CHICKEN WITH A SIDE ORDER OF BLEAKNESS

                                                       The site of this afternoon's incident.

An unfortunate aspect of the fast food restaurants in Sunset Park is that many of them are used as convenient shelter where the local homeless/junkies/hardcore alcoholics go to sleep it off or beg. Nearly every time I’ve dined in one, I have either been accosted for money or found myself seated next to some poor bastard who’s fighting a losing battle with consciousness and gravity. 

Today I went to Texas Chicken and Burgers (aka Tex's) for lunch and ended up catty-cornered to a Latin guy who was clearly passed out, and he was slowly oozing off of his seat. 

 

I took his picture to provide an example for my ongoing NYC life document, but not ten seconds after I snapped the pic, he fell face first to the floor with a heavy thud. 

 

There were only two other customers present and only one other witness, and I was the first to make it to the counter to alert the staff. Unfortunately the staff mostly doesn’t speak English (the only English that most of them know is what’s on the menu), so I had to coax out staffers using gestures. Two of them came out and immediately got what was going on, so they called for emergency assistance and then carried on like nothing had happened, probably because this kind of thing is a common occurrence during their average work day. Meanwhile, the guy just lay there on the floor and the other patrons simply ignored him. 

After about ten minutes an ambulance arrived and out stepped two bored-looking EMTs, an Asian woman and a Latino man. While the woman took notes, the man attempted to rouse the guy who was passed out on the floor. Speaking to him in Spanish and rolling him over twice did nothing, so the male EMT asked me if the guy was drunk or high. I told him he had been doing the classic junkie nod-and-lean, so I’d bet good money that he was smacked-out. With that information in mind, the EMT lightly slapped the guy around while continuing to address him in Spanish. The guy slowly roused and was groggily helped to his feet, where he wobbled and nearly fell on top of me. Once more or less steady on his feet, the guy was asked a series of simple questions before he was determined to be okay, and once cleared the staff ushered him outside and back into the streets of Sunset Park.