I love a person from Philly. Most people I associate with aren’t, however, and the ones that are (like my 260 posse) have moved away to Brooklyn or something. Nikki turns out to not only be from Olney, where I grew up, but is also into a ridiculous amount of the same things I am – like where was she all my life?
“My name is Nikki Santiago. I grew up in Olney and now I live in West Philly.”
“Word. How would you describe your style?”
“Well, everything I own fits into one of two general color schemes. One is aqua, purple, and pink. And one is primary colors, so yellow, blue, and red. And other than that, I kind of like to dress like a kindergartener or Rudy Huxtable, who is my style icon.”
“Ohh man that’s pretty good.”
“It’s true.”
“Is there anything you wish people would or would not wear in Philly?”
“Oohhh, hmmm! I wish less girls would wear shaggy straight bangs, saggy winter hats, umm. The same shit. I just wish people would stop dressing exactly the same as each other. And I wish people would wear more colors, less black.”
“Less, like straight up black, just all black?”
“Well, yeah, less like straight up black. Less ‘if I wear black I will look okay black’ – safe black. Less safe black. More daring black. More other colors. Like, I’ll just look off the subway, I’ll get off the subway and look around and and there’s nothing that catches my eye. Like nothing inside of all the black that makes me look at it. Which is wack.”
“It’s true. What is your favorite item that you’re wearing right now?”
“I guess it’s my zipper pull. I like my zipper pull a lot. I started getting into zipper pulls cause I saw them on Kid Robot, but then I found out that you could go to certain websites that have stuff from Japan and get them for like, two bucks. And so many more choices. And not blind assortment, so you get exactly what you want. So probably that, and these button earrings I got for like fifty cents.”
“Nice, nice…”
“And my lunchbox cause it’s got bangin shit inside! And I’m about to eat it in the library – wassup!”
(Pause for lots of posturing and tossing around Philly slang like we’re hard.)
“What’s your current obsession?”
“You mean style obsession or just general obsession?”
“No, no, yeah, general obsession.”
“What is my current obsession? My current obsession is Last.fm. Seriously. All I do is is get new music off of Last.fm. Or recommendations. Also, my other one is the new Autechre album. It’s like my super duper obsession. It just came out last week and I can’t stop listening to it.”
“Can I borrow it?”
“Yes you can borrow it!”
“Yaayy!”
“It’s really, really, really good and they’re coming to town. I’m so excited. I think that’s it. And um, Stephen Crane.
“Who’s that?”
“Some old American writer. Something totally uncool. Oh, and Lost. And catching up on Lost. Watching Lost for free online.”
“Let me see, is there anything else?”
“Packing lunches. ‘Sup with packing lunches. And thinking about them all day until I get to the point where I get to eat it, it’s just mmmhmm! You know?”
(starts eating delicious tortilla chips)
“Dang. Okay, I think that’s it!”