's too weird! At the crack of dawn??? I guess there's a lighter crowd on the sidewalks then?

August 31, 2011 at 10:02 AM  
Blogger The Unbearable Banishment said...

lx: Just ignore it. It's easier than you think. The Yankees used to make my crazy. Now, I just tune it all out.

Ponita: For all our posturing, I think we are a soft, complacent people. A bunch of big babies who are unwilling to make sacrifices. That's why this nation is drowning in debt. We want what we want. As far as the photo, there's less people but, also, light at that hour is great.

August 31, 2011 at 10:27 AM  
Blogger savannah said...

i'm so southern now that just the thought of living with all of that external cacophony (i used the modifier not to be redundant, but because i already have to fight down the internal now) is disturbing! it is rather interesting in a way how my life has become so much more provincial. i'm an uber urban girl living in a non-uber-urban urban environment. (whoa, wtf happened there, right?) i digress, my bad. not enough coffee? maybe too much? ok, i think i'll stop now and come back later, i'm wy too off base now to even try to salvage this comment, but too *insert correct word here* to delete it! (dude, i have invested time here)

August 31, 2011 at 11:25 AM  
Blogger Adam Kenny said...

You're having a good morning coming across the Japanese Stripper Schoolgirl Brigade until you realize that yesterday was apparently naked body-painting day in Times Square. The story/photos in the Post, the News and other places are damned entertaining....especially the one of the little kid staring at the naked, painted girl walking down the street. Suddenly his, "Coolest Thing I Did Over The Summmer" Presentation has written itself.

I take a differing view on 09/11. I do not equate the memorial ceremony held annually to refusing or failing to get over it - any more than I view parade held annually on Memorial Day representing a similar view. I view it as honoring those who died and by extension their loved ones. As long as those who experienced a personal loss on 09/11 are comfortable with the ceremony, I have no issue with it. I am a runner and will run again this year in the Tunnel to Towers Run, which last year was a simply amazing day. Politicians wrap their grubby hands around anything bright and shiny that they can - nothing new with that. The manner in which those public figures conduct themselves is - in my mind's eye - separated from how those who lost someone on 09/11 conduct themselves.

That being said, I do not think it is healthy for anyone to dwell on one thing or one event. Life is lived forward. The lawyer in me feels my teeth start to grind when I read an advertisement such as that one b/c too often it seems Person A preys upon the fears or insecurities of Person B for his own benefit, pecuniary or otherwise.

August 31, 2011 at 11:53 AM  
Blogger Pat said...

Re the school girls - I blame Britney.
Here in the UK they are advertising a programme about the children who lost a parent in the 9/11 tragedy.

August 31, 2011 at 12:07 PM  
Blogger The Unbearable Banishment said...

Sav: Hey, that was a rambling one! I liked it. I got used to the noise to the point that I miss it when it's not around. Really!

Adam: Memorials are entirely appropriate and necessary. What I can't abide by is suffering from PTSS ten years after VIEWING the event. I don't mean to come off as calloused but it sounds spineless to me.

August 31, 2011 at 12:13 PM  
Blogger The Unbearable Banishment said...

Adam (pt. 2): Call me weird (in addition to calloused) but I find the outfits more erotic than the painted bodies. That's just me.

Pat: That actually sounds kind of interesting. I wonder if it'll play here? Is it a BBC production?

August 31, 2011 at 12:16 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I like to think of 9/11 as another successful year for you and the Mrs. and thank God that she put up with you for another one :)
MT

August 31, 2011 at 5:50 PM  
Anonymous dinahmow said...

In 1945 it was not called PTSS.
It was called"It's over and a bloody good job, too. Now, who knows how to lay cable/swing a hammer/dig a trench.Let's get this mess cleaned up!"

About the little girls...black stockings were part of my winter uniform at High School.

August 31, 2011 at 6:00 PM  
Blogger dinahmow said...

Oops! Maybe I should make it clear that our skirts were longer!

August 31, 2011 at 6:01 PM  
Blogger The Unbearable Banishment said...

