A Common Scam

The guy sitting one bench over on the subway has a small pile of CD-ROMs in his lap, with obviously home-printed labels and insert cards. His eyes are closed as we ride across the bridge.

I remember my first week in New York, walking through Times Square, when a guy came up to me and, in increasingly aggressive tones, “sold" me his rap CD for ten bucks (which, of course, turned out to be blank - a very common scam).

The guy with the CDs on my train gets off at Barclay’s Center in Brooklyn, and I wonder who he’s gonna try to scam tonight, or if he’s just hustling for his music.