Monday

Outside Whole Foods in Union Square, NYC

Received Monday, June 18, 2007
I saw something strange this morning when I went to Whole Foods. A woman was outside the store milling about. I think nothing of this. I go in the store , the time is about 9:30 AM, I leisurely shop and leave the store approximately a 1/2 hour later. The nanny is still there. She looks anxious. 30 seconds later, a large Black man with a half beard, grey logo shirt, gold chain, approaches her slyly and reaches for her hand and slides her something. So quick, anyone could have missed it. As he disappears I see her open her palm to reveal a tiny plastic wrapped packet. Tiny. She sticks it in her back pocket. I am waiting for my help to get home with these bags so I remain standing in the vicinity. The woman heads off towards 14th. Street.
From this I have made these assumptions:
1) The woman was a nanny or sitter. She was pushing a very expensive, high BUG pram and her clothing and appearance was not conducive to that.
2) The woman was buying drugs. She never went in Whole Foods. And was clearly using the area as a meeting place.
Description of this nanny: About 5'5", white, extremely thin. I would guess around 100 lbs. Wearing blue jeans and a striped L/s cotton style shirt. White, with straight, Lt. brown hair that looked like it needed to be combed. Wide set, very pretty eyes, pale skin, nice mouth. Could have been very pretty if she put some effort in to it. She did not carry a handbag.
The child: A white, boy with brownish red, curly hair. He was not very visible. I cannot speculate as to age.
The stroller as I said was a Bug. Chrome and pale green with a black net underneath that was empty. No diaper bag, groceries, etc.

29 comments:

Anonymous said...

This could very well be the mother. Her being underweight and slovenly is an indication of a serious drug problem, rather than economic status. It sounds like her condition would be hard for an employer to miss.

Anonymous said...

maybe the kid and the stroller were just a means of distraction.
ala goodfellas.

Anonymous said...

if a mom was that deseprate, wouldn't she hawk the Bug? Wouldn't the bug be beat up and the kid disheveleed?

If I had a nanny, I would be checking her handbag. Mostly because I just like to snoop. But also looking for the chill.

Anonymous said...

Honestly, if you suspected this was a drug transaction, you should have taken pictures of both the women and the man who approached her. You could have then either contacted the police or posted the pics on here.

I had a neighbor who we suspected was dealing drugs. We began writing down liscense plate numbers and photographing the transactions. The police were able to use this information to bust them!

Anonymous said...

My assistant Todd tells me "yeah that's where you would go for some meth on a monday morning".

My thought, isn't that kind of far South for a BUG?

Cheryl said...

A few of the above comments seem extreme to me. This woman was buying a small amount of drugs, why would a child and stroller be needed for distraction? She's not selling,and the amount is small. Also, I am confused by the comments asking why the stroller wouldn't be beat up or sold. I think these are some really extreme ways of thinking based on this interaction.

Also, I am not so crazy about suggestions that people start taking pictures of strangers in drug deals in public places. If you expect this to happen and you can do it on the downlow, fine, but otherwise that is a very dangerous thing to do, especially if you have children with you. To the poster that suggested it, you state it was your neighbor you helped get busted, not someone you encountered in public.

I am not so convinced this is a nanny, but I am not convinced it is not. I think posting this here was a good thing to do though.

Anonymous said...

2:14 "far south for a BUG"?

You clearly don't know much about what goes on or who lives downtown.

Anonymous said...

I think the person who suggested that she take pics of drug transactions is dead on. (I'm laughing out loud now by the way.)
Yes, that's the ticket, good luck with that. And have fun getting shot at, stalked and finally killed by a NYC drug dealer.
Wow, the dumbasses on this board are so friggin chuckalicious. Lol.

Anonymous said...

Wait, you go shopping with your help?

Anonymous said...

I am going to venture to say that you have NO PROBABLE CAUSE that this woman was doing anything other than exchanging a personal item (her insulin? cash? lottery ticket? who the hell cares?) with someone she knows outside Whole Foods -- which is a common meeting place. Why the H-E-L-L would anyone buy/sell drugs in plain view outside Whole Foods? And since all of this happened "so quickly that anyone could have missed it," how the hell did you see it? Do you have superpowers, OP?

Your assumptions are nothing but assumptions based on this woman's race and your own cultural baggage. Shame on you.

Anonymous said...

Dude, the woman was white.
Cultural baggage?
Not only do you sound like a raging liberal, but also an incompetent douchebag.

Anonymous said...

2:58,
I apologize. I thought Kolcroft was the Stroller of choice for the downtown crowd. Carry on.

Anonymous said...

as for why wasn't the stroller or the child disheveled.....not every person who does drugs lives in squalor. some of those people are living high on the hog. and even if they are well off, if they are addicts and get desperate, they will hang out with their kid in an expensive stroller outside of whole foods to score a fix. but don't assume that JUST because they were scoring drugs it was a nanny rather than a mom.

