Benny Medina: Bing Bong!
The word on Dixwell Avenue Tuesday was: Enjoy the finer things.
On Tuesday, those finer things included a cappuccino from Hamden’s Common Grounds coffee shop, a trip to see John Legend in New York City … and ten dollar faux-Gucci wallets.
Benny Medina, 50, was purchasing the coffee on Dixwell Tuesday morning — and preparing to pick up the tickets and wallets later on — when he stopped to chat for WNNH FM’s “LoveBabz LoveTalk” “Word On The Street” segment.
Medina was beginning the day as he regularly does — first with an almond milk cappuccino from his local coffee joint, then some halal chicken from the Dixwell Deli Corner Store. “They bless the chicken before they kill ‘em and fry ‘em up nice,” he synopsized.
From there, the plumber had a special 24-hours planned, including a drive with his wife to New York to see a Harry Belafonte tribute concert featuring John Legend.
Next, on to Little Italy for the pastries — “I’m 300 right now, and when I come back I’m gonna be 325!” he announced — and Chinatown for the “fake merchandise industry.”
Last time he went to Chinatown, he said, he found fake Louis Vuitton wallets at $10 a piece for himself and his three children, aged 20, 16, and 14. “The bootleg industry’s got some good products!” Medina said.
On Tuesday, he was dishing out the cash from a Gucci knock-off — and mourning the fact that money is low.
“Cash rules everything around me,” he said. “And I don’t have any money right now.”
Besides concert tickets and $6 beverages, his income goes towards Hamden’s high taxes, he complained.
Moving to Hamden was a “big mistake,” he asserted. He came to town from Meriden to build a home with his wife. “The moral of the story is: Don’t fall in love, and you won’t get broke.”
However, Medina did fall in love — with the “one and only girl I got,” he said, and with “the finer things” in life.
“I’ve got that Puerto Rican blood in me,” he boasted, explaining his ongoing craving for human connection, celebration and pleasure. “Puerto Rican and Italian, baby! Bing bong!” he declared.
Of course, there are always external forces that threaten to ruin the fun (like Hamden’s taxes). Medina worried aloud that Tuesday’s concert would “suck” because masks were required in addition to vaccine cards. The previous week, he said, he went to another concert in Madison Square Garden that allowed attendees to go maskless if they were fully vaxxed.
“Up close, whatever, in a doctor’s office, hell yeah, I’ll wear a mask.” But in a group of fully vaccinated people, he questioned the need.
“Breathing’s a little difficult with a mask … You get hot, and when you get hot it’s hard to get cold,” Medina stated.
All the same, he said that he respects the concept of masking up if it makes those around him feel safer. For example, he said that while his “views don’t coincide” with the Hamden Board of Education, which voted to maintain a mask mandate in public schools Monday night, “I don’t wanna make problems for nobody or make somebody feel uncomfortable.”
“I will follow what they set out there,” he said.
It’s also challenging, he noted, to stay positive with a war waging in Ukraine.
Medina instructed his audience: “Just keep laughing. Have a good time, be happy and try to enjoy life.”
Watch the full conversation below.
