Overheard in New York: dialogue

I have a certain fascination with the perfectly ridiculous, xx-rated, and wonderfully horrible site, Overheard in New York. This is what American dialogue outside the box/book is really like.

One can find absurdities that relate to one's own concerns, such as (in my case) book sales or the lack thereof. This exchange puts mid-list marketing into perspective:

Russian woman: She's doing very well. Her book is doing well. She's already sold a lot of books.
American woman: That's great! That must be so exciting! Russian woman: Yes, she has already sold ten or twenty, I think.
--Union Square
Overheard by: Diana

Now why can't I adopt that attitude?

And you know, my publisher is at Union Square. Could be relevant.

Or you can find stimulating anecdotes about totemic animals like (in my case) chickens:

Man: That guy's got a chicken! Hey man, don't hurt the animals! He's gonna burn the chicken!
--Tompkins Square Park
Overheard by Alex Romanovich

This site reminds me of living next to the park in Albany, hard by the psychiatric center. Often I had to contend with mentally ill Yanks who wanted to admire, touch, or hold my precious children.

One day I realized that a man sprawled in the gutter was ogling my belly. You gonna have a boy, he pronounced in sonorous, positively oracular tones, waving his bottle in judgment. I'm always right.

He was right, as it happened.

Or this, at my local Price Chopper, semi-affectionately known in the neighborhood as the Ghetto Chopper:

Elderly man, peering over my shoulder: Some big f-ing breasts on these chickens.
Me, tickled: Kind of makes you wonder, doesn't it?
E. b. m.: I get your drift, sister, I get your drift . . .

I liked the Ghetto Chopper because sometimes they had fresh okra. Small pods, too. Expensive, but who cared? You take what you can get when you're a foreigner.

Another time I was pushing a double baby carriage in the park when a bloodshot man, about 6'4", raced up to me: Do you know the way to route 9? he blurted out, maximum urgency lacing his voice. I checked to make sure the babies were battened down, moved to shield the carriage with my 5'3" body, and told him that no, I didn't. I did, of course, but I didn't want to get into it. Leaning down, the mad witless spit flying from his mouth, he began, I'll tell you how to get there . . .

There were plenty more, making confessions, weird or funny or plain old sad: Marly among the mad, mad Yanks.

What we need is a Southern site, with some overheard local color with possums and yard dogs and porch chickens and bottle trees and some everyday, down home testifying. Maybe a few crazies of our own, like Cooney, who afflicted my childhood. Get some dadgum balance into this thing.