Any public space in NYC can serve as a stage, any subway platform a recital hall, any sidewalk a runway- or maybe a catwalk.
Midtown streets are full of hustlers soaking unsuspecting tourists for as much as they can grab. One of the biggest rackets is to get a ratty Pikachu or Elmo costume (anything that covers your full body and face) then hit 44th and 6th, and when a fool pedestrian wants a photo with you, you charge them $10. Why this scam works is beyond me. I supposed it’s a part of the “Disneyfication” of Times Square to have ratty cartoon characters and beat-up superheroes roaming around. The good news (as I see it) is that unlike their Disney counterparts these anthropomorphic extortionists are carrying weapons and a decent amount of cash.
One delightful and enlightening encounter occurred when I had BGIC truck parked at 46th and 6th, barely outside of Times Square hubbub. Just after midnight Dora the Explorer walked up to the truck. My eyes rolled back in delirious ecstasy when Dora reached up and took his head off, nonchalantly dropped it on the sidewalk, and asked for a milkshake. I’d already packed the blender away for the evening but what could I really say? Dora just self-decapitated for me, I’d say making her milkshake was the least I could do for her. Him. Them.
Dora offered to pay and hauled out a sizable wad of bills. He also hauled out an impressive blade. Dora carried a knife! I was so chuffed that I declined the payment. He drank his milkshake then picked her head up off the ground and went back to work.
Of all the street scammers there was no better angle than Cathead Guy’s Seussian shtick. Cathead Guy was a surly dick of a human. Never without a cigarette and always in shades he didn’t appear homeless but at the same time I couldn’t imagine him managing to keep an apartment. He wasn’t dirty but by the look of it he hadn’t done laundry for a few years. Sometimes he was sweating toxins, leaching out of him soaking his shirt on a mild day. He glistened with crack-sweat and his forehead was greasier than the pool that collects inside a pepperoni.m
Other than looking shoddy there was nothing to set him apart from many people except for the cat sitting on his hat. There was a kitty perched on the guy’s hat.
Here’s Cathead Guy’s racket. Want a picture with him? Sure- pose for a photo with the guy but as soon as the shutter clicked his wife (or “his woman” as he called her), until now hiding in plain sight among pedestrians, would sweep in and hit you up hard for money for cat food. Her sudden appearance and scary assertiveness earned her a buck or two each time. People were too blindsided and intimidated to refuse her.
I met Cathead Guy when he appeared at the truck hoping to get the tourists waiting my line to snap photos of him/with him. I had never seen him before and got fooled into generosity by his blinding star power. I made a teeny little cone and gave it to him for the cat to lick. It was really cute- he held the cone up at his forehead and the cat dug in. Pedestrians loved it and that’s when Cathead Guy and I bonded. I thought the whole thing was creepy/adorable and we each saw ice cream and the cat together making us both some money.
This became a thing. Once or twice a week Cathead Guy would appear, with his accomplice creeping in the shadows. He’d bypass the line and walk right up to the service window. I started to loudly talk with him a little bit when he showed up, to the amusement of the folks in my line. From our little conversations I began to sense that he was pretty vile and hanging by 1/2 a hinge. This was confirmed when one day he came by and refused the usual cone for Timmy. The cat’s name was Timmy.
Cathead guy yelled, so that everyone within 1/2 block radius could hear him, “I can’t do that ice cream thing with the cat anymore. Last time the cat exploded diarrhea all over my neck. It ran down my back and I had to go all day long with the shit drying on me.” People retched audibly. I told him to get the fuck away from me. He laughed and didn’t leave.
This is back before e-scribe made it hard for pill fiends to get more than they needed. His wife/woman would go from doctor to doctor collecting scripts for narcotics then sell the pills for what I’m sure didn’t pay for cat food. I must mention that she did have a generous side- after one of her pill shopping sprees she tossed me a Vicodin, gratis, to help me manage my blown out back. I was very appreciative, enough so that the next time they came by he one-upped her by giving me a gift of his own.
I was in the service window making a cone and he barged his way past my customer. He held his hand through the window and shook it in a “I’ve got something for ya” fashion so I held out my own hand. Into it he dropped a dollar bill folded into a little square. I’d gotten cocaine in dollars like this before (for research purposes) so I tossed the package onto a shelf and said “thank you, go the fuck away.” He reappeared about 1/2 hour later, barged his way up again and said “did you like your present?” I said “I don’t open gifts while I am at work. Thank you and go the hell back where you came from.”
I didn’t revisit the dollar bill until after I got home late that night. I opened it up (for research) and was a little taken aback by what I saw. Not coke. Cathead Guy had slipped me a point of heroin at teatime. Thoughtful, really. Hard pass but appreciate the twisted sentiment.
He claimed to have worked in HVAC and refrigeration and was pissed when I didn’t hire him to help build-out our first shop. After airing that grievance he vanished for a month or so. I knew he’d be back. He couldn’t go straight, no way, and no normal job would get him anywhere near the same money that the cat gig was bringing in.
Eventually he turned up and I asked him where he’d been. I knew he occasionally drove a taxi on Staten Island and he said he tried to do the job full time. I asked him why he wasn’t there now. “I smoked a ton of fucking crack, took one of the taxis in the middle of the night then drove to Cleveland to see my cousin. My boss got all fucking pissed off at me and fired me. What a piece of shit.” I said “well, you did smoke crack then steal a taxi and drive it three states away. Seems like a pretty fireable offense to me.” He laughed and said “yeah it really does.” First sensible thing he’d ever said to me.
Once I knew my days on the street were numbered I made a bold move and asked if I could try wearing the cat. It was time, really I’d been putting it off and I could feel it calling me. Time to listen to that call, which sounded like a cat screaming and someone saying “GIVE ME A DOLLAR FOR THE CAT.” He acquiesced.
I’d seen the cat-mounting procedure before and it was really something. Cathead would take a knee and lower his head. Timmy would jump on his back, climb onto his head, and Cathead would rise to his feet as if he was an Indian peasant carrying a basket of chikoo on his head. Timmy clawed the bejeebus out of Cathead’s back when he loaded up and the guy swore viciously at the cat every single time. “God damn it, you little fucker!”
I hopped out of the truck, went to the sidewalk, and knelt. Cathead said “you can’t do it without a hat,” then took his hat off and put it on my head. I was stunned and disgusted- lice? Scabies? Leprosy? God as my witness I just picked up some sort of vengeful flesh-devouring parasite from his greasy ball cap. I leaned over and Timmy skipped up my back and onto my head. He didn’t claw me at all- barely felt him- leading me to believe he was doing the shredding intentionally as a passive-aggressive act to get Cathead back for making him work so hard under such sketchy circumstances. I had a momentary fantasy that Timmy told me he just wanted privacy and to sleep all day, he wanted to be a commoner, he never asked to be a superstar. I empathized and told him I could understand why he would inflict a little bit of retribution. I stood up, proud of the cat on my borrowed hat, feeling on top of my own asteroid.
In the first few post-ice cream truck years I thought about Cathead Guy frequently. People would tweet at me that they had just seen my “friend” at whatever intersection doing his usual.
Ice cream vending and street hustling both share a solitary nature. You carve out your turf and frequently defend it with fists. Despite the typical animosity between those of us looking for money from tourists Cathead Guy and I developed a symbiotic relationship. We had nothing in common- I mean, I so like cats and everything but really I’m not sure HE liked cats and I loathed his game but because of the mutually agreeable relations that we were able to forge I was proud to be linked to him. As nasty of a human as he could be, he was also street royalty.
BGIC connected me with lots of high rollers but to me none rolled as high as the man called Cathead Guy.