Anonymous said...

3:26 ~
Good job in putting 3:24 in her place. She obviously doesn't know how to read or she would've seen that the OP was describing a white female ... hmmm, wonder if HER assumption makes HER a racist?
Anyhow - methinks this may be a Nanny with a very detached Employer, otherwise she wouldn't be getting away with such a disheveled appearance. If she was otherwise pretty, maybe the Employer is glad she doesn't fix herself up because of dh? ... or maybe she looks like shit because of all the long hours Boss Lady is working her and she needs a "pick-me-up"? (just kidding).
As for 2:13 ~
Are you out of your ever-loving mind? Take pictures of a drug transaction? That's about the dumbest thing I've ever read. And who says OP had a camera on her anyway ... yeah, we all walk around with cameras shoved in our pockets. If that was the case - we would have solved the mystery of the "sleeping Nanny" by now. Geez.

Anonymous said...

Why didn't you call the police and arrange to testify in court against this nanny?

Anonymous said...

On Monday mornings I enjoy picking out overpriced organic goods then strolling outside whilst waiting for the help to carry my bags. We all need to remember... even Steph from Full House turned into a meth head. And I bet she has nice strollers too!

Anonymous said...

My nanny starts at 6:45 in the morning so I can catch the train to the city. She lives in and comes straigh upstairs to get the mbaby monitor from me and say good bye. She looks like she just rolled out of bed because she did just roll out of bed. After the baby has her first feeding, the nanny goes back to bed for an hour or so. Gets up, makes coffee & takes a shower. While my own arrangement is hardly interesting, I can certainly say that I know lots of people who need their nannies to start very early and nanny usually has her look pulled together a little later in the morning.

Lisa said...

I have to chime in and say, I have a Bugaboo and I don't look like the typical Bug owner -- I often dress in my thrift store/Costco/Target finery when I go to the supermarket.
One day I'm afraid I'll see a post about myself on this blog!

Anonymous said...

OP, what the police say when you called them???????

Anonymous said...

Adam:
Who said anything about the mom being desperate? Cocaine is the drug of choice among well to do women. It is expensive, and they cay afford it. They don't look slovenly because of lack of money. Poor hygiene and lack of concern about appearance is a sign of drug use. It is usually the tip off teachers, therapists etc. are trained to look for.

Anonymous said...

3:37:

I guess you've never been to SOHO. Or the West Village. Or these days, the East Village.

Of course not. You're too cookie cutter.

Anonymous said...

3:24 - how naive you are! Drugs deals do go on, in plain sight, so not to cause suspicion. The hand shake and short encounter is a telltale sign. If this was someone the nanny (or whoever it was) knew, I would imagine the encounter would have lasted longer and not looked so suspicious. Come out of your bubble!

4:04 - 99.9% of cell phones now have cameras on them...and since just about everyone - including my 85 year old grandmother - has a cell phone, I feel that camera could be put to good use. This is why I can't understand that no one has gotten a picture of the sleeping nanny. You can take pictures of people without being caught very easily. Do a search on "upskirt shots" - you may be shocked at how many unsuspecting women have their pictures secretly taken everyday and posted all over the internet for perverts to see.

Anonymous said...

8:53 ~ 4:04 here :
Duh ... you know what? I just got a new phone with a camera/camcorder .... I wasn't thinking straight. You are right. But still - taking a pic of a possible drug transaction? That's taking a big risk, I think. Give me the sleeping Nanny any day.

Anonymous said...

946, do you watch a lot of Lifetime movies?

Anonymous said...

3:24 --I agree with you...

I think a lot of what we see in society is thwarted by a fog of racism and stereotypes. To me, it seemed the OP "assumed" this was a drug deal since the supposed "dealer" was a black man wearing "bling bling" associated with the ghetto hip hop culture of drugs violence and sex. I'm white. My husband is black. He occassionally wears a nice gold chain...he;s not even from this country and i'm sure all the mothers at the park freak out to see a black man playing with kids....at least in the affluent neighborhood that I live in. Even when my husband was house sitting for our next-door neighbors and doing their gardening, people thought he was "breaking in" and called the police--can any of you even IMAGINE being a stereotype????

Anonymous said...

Bling is diamonds. Not Gold.
And the point of this was that the white nanny was milling about for awhile. The man-who happens to be black, shows up, quickly slips her something and leaves.

Lets not be ass backwards liberals, okay?

Anonymous said...

Maybe he was slipping her a piece of candy... do you think that makes more sense than drugs?

I don't.

I was proud to see the OP stated, I am making these assumptions. Yes she is assuming, but it seems like a pretty good assumption to me.

Anonymous said...

1:10 ~
No ... I'm too busy dating your husband.

Anonymous said...

Bwahhhhh!