ALL: What MT is referring to is our wedding anniversary. It is, in fact, 9/11. THAT'S what she's celebrating. Let there be no confusion.

Dinah: You wouldn't happen to have any old photos lying around of your black-stockinged self, would you?

August 31, 2011 at 6:04 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I witnessed 9/11 and I'm not traumatised. Even though it was my introduction to New York City, now it's just part of my history.

Those Japanese girls look fabulous!

September 1, 2011 at 5:48 AM  
Blogger Mitzi G Burger said...

The kink scene in Japan is lively. They invented rope bondage (Shibari). You can get "school-girl" bondage figurines from vending machines over there.

September 1, 2011 at 5:54 AM  
Blogger The Unbearable Banishment said...

nurse: Most people have the ability to rise above their tragedies. However, it seems there's a minority who just won't let go. Re: the Japanese girls. Do you think they're too young to pull this off? I saw them again this morning! Same outfits! A fantastic way to start the day.

Mitzi: Is all that true?! Perhaps an investigatory trip to Tokyo is in order. For research purposes only, of course.

September 1, 2011 at 6:50 AM  
Anonymous looby said...

The more people publicly make a drama of their alleged suffering, the more a they're handing the terrorists.

I was proud of how Londoners responded to the so-called Muslim" fanatics' bombs there
http://tinyurl.com/london-not-afraid

September 1, 2011 at 7:35 AM  
Anonymous looby said...

The more a victory, I mean.

Can't type with those girls on my mind.

September 1, 2011 at 7:37 AM  
Blogger The Unbearable Banishment said...

looby: The British practically invented stoicism! Or is that simply reducing them to a stereotype? No matter. It feeds my Anglophilism.

September 1, 2011 at 8:09 AM  
Anonymous looby said...

If it's a stereotype it's certainly got a kernal of truth to it. I think many British people consider it vulgar to parade your emotions in public. Mind you, I'm 47. Younger people seem to be unable to even say hello without screaming and ohmygodding. And the tendency to emote as soon as a TV camera is stuck in your face is now seen over here as well.

September 1, 2011 at 9:12 AM  
Blogger Kono said...

I'm sure this was an interesting post but i'm to busy staring at the pictures of Japanese school girls... though i vaguely remember seeing something abut 9/11, which just happens to be my birthday.

September 1, 2011 at 9:23 AM  
Anonymous Sid said...

I saw the pic of Japanese girls and all I thought was "cute blouse".

September 1, 2011 at 10:31 AM  
Blogger The Unbearable Banishment said...

looby: I believe the moment it all changed was Princess Di's death. The emoting was shocking. Another terrible U.S. import. Like fast food.

Kono: Doesn't it make you feel like you're breaking some kind of law? I do. But I can't help myself! It's biology.

Sid: Cute blouse, stockings, heels, garters, come hither looks, etc.

September 1, 2011 at 12:55 PM  
Blogger Here In Franklin said...

You now have the distinction of being one of the only blogs in history (mine included) that captured my husband's interest. You are now being forwarded across the greater U.S.

September 1, 2011 at 8:58 PM  
Blogger The Unbearable Banishment said...

HIF: I'd like to think it's the quality of my posts but it''s the schoolgirl outfits, isn't it? Forward your address and I'll send hubby $50 bucks.

September 1, 2011 at 9:09 PM  
Blogger Leah said...

Oh how I LOVE the "schoolgirls"!!!!

And I obviously have a completely different take on the 9/11 stuff than you, but hey.

September 2, 2011 at 3:45 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Thank you thank you thank you. I am not looking forward to all the 'where were you' scenarios. Frankly a lot of really good things have happened in the last 10 years...and I'd rather concentrate on those things.

September 6, 2011 at 12:27 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

diet treatment for fatty liver diet treatment for fatty liver diet treatment for fatty liver

Feel free to surf to my weblog :: fatty liver children treatment

June 6, 2013 at 11:17 PM  

Post a Comment

Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]

<< Home