Louis Vuitton Whores Shopping In Chinatown from Planck's Constant

Hester Street, New York City
Photo Credit: Google Maps

As some of my readers know, I have been doing business in New York's Chinatown for more than 30 years. If you need a knock-off of any name-brand handbag, watch, boots, etc. Chinatown is for you.

Years ago you could buy any counterfeit product from a Chinese-owned Canal Street business simply by asking for it, however the police have done such a good job these past few years closing these places down that the sellers have been forced to move their operations to the surrounding side-streets. Now we observe roving gangs of young Chinese selling their fugazies on the sidewalks of Hester Street, one block north of Canal.

Here is how it works: The hawkers single out female tourists, ideally a small group of two or more women, approach them muttering sotto voce the words "Gucci," "Coach," and "Louis Vuitton," to get their attention. If the tourists indicate that they are looking for handbags, they will be given a one-page color-catalog of the latest designer handbags available at 10% to 20% of the cost of the genuine article and depending on your negotiating skills sometimes even less. Many can be purchased starting at eighty dollars.

You want watches? Out come a few samples. Don't see one you like? Here pick one from a flyer displaying dozens of brands of designer watches. Just point, agree to the price, and a minion will be sent packing to retrieve your item.

Positioned at strategic corners are the lookouts with cell-phones and walkie-talkies watching for the police. Amazingly and quite brazenly there will sometimes be as many as twenty or thirty tourists buying handbags, watches, or other designer faux pieces.

They do quite a business for the simple reason that the knock-offs today are very difficult to identify from the original. Very few women can tell the real from the fake and so are unable to resist the urge to buy a $700 or $1200 handbag at a fraction of the cost, especially if they believe their friends won't be able to spot a fake either.

So if you see a friend of yours sporting an eight hundred dollar Coach Kristin Embossed Croc Satchel and an equally priced pair of Giuseppe Zanotti Suede Boots but you don't know how she can afford them, remember: things are not always as they appear.

For example consider this amiable-looking fellow, Nidal Malik Hasan:

Born here in the United States, Nidal was raised in our American culture, went to an American college, joined the American Army and became a psychiatrist. To all appearances he seemed an American the same as you or me. According to the Council on American-Islamic Relations there are millions of Muslims and they are all just like any other American. One of their slogans for last year's Ground Zero Mosque campaign is “We have more in common than we think.” ¹

But they are not just like us; sure they look like the real thing, but just as Nidal above, things are not as they appear: in their hearts they are Muslims first and nothing second. When given a choice between going to war against Muslim enemies, strangers he has never met, who are not related to him, who he did not grow up with, and killing Americans, soldiers he personally knew at the Fort, Americans he grew up with, Nidal chose to kill fellow Americans rather than possibly harm an enemy stranger from a culture foreign to his own.

Muslims have more in common than we think? I don't think so. Real American? I know a fake when I see one.

Addendum - 17 Mar 2011

I should mention that I do not want to give the impression that one cannot buy fakes on Canal Street at all, it is only the stores themselves that stopped selling them - one can still find young Chinese hawking Coach bags and Gucci watches on Canal, especially between Broadway and Lafayette Street. Simply look for a young girl standing still and facing the storefront with her arms akimbo or folded. As you pass by you should hear whispered "Coach, handbags...watches."

Notes

(1):

Southern California Public Radio, 2 Sept 2010, Muslim community launches TV campaign to fight hate speech
A Muslim group is speaking out against the backlash against plans to build an Islamic community center a few blocks from ground zero in New York. They say it’s spawned a lot of hate speech against Muslims in general. They’re hoping a new series of TV public service announcements will help. The Los Angeles chapter of the Council in American-Islamic Relations — or CAIR — unveiled those PSA’s in Anaheim yesterday.
The PSA’s have two themes: “We have more in common than we think” and “9/11 happened to us all.”