Overheard

I came across Overheard in KC a few weeks ago and experienced a pang of regret or more specifically a re-pang.

OKC operates on a simple model: People overhear something funny/strange/poignent or whatever while they're out and about, write them down and send them in. The site was inspired by Overheard in New York, which has been around since at least 2003, near as I can tell. I came across ONY a few months ago and experienced the original pang.

I lived in New York for the better part of 1997 and 98 and was a very happy pedestrian, riding the subways and buses and ferries, pounding the pavement, sitting in libraries and coffee shops. And of course eavesdropping, which is the unofficial pastime and inalienable right of anyone living in that humming hive of humanity.

One day in May 1998 I was walking through the East Village. I turned off Sixth Avenue at 8th Street and within the first block I overheard the following snippets of conversation:

- Her father's in the construction business in Indianapolis. Very sweet...
- You can't talk to the dead. Everybody thinks you can...
- I think I'm gonna turn into a piece of falafel.
- I think I'd like to become a professor.
- Only the stupid people like to spend money.

I took out my little notebook and jotted it down. That evening I shared it with my girlfriend and some of her friends. We all laughed. I discovered that I had a bunch of eavesdroppings in my notebook. For example, a woman in her 20s saying to her friend: "What he doesn't want to hear is that she wanted to kiss me."

Someone said I should just walk around and write down what I hear. I said, "Yeah, I could just label each one with the location I overheard." My girlfriend said, "Yeah, you could publish it with pictures of street corners. New Yorkers eat that kind of stuff with a spoon." And like so many of my plans from those days, that's as far as it went.

Five years later along came S. Morgan Friedman and Michael Malice and overheardinnewyork.com. Then last January they published the book. And sure it's only #13,347 on Amazon's top selling book list, but I'm not bitter. The site is a fun stop although the titles are a little show-offy for me. I wish them well, even as I grind my teeth.

Overheard in KC has some nice photos but it hasn't exactly been mobbed with material, a fact to be speculated on. Maybe we're just more discreet here. Or maybe because people in KC spend more time in their cars we have less opprotunity to snoop. There's also something un-bloglike about having to submit something and then waiting for it to be approved. That's a little too much like old-skool publishing. (Overheard in New York does the same thing.)

Speaking of snooping, I overheard something recently that I thought was great. It was the sort of thing you probably wouldn't hear in NY.

At Costco, man to female companion:
"We oughta get us one of them high-end chicken pot pies. Whaddya think?"