Max F.
Yelp
He'd had been a rough few months. The usual thrift stores--Goodwill, MyUnique, Out of the Closet--had stopped being places that he could get cheap clothes that also looked good on him. He appreciated the need for thrift stores in this eyesore, rancid city where every penny saved feels like a rent check saved, but he could no longer connect with their clothing options like he did in college. He definitely wasn't about to drop a full $60 on a new pair of shoes, not to mention a denim jacket, because somehow they'd gone from being something a 10-year-old might wear on the school courtyard during recess to the ultimate lightweight warmth and fashion option. Even fools looked good in denim.
Off to Urban Jungle he went. A friend had mentioned that she got a lot of her better-fitting, less wallet-busting clothes there. He'd planned to occupy the first part of his Sunday heading over there--it's not as easy as it looks to get to that part of Bushwick/East Williamsburg from Clinton Hill--and take the rest of the day catching up and/or relaxing, but come Saturday, it just wasn't gonna happen. Instead, our (anti)hero's anxiety accelerated the adventure up by a day; suddenly, opening a new checking account and then going all the way across North Brooklyn to buy a new pair of kicks felt less like too much at once and more like the only way to go.
He waited a bit too long for the bus--a distinct thought that crossed his head was, what will I do if this thing never shows up?--even though MTA Bus Time said it was around the corner. The B57 eventually came, offering a slog of a ride, save the really cute dog a few seats away. Eventually, the bus crossed under the J train, which was his cue to pull out his phone and really start figuring out where exactly he was. Had he pulled the yellow cord a second later, maybe he would've missed it, but he got let out right in front of a frequent favorite, the vegan Ethopian heaven Bunna, and walked a minute or two to Urban Jungle.
As he opened the doors, the first thing he noticed is that the music that Urban Jungle plays is actually louder just outside the doors than inside the store. Okay. Weird. And so was this actual jungle of overalls, shoes, pants, hats, and other accessories and vitals. Overwhelming was an understatement--where do the sections begin an end?--but he gets disoriented for the first couple of minutes anytime he goes somewhere new. It only took two circular racks of denim jackets to bring him back to life.
He felt comforted by the number of people there--enough that not everyone was going to get into a fitting room all that quickly, but not enough that trying things on in one of the modest mirrors occasionally lining the store's walls would be widely observed. No one would notice him plowing through racks of jackets, trying on choice after choice, struggling to find one that didn't make his arms look like zucchini noodles, his torso like dough so flattened its edges had torn, his legs like carrots neither baby nor adult. But when he found the one, he knew it--and it only cost $18.
He had taken about 20 minutes to land on this jacket. If he had spent only a few minutes searching, maybe he would've been tempted to leave more quickly, just buy the jacket and go. But at this point, he was fully immersed in the jungle, ready for some fun and games; why not do some more browsing while he could? There were too many interesting pairs of shoes--old red Converse somewhere between beaten to bits and covered in subway wear and tear, the darkest black leather shoes this side of Ozzy Osbourne, something that would make a cowboy say "yeehaw" and then some--for him to decide that a new pair could wait. There were about five pairs he wanted to buy. Urban Jungle isn't for wallet-busting, though, and he settled on a pair of light-blue suede high-rises that were--get this--DC. Even on a budget, Urban Jungle revels in style.
A couple months later, he found himself at Bunna again, of course, so why wouldn't he stop into Urban Jungle just to see the sights? It was far less crowded this time, and just as enjoyable. All he had to do was part the trees that one time, and now here he was, seeing the full forest too.
