The Knock off Louis

Sometimes I get asked to do really weird things at work that seem totally out of whack to me and should seem abnormal to the people that have me do them, but apparently it was all fine print in my original job description. Yesterday afternoon one of our VPs (who commutes in from PA) asked me to go down to Canal Street and get his daughter a knock-off Louis Vuitton. There are a lot of factors in heading down to Chinatown for knock-offs and one of them is that they don't really trust men. This man happens to look exactly like a cop and since he was raised in Brooklyn his accent doesn't helpl his case. For some reason every sketchy salesperson ever trusts me so its not a problem for me to head down there and at least try. So he gave me some cash and away I went. Walking down there I planned out a strategy. First and foremost to go into a couple of booths and check out their wares.

Canal Street has two knock-off industries going. There is one that involves really bad knock-offs that look kind of like what a bag might look like but definitely isn't. Then there are the really good knock-offs that are kept behind closed doors and have to be found through these people on the streets who whisper the brands they carry into your ear. There is a hum of "Prada, Gucci, Dior, Louis Vuitton..." that you won't hear anywhere else in the world.

I wandered in and out of booths, finally selecting one off a street that seemed to at least have the right brands tacked on the bags. I loitered in there for a few moments before casually passing hte woman who ran the booth and asking, "Louis Vuitton?" She shook her head and motioned to a small statured Chinese man who was bouncing up and down the street, collecting people in a general area. I went up to him and nodded. He nodded back and shoved me through a plain metal door into a dank hallway with about six other people. We were herded into an elevator and went up an indiscernable number of floors before the doors opened into near-blackness. The man jumped out, looked up and down the hallway, motioned for us to be quiet, then herded us into a line. I saw doors all over the place, all labeled in letters and locked with padlocks. One of them was just closing and behind it I saw the white glow of the Dior summer collection. He pulled out more keys than a janitor, selected one and opened a lock, again shufffling us all into a room. This was full of Louis Vuitton hanging on the walls, carefully displayed on shelves. They were fantastic knock-offs and I was pleased to see the one that the VP's daughter wanted on the wall. I selected it and told him this was the one I wanted. We bargained for a few minutes, came to an agreed price, and I handed him the money while he knotted it in a plain black plastic bag. It was not dissimilar to a drug deal or buying porn.

He asked if I was done and when I said yes, jumped back out into the hallway, looked up and down, lips pursed, eyes narrowed. He waved me out there, shut the door behind me shuffled me back down the darkened hallway, opened another door and pushed me into a stairwell, slamming the door behind me. I was in a stairwell in a building I had never seen before and had no idea where the heck I was. I followed the stairs down and came out of another door in the wall, back into Daylight and the hustle and bustle of Canal Street.

It was such a funny experience but at the same time such a common one. You become really used to having to do such things in order to purchase knock-off bags or sneak into hip clubs or whatever you're trying to do. I think it's part of the New York way of life.