become the world’s first dining and leisure shantytown, a brand-new cold- brewski slum with extra cheese. But it’s gambling that’s the real meat and drink. It’s done on the same confounding electronic video-card-playing devices that the Pequot Indians are using to reconquer Connecticut. Albania is a country that, from 1986 to 1990, imported a total of sewing machines, electric stoves, and hot-water heaters numbering zero. And Tirana is a city with electricity as reliable as congressional-committee testimony on campaign contributions. But there they are: the very latest examples of wallet-vacuuming technology from America, available everywhere and, through some miracle of Mafia-to-Mafia efficiency, functioning smoothly all day. Albania is also a country where the poverty line is $143 a month for a family of four. Eighty percent of Albanians are living below that line. And what looks like 80 percent of Albanians are standing in front of bleeping, blinking games of chance feeding 100-lek coins—fifty-cent pieces—into the maw. The most- common commercial sign in Tirana is AMERICAN POKER . The second most common sign is SHITET . Appropriately. Although it actually means “for sale.” Appropriately. Or perhaps it should be “up for grabs,” whatever that is in Albanian. Maybe it’s “Amex.” I went to an American Express office to get some money, and they were completely taken aback. They would never have anything so grabbable as money right there in an office. For money you go to the Bank in the Middle of the Street. Here—everyone being surreptitiously armed—great wads of money are being waved around, some of it peculiar. I got a few greenbacks with the green on the backs more of a pants-at- a-Westport-cocktail-party shade than usual and a twenty with something dark and odd about the presidential portrait. Was Andrew Jackson in the Jackson 5? The thousands of tape cassettes being sold in the middle of the street are counterfeit, too. At least I hope they are. I’d hate to think anyone was paying royalties on Bulgarian disco and Turkish rap. The Marlboros are real, however, and cost less than they do when they fall off the back of a truck in Brooklyn. The clothes fell off a truck, too, I think, though not, unfortunately, a DKNY semi. Albanians have the Jersey Dirt Mall mode of dress figured out. Like everything else, these duds are sold intra-avenue, from racks mingled with car accidents, royalists, money, guns, and automated five-card draw.
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