It’s that time of year all you just-in-it-for-the-bragging-rights Jews have been waiting for: Passover! A time when yentas and gentiles alike gather to celebrate freedom, resilience and the gift of life. Also to remember that time that God laid down his wrath on the Egyptians over and over and over again until he freed the Jews. Of course, these days you might not be afraid of things like frogs, thunderstorms or darkness (you’ve got a flashlight on your iPhone, after all). So, in honor of the holiday we decided to update The Ten Plagues to get a look at what we might be dealing with if we ever have to face God’s judgement. Enjoy the chill these BK-specific horrors send down your spine, and happy Passover!
1. All Your Favorite Dive Bars Turn into Condos (Water into Blood)
It’s no secret that all of our favorite bars are slowly disappearing. But in the plague-version, it happens in the blink of an eye. Picture it: you’re sitting at Full Circle, drinking a beer with your friends, and suddenly BAM. You’re sitting in a lobby lined with ferns, chugging the cucumber water tank under the disapproving eyes of a condo concierge. Scary.
2. French Tourists in head-to-toe Nets Gear Keep Asking You, “Where is the Real Brooklyn?” (Frogs)
Goddamn you, French tourists! Everywhere in Brooklyn is the real Brooklyn! Dissatisfied with your explanation, however, the streets continue to blacken with more and more Nets hats, as the French swarm into the streets, convinced that the food carts lined up outside of Barclays are what the Americans call “block party.”
3. Bedbugs (Lice)
You have bedbugs, but they’re not skittish like normal bedbugs. No. These bedbugs are going to touch you with the lights on. These bedbugs are so voracious that they attack only you, as your roommate looks on with disgust and says, “Get a room!” Ah. She forgets. You already have your own room.
4. Raccoons (Wild animals)
Oh sure, you’re a hardened New Yorker. You can deal with mice, rats, even the occasional stray coyote. What are you gonna do when your neighborhood is overrun with rabid raccoons though, rooting through your trash at all hours, scratch scratch scratching your roof and terrorizing your dog?
5. Hormones in your Meat, Even if it’s “Organic” (Cattle Disease)
All the meat in town—regardless of whether it’s cage-free/farm-raised/organic/I Was Loved label—is tainted. You have no choice but to ingest thousands of known carcinogens with every bite. Every roast you make, every fish you bake, every single steak…will be killing you.
6. HPV (Boils)
This isn’t your mother’s STD. This HPV is written all over your genitals, screaming from your nether-parts like a neon sign off the Jersey turnpike. And the worst part is that nobody wants to admit that they have it, that we all have it. So nobody will fuck anybody, and every date ends with you alone crying into your beer about your lack of “prospects.”
7. Poorly-Named Hurricanes, All the Way to Z (Thunderstorms)
Hurricane Abilene. Hurricane Brie. Hurricane Cher. Donny. Elvis. Fonz! A slew of hurricanes ravage the borough, causing floods and outages and de Blasio’s reconsideration of evacuation zones. Worst of all, the storms have such dumb names that hearing about them on the news just makes you laugh, which makes you forget that your home is being swept up mid-laughter, and all the cows raccoons are swept up around you, while a witch on a bicycle hovers nearby, cackling at your misfortune.
8. Bro-custs invade Williamsburg, call it a “nice place to live” (Locusts)
A swarm of bros bigger than any communal table at Radegast touches down in Williamsburg. God, they’re everywhere. For a moment everything is utter, total calm. Then someone yells out, “Jagerbombs!” and the nightmare comes alive. The bros begin to dance to house music (where is it coming from!), flooding the neighborhood with a sea of Red Bull not even Moses could part. Rent prices spike, tap lists quickly devolve into all-macro madness, and you watch in horror as the bro-custs continue to land ad infinitum, congratulating each other on finding their “affordable” $2,000/month studios on Kent. OH GOD, THEY ALL LIVE ON KENT!!
9. Looking Down into a Train Tunnel Late at Night, Hallucinating Glimmers Forever (Darkness)
You’re banished to a wifi-less train platform, where the dark tunnel reveals just enough light that you keep thinking a train is coming. No one else is on the platform with you, and the minute-counter for the train just resets over and over and over. Every now and then an automated voice says, “Ladies and Gentlemen, the next [x] train to [y] is now arriving. Please stand clear of the platform edge.” But the train never comes.
10. Theft of Your First Bike (Slaying of the First Born)
You just bought a shiny new bicycle, opting out of the Craigslist searches because you wanted to “invest” in a ride that would last for years. But what’s this? You forgot to smear sheep’s blood on the handlebars, the universal sign for “Don’t fucking steal my bike.” And when the bicycle reaper passes over your house, he spies your ten-speed locked up innocently behind the fence. You see him break the lock from inside your apartment, and you’re screaming, “No! Just take the seat!” He is deaf to your cries. He rides off on your precious bike into the dead of night. The wind howls.
Follow Sam on Twitter for more mishegas.
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*slow clap*
Beautifully done, Sam. Brought a tear to my eye.
Funny, but this happened to my family about 50 years ago. There we were happily in Flatbush when my mother parted Jamaica Bay (she was a very strong woman) and we went to the “Promised Land.” We’ve been wandering in Long Island ever since.