For quite some time I have been thinking of going to paint the Sunday farmers' market on Queens Blvd. It has been a tradition that in summertime there is a farmers' market in front of the Jewish Synagogue on Queens Blvd. It is good thinking because the Jewish have religious services on Saturday instead of Sunday so farmers just use the space to sell their products and urban residents can have some fresh veggies or fruits. There is a park island off the access road. The other side of the park island is Queens Blvd.
This morning I set up on the edge of the park by a zebra crossing. Two farm boys were doing business with their backs to me . When I just got started, a car pulled in, right in front of me. It totally blocked my vision. An African-American girl got out of the car. As soon as she saw my desperate long face and realized what she had done to me, she apologized to me and, noticing there was a car ahead was just pulling out, she popped back into her car and moved away.
I learned my lesson and put my shopping buggy in the slot so that people would know it was not vacant. However, 20 minutes later, when I looked up from my canvas, a woman had removed my shopping buggy and pulled in her car in that slot. I asked what she was doing. She simply said there was not other space. Actually, people kept pulling in and out, just for some vegetables. It was not like cinema parking lot, but she crossed the street to talk to the vendor. At that time the car right behind hers was pulling out. I hollered to her, asking her to move her car to that spot. She simply ignored me. That was the last straw.
Throughout my whole career as an artist, I've never met with anyone so impolite and unreasonable. So I simply put away everything in my shopping buggy, including the unfinished painting. I did leave something for the woman to remember me by. I emptied the whole container of turpentine from my brush cleanser over the windshield of her car.
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