Sharp

Unfortunately I wrote down the wrong contact information and I never saw my Dominican friends again, but they had told me about the Dominican neighborhood and I decided to check it out without them. They had both said that they avoid that area cause they knew everybody and all the Dominican girls would be gossiping and hating on them. The Dominican neighborhood in Madrid was interesting cause it was more Boston than NYC, i.e. a couple of thousand Dominican scattered in random neighborhood rather than agglomeration of Dominicanness that is Washington Heights, at least until the yuppies finish their Reconquista of Manhattan. But it did allow them to be as tacky European as they wanted to be, I have never seen more Armani Exchange t-shirts, tight jeans and pointy shoes in my life. Moreover I kept being thrown off by the number of white folks in the area, and had to keep reminding myself that I was in Madrid not Santo Domingo or NYC. Still there were Dominicans there. I asked the first black kid I saw for the barber shop. Regrettably I got a fucked up cut in Dakar from a Guinean dude who messed up the areas around my ears (I am still recovering, I should be fine) and should have waited until Madrid to get a sharp, NYC-style line-up, the kind so sharp you can use your sideburns to trace straight lines on paper. Instead, my new buddy Tracey got to feel what it’s like to be Dominican sharp. Afterward I asked them for a good restaurant and I bought some arroz blanco con gandules and pollo guisado. Again the price was ridiculous, but it was enough that we were able to eat for dinner the next day.