— पांच हजार तीन सौ पचहत्तर —
I totally forgot to mention yesterday that I ran into the guy who made
my beloved purple sparkly shoulder bag at Pike Place Market while I was walking home from work on Tuesday.
And I have to cop to this: I made a deeply shitty, racist mistake when I first saw him.
None of this is any kind of excuse, but I was focused on the book I was reading as I walked, and walking quickly. I had shifted to walk just outside parked cars because, this being Pike Place Market, the sidewalk was too crowded. I walked past this guy, a kind of older, Black man with bloodshot eyes, and he paused from pushing some kind of storage containers stacked on a handcart to say to me, "Hey can I ask you a question?"
My knee-jerk reaction was to assume he was going to ask me for money. Some might want to make excuses for me in this moment, because, for instance, I have indeed had countless experiences with that sort of a greeting that only resulted in being asked for money. But here's where I fucked up: I didn't look at him any more closely than just seeing an older Black man, and did not notice at first that what he was doing (pushing the containers on a handcart) clearly indicated he was engaged in some type of employment. Why would he be asking me for money? The truth is, my subconscious was answering that question with, "Because he's Black."
When he asked me that, "Hey can I ask you a question?", I glanced up for a split second, just said a quick "No" and kept walking. But a split second after that, he called out from behind me: "I made your bag!"
Shit. Fuck. Goddammit.
As soon as he said
that, I stopped in my tracks and immediately turned around. "Really?"
I walked back to him and he asked if he could give me a hug. We embraced and gave each other a genuine, full-on hug, not one of those fake, back-slappy kinds of hugs. He told me he's seen me around before, and even said, "I think I made that bag about, ten years ago?"
"Close!" I said. "I bought this
at the end of 2014. I love this bag."
It's not cheap, either, I feel compelled to note. He was selling that particular bag in 2014 for $85, and Shobhit haggled him down to $80 without any tax added. I always regarded it as my Christmas present that year from Dad and Sherri, as they had given me $100 in my Christmas card, and I used that to buy this bag. Clearly it's high quality and long lasting, as I've now been carrying it around for more than eight years.
The guy, whose name is Robert Jones (which I only know from searching for my mentions of him on Facebook), told me that if it ever starts to get holes in it and needs mending, he can fix it for me. It actually is starting to get there, but I loved hearing that because his bags are all unique and I don’t want to have to buy another one that is totally different. I love the idea that he can just fix this one.
He only sets up his vendor booth at the Market on weekdays, however. He told me he just doesn't like dealing with the tourists who are there on the weekends as much. I even asked, "Are the people on weekdays more local?" and he said no, they're still tourists—they're just better, somehow, I guess. He never got into specifying how or why that might be.
I really wanted to contact him to apologize for dismissing him at first, but if he has any online presence, he's
very hard to find, no matter how many combinations of his name and "Banner Bags" I Google. Banner Bags actually is mentioned in
this blog post at the Pike Place Market website, from
January 31 of this year, about Black-owned businesses at the Market for Black History Month. Unfortunately, when you click "Learn more about Banner Bags" under that business's blurb, the
vendor page just reads,
About Us
Oops! We are sorry some information about this business is still missing. We are working to gather it for you. Please click the button below to contact Pike Place Market for assistance. Dammit!
But, whatever. The man is clearly very kind and gracious, far more than I arguably deserved. I did buy his bag and I continue getting regular compliments on it, so maybe that counts for something. I consistently tell people I got it from this vendor at Pike Place Market. His bags are pricy but worth the price, and certainly fair for hand crafted products.
I first learned about that guy from Ivan, incidentally. Ivan's first stint living with me was in 2014, and he had more than one bag from Banner Bags. I always admired them and that was why I sought them out myself. Robert can be hard to catch, though; he's not even there
every weekday, just a couple of days a week.
— पांच हजार तीन सौ पचहत्तर —
— पांच हजार तीन सौ पचहत्तर —
As for last night, there's not much more to say. I walked home from work again. Shobhit had just walked to the bank and happened to be right in front of the building when I reached it myself, and we went inside to the package room together, where I retrieved my latest round of medications. On the way back out from there to our building (the Braeburn has two), Shobhit ran into Phoenix, who was just elected to the Board, and I kept going on to check the mail instead of staying to hang out and listen to them talk shop. This gave me time to take out the recycling after getting back to the condo anyway.
I made us chai. We watched the season three premiere of
Ted Lasso, thanks to my three-month free trial of Apple TV+, of which there is only one month left so that will end well before the season does. Will I just pay for one more month of it? Who knows.
Shobhit made magi with tofu for dinner and it was pretty tasty; I ate it while both doing laundry and catching up on the last two weeks of
The Mandalorian on Disney+. I've got kind of mixed feelings on it so far, especially now that the vastly superior
Andor now exists. Plus, especially in the first two episodes, Grogu ("Baby Yoda") is deeply overused, like they decided to lean in on the cute little guy that made the show a hit in the first place, to the point of oversaturation. Last night's episode 3 has me more intrigued, however, as it cuts away from Mando and Grogu and suddenly follows two seemingly unrelated characters in my favorite location of any fictional universe, the city-planet of Coruscant. ("A trillion permanent residents," says one character.) The shift to this plot line seems not to have any relation at all to the title character, but I'm sure they will cross paths eventually.
Also: Pedro Pascal seems to move his head around in his Mandalorian helmet a
lot more now, shaking it almost like a bobblehead sometimes, which is very weird.
I was particularly amused by the quasi-meta moment in the premiere episode, though, when the Mandalorian says to someone, "His name is Grogu," and the response is: "Oh. Whatever you say." Ha! Because of course we all still know him as
Baby Yoda.
Side note: if a Mandalorian is meant never to take off their helmet, how strict is that anyway? So they sleep in their helmet? Do they fuck in their helmets? I want answers! Oh, wait. I guess these answers aren't
that hard to find.
— पांच हजार तीन सौ पचहत्तर —
[posted 12:29 pm]
