I’m a…Culinary

So a few months back I was stopped by some of New York’s Finest on my way to work. For quite some time now, I’ve been talking to both chef and non-chef friends of mine about what one should do in just such a situation. There are something like 8 Million people in New York City and an innumerable amount of restaurants, some opening, some closing and some thumbing their noses at recessions as easily as they do at fannypack-wearing tourists. With these restaurants, obviously come an army of cooks. The men and women who keep odd hours, stand on their feet all day, pickle their livers and partake in various other “extracurricular activities.”
Many of these cooks take their knives with them, to and from work. And you’ve got to figure, that sooner or later, one of these people is going to be stopped by members of the Constabulary to perform a “random” search of a person with an oddly shaped oblong bag on their back. What do you say when you take the bag off your shoulders, lay it on the table, open it up and the cops see forty inches of sharpened steel sitting in front of them? Well, here’s one possibility…
I was heading to work one day, talking to a buddy of mine who lives in LA, and not really paying attention to much else. I made my way through the subway station doors, busted out my MetroCard and was almost about to swipe when I actually registered the authoritative voice booming out, “EXCUSE ME! EXCUSE ME!” from somewhere behind me. I turn around, still on the phone mind you, and see two Boys in Blue beckoning me over to a plastic table. I walk over to the table, probably a little too nonchalant, and ask them, “hey what’s going on?” and then into my phone, “no, not you I’m getting stopped by the cops right now…no, its cool, I can talk.” The officers proceed to tell me they have selected me for a random search and ask me to remove and open my bag for them. I say into my phone, “hang on a sec, I gotta take my knives off, the cops wanna see them.” At this point, the two of them exchange a brief quizzical look as I ask my buddy to hang on, and lay my knife bag on the table.
As I unroll my knives, with my phone still cradled between my ear and shoulder, I look to the cops and say, “look, officers, I’m a cook. These are my knives and I need them for work.” The cops look at my knives, they look at each other, they look at my knives again and sort of shrug. Then one of them says to me, “oh, okay…so you’re a…you’re a culinary.” I look at the two of them, roll my knives back up, sling them back over my shoulder and say to them, “yes, I’m a culinary.”