Underground Gucci

Purses have a darkside I never knew existed. A seedy, sinister side as mysterious as the contents of the purses themselves.

I always thought of them as innocent little accessories, first noticed as the place Mom kept tissue, gum, and loose change for the candy hoarding vending machines. I see them now out and about on busy city streets, slung from the shoulders of every working woman from baristas to CEOs. They are where my girlfriend keeps her cellphone, lip gloss, makeup cases, and the terrifying tampon.

What I didn't know(but am now wise to ways of the real world) was that your average woman will gladly venture into back rooms, dank stairways and beyond dark alleys to obtain that precious piece dangling at her side. Your lady, if she really fancies purses, is more versed in the criminal underground then you could ever hope to be -- that little March Madness pool pales in comparison.

Now, I've been to Canal Street.

My girlfriend told me what to expect during the six train ride downtown:

"We're looking for someone on the street whispering 'Gucci', 'Louis Vuitton or just 'Purses'. Got it?"

"Got it," I replied, repeating the brand names like an oath. "Gucci, Louis Vuitton."

"Or Prada" she added.

Canal Street is in New York's Chinatown; a hotbed of illegal purse activity. It didn't take long to locate our first contact: after barely half a block a short man dressed head to toe in NorthFace apparel said "Lady, Purses, Ladies, Purse", going in and out of plurals. He said this only to female passersby; men were fodder to be sifted through. This being his day job(I guess) he looked bored(probably to attract the least attention...day job? I am so far removed from criminality).

My girlfriend parroted back his invitation. He opened one half of a grimy glass double-door, and motioned us through. We entered the underworld.

The underworld had a lot of screaming children running around. An old color TV sat atop a high-chair, serving as a makeshift obelisk surrounded by baby toys and their captivated owners. The kids shouted about stolen toys and who was a jerk-face. The man handed us off to a young, equally small woman. She led us to a glass door obscured by a black curtain hanging from the inside. She squatted to work the bottom lock, then the middle before opening the door, lifting the black curtain, and hurrying us inside with pinwheel spins of her forearm.

Inside, my girlfriend started looking over the wares. In neat organized rows -- covering every available square inch of wall space -- hung all the desired suspects: doppelgangers of Gucci, Coco Chanel, Prada, and Louis Vuitton. The room was small, barley bigger than my cubicle back in DC. The grey walls didn't reach the high ceiling, allowing the cacophony of the playing children to echo and mix with the Q&A my girlfriend was having with our host.

I was told earlier I wasn't supposed to act interested in any item, to help with bargaining. Even so, my girlfriend insisted on asking me what I thought about each potential purchase. If it was a test, I passed and failed depending on how distracted I was when asked.

A bag hanging in the top row caught my girlfriend's eye, and the woman hoisted it down with her metal purse grabber(not it's real name I'm sure, but this is the only context that I have for it). The make was Gucci and the style was "hobo", so called because of it's large size and low-slung style. What a cruel name; an urban luxury item named after people who can never afford it. If everyone followed that example, NorthFace would have "bum" style wintercoats and Urban Outfitters would sell "derelict" style loafers to hipsters who love spending hundreds of dollars to pretend being penniless. Swing a hobo bag in a Manhattan UO and you'll hit two or three trust-fund kids.

Anyway, after examining the bag my girlfriend asked if they had it in a different pattern. The woman said they did, whipping out a flip cellphone and -- after the familiar beep -- barked orders over it's walkie-talkie. Technology makes everything more effective, I thought. Even the illegal purse business. A confirmation reply came back; I could hear the echo of the man's real voice talking a few rooms over. Sure beats having to walk over there, lock the doors(you don't leave the room unlocked with only customers in it, I learned), ask about the bag, come back, and unlock the door again.

I tried to stand still and out of the way, but out of a protective habit kept close to my girlfriend. She told me she had done this alone many times. These were purses, not freshly cut kilos of fishscale. The woman and the man were physically unimposing. Wouldn't mean much if they had guns, though, would it?

After a long, fruitless semi-silent wait for the purse it was decided that the purses here were about ten dollars too expensive, and the quality was terrible. I concurred with confidence, fully ready to contradict myself if the desired purse suddenly appeared. It did, but too late as my girlfriend was out the door despite the woman's pleas to reconsider ("Hey lady, what price you pay? It's very good bag!", an ubiquitous line in the underground purse business I would later learn).

Emerging outside, we continued up the street. It was cold. The wind blew past us and froze me inside my coat, since I only wore a t-shirt under it and my scarf. I felt it was unfair trick of the coat, my girlfriend marveled that I had not died of pneumonia before meeting her. Our next contact was a homely looking lady with heavy eye make-up.

She led us down an alley, past a storefront and through a pair of huge sliding metal doors. Unlocking a large wooden door, she motioned us through saying "last door on the left". The hallway before us had four identical wooden doors on each side. The ceiling was high -- dripping flaked plaster -- and I could hear haggling over the hallway walls.

Inside the last room on the left, another short woman was already attending to two other couples. The women were both middle-aged, Long Island looking housewife types, their ballooned bottoms matching their husband's hanging paunch. They had manicured nails and trumped up hair to go with their dumpy sweats. They loved their purses, and their men dutifully waited. Outside of this potential police raid target, you would see them driving children to soccer practice, arguing with the sale's clerk at the GAP, or ordering lattes at Starbucks. Here, they were purchasers of contraband. I guess that made me and the other men accessories.

This room also proved too expensive. After two more rooms(one nestled behind a labyrinth of narrow stone stairs and halogen lit, winding white-brick catacomb-like hallways - I was certain at one point we'd fallen victim to the Western slave trade) my girlfriend finally settled on a black Gucci "hobo" bag.

My reward for being her shopping escort was warming up at a nearby Starbucks. Standing in line to order my trademark tall, skim, no-whip hot chocolate, I felt my girlfriend tug my arm. I lowered an ear.

"I don't want to freak you out, but look who is standing next to you..." she whispered. I glanced at the man to my right.

Jerry. Fucking. Springer. Who is taller than you would think.

Thus ended one of the stranger days of my life. Later, my girlfriend bought me some long-sleeved shirts and we had dinner, but nothing matched the adventure in Chinatown capped by an appearance by the Ringmaster himself.

Only in New York.