new york by bike is bewildering

The last couple of days, pang! I went to New Haven to see a city marked by decay -beautiful the old, rotten parking multi stories. Odd office buildings, looking like one of the inexperienced architecture students of Yale were allowed to try their luck. The model must have been out of toilet paper rolls. But the Campus itself, I was tricked into feeling very British, but hey might have been the weather, too. And then yesterday at eleven, the random idea to go biking through downtown Manhattan. Biking through Manhattan by night left a weird happiness but at the same time melancholy. Barely any cars, no people. My bike broke down twice, we had no wrench, then we did, left it locked to a fence anyways, afraid to totally break it, shared one bike, which was nice and cosy but scary too. Coming back from Hudson River we drove through the meatpacking district and drove into a scene that still spaces me out. Yellowish light, several huge trucks, a devastating smell and boxes, millions of them. Rows and rows of white smelly boxes. I immediately assumed fish. Trying to get out of this box jungle we drove into a dead end lane, at least for the bike, passing huge very grim looking men. When I wanted to squeeze through them a big guy stopped me shouting: ‘don’t , your boyfriend isn’t going to like that, when you’ll smell all like chicken at the party.’
Huh? Party, chicken, boyfriend? Chicken? CHICKEN? Sometimes I’m so glad to be a vegetarian.