Read Online Tales of Times Square: Expanded Edition by Josh Alan Friedman - Free Book Online Page B

to watch them dance. They are fledgling break dancers, executing spontaneous beginner dips and dives and spins, not yet matured into dance steps or acrobatics. But tourists are charmed, and every minute some ticket holder stops to smile, clap, or dance along and toss a coin. Other kids may wash windshields on 42nd Street, but these are minstrels. Street urchins without parental guidance. They have no ghetto blasters, no rap or funk tracks to dance to, which makes them an a cappella dance troupe. All of them wear slum-certified Keds sneakers, and know how to walk on the insides of their ankles, an old comedian’s trick that is their most advanced move. The head kid, who whispers instructions to the rest, wears a black cap and carries a cane.
    A potbellied, jolly fellow stops to join them, as his wife watches, charmed. He loves little kids, obviously, it makes no difference what kind. He pulls some change from his trousers and has them guess which hand. Making direct eye contact, he matches them step for step, dancing along, belly abounce, a real hoofer. Next he pulls out a dollar bill and throws it in their shoe box. Paper money is a rare and euphoric acquisition, which sets them to yelling and pulling at each other.
    “Yo, mister!” shouts one of the breakers, tugging the coat of the potbellied gentleman, now twenty steps down the block with his wife. “Tell ‘em it’s for me, all right?” The five of them argue over whom the buck was intended for, but then scurry off to another corner, as if they’d already milked this corner for its spoils. Wow!
    Next to the Orange Morris (formerly Julius) on Seventh and 46th, the four best break dancers in Times Square are passing the collection plate to a dozen spirited passersby. “Pay up, pay up!” demands the collector with the box. “If you watched, you gotta throw in at least a penny!” Only three or four cough up. The collector hams about in a duck walk, an ankle walk, but nothing so tricky as to spill over the coin box. On a warm spring night such as this, they might get $15 apiece. These are the big boys, about sixteen years old—though the fourth member is eight. They have a high-volume JVC blaster with plenty of rap cassettes. They wear uniforms, or at least their own cultivated personal dress. Two of them have windbreaker jackets and pants, the fat one named Jelly wears a brown stocking over his head, and the small fry just wears corduroys. They are joined by friends who come and go, subwaying down from Harlem, but basically they are known as the Fantastic Four; they were once picked by Pee Wee Herman to do a guest set during his engagement at Caroline’s Comedy Club.
    When the five undomesticated street urchins arrive before the Fantastic Four, they are too intimidated to speak and merely take their place among other spectators on the sidewalk. In fact, they’re treated with disdain by the Four, who keep yelling for them to make room “so the people can see.” None of the urchins would dare break dance in such presence, but they study the motions with mouths agape, especially the little member of the Fantastic Four, whom they follow enviously. This little fellow is advanced, born into rap and backbeat funk tracks, knowing no other music before this electronic genre—not Motown, not James Brown, not Bach.
    The Four’s rival breaker group, Float Committee, spills past Orange Morris. The pavement heats up now, the Four breaking harder, screaming louder, pushing back the five little squirts, who can’t seem to stay out of the way. Someone yells for a face-off—Fantastic Four versus Float Committee. This is dance gang war!
    The fat guy with stockinged head glides out to face Float Committee’s fat guy. They dance off. The first fat guy falls to the ground in a seal imitation, rocking like a seesaw, flapping his fins. He maneuvers his hands over his torso, simulating quivering belly flab. His rival merely holds out his arms, as though electricity is snaking