and everything is beautiful when you're young and pretty

Best part of the weekend: driving over the Manhattan in the jeweled sunshine, singing aloud to "New York City" by They Might Be Giants with Stuart and thinking how that was our song from the very week we met, and looky there! Here we are.

humanizing the system

Subway conductor, after a ten minute delay between the 14th and 8th Street stations: "This N is running local on the R line. It's going to take you a while to get to Brooklyn."

Subway conductor, after another six minutes between Prince and Canal: "We're pulling into Canal now, you can transfer upstairs for the Q which is running over the bridge. It's not the N but it'll get you to Brooklyn faster, so that's what you should do."

Pause.

"... I know I would."

conversa interruptus

I boarded a jam-packed F train at 14th to find myself jammed right next to an adorable HipsterCouple. The girl, with long lashes and a babyish pout, is looking up at this blue eyed guy with a chiseled jaw who is categorically not looking back at her.

For a second I think, maybe this isn't actually HipsterCouple at all. Maybe she's just a gawking stranger thrown closer than normally acceptable to some eye candy. But no, she leans in a little a tilts her chin back in an attempt to catch his eyes. Eyes which are sweeping back and forth almost sullenly along the car, even meeting my indecent staring as I try and suss out the connection.

So I let my eyes linger on the poster behind his head, drooping my eyelids just lazily enough to seem like I'm actually staring at nothing. It's amazing the capacity New Yorkers have to Not Stare at someone and still not miss a move. And I don't have to be an expert non-starer to get the vibe that HipsterBoyfriend is one pissed dude.

Girlfriend is still swaying near him, looking up, looking away, looking up again. She's not even holding on to anything, I think, maybe she's hoping if she stumbles he'll reach out? Looking up again, she speaks.

"It was only eighty-nine dollars."

Still without looking, Boyfriend manages to acknowledge she spoke. Mostly by rolling his eyes. He's rolling his eyes above her head! What was eighty-nine dollars? Is it this eighty-nine dollars the source of this odd non-verbal fight? Why is this the only thing she says? Does this explain his frostiness, or is it just a complete non-sequitur that nonetheless makes sense to the boyfriend?

I cast about wildly in my brain for a logical explanation. She spent too much on a purse? She borrowed money from his wallet? She's explaining an expensive dinner that an ex-boyfriend paid for? WHAT'S only eighty-nine dollars?! Or, god forbid, are they not in a fight at all? Is this just the way this prettyboy behaves, like, all the time?

I wait in vain for a response. About 90 seconds later, when I get off the train, he still hasn't answered. Sometimes riding the subway in New York tells you too much about the total strangers around you. And sometimes, tantalizingly, it tells too little.

you suck!

Here are some things that are annoying about the subway. And by "things that are annoying about" I mean "people that are annoying on". I notice them all the more clearly because other than these sucky people I really enjoy my daily subway rides. So sucky people, I just want to clear the air.

Lady who hugs and/or leans on the entire pole in the center of a crowded car! No one else can get their hands on the pole if you are snuggling with it. Are you lonely? Wait I don't care. There are four people standing right next to you and they are all involuntarily subway-surfing on their way home from work (which is hell on their knees) because you think that pole is your own personal subway pole, like maybe the MTA woke up one day and thought you might be the Queen. You suck!

Dude sitting next to me who is falling asleep! You have your head in your hands and your elbows on your knee and you slump towards me every three seconds and then jerk yourself away, all still asleep. A second ago, you actually leaned your elbow ON MY KNEE. Then when I not-so-subtly shove you off me with my shoulder, you wake up and give me the stinkeye. Dude, it's really annoying to have someone leaning on you and then jerking away every three seconds. Besides, you've probably missed your stop. I'll bet you actually live in the Bronx. You suck!

Creepy guy who stares at me from across the car and then turns to your friend to comment on something and then turns back to me with your friend this time. WTF! I am sitting here reading, I am not pole-dancing for you. I say pole-dancing because if I were pole-dancing for you, well, I feel like you'd probably feel entitled to stare at me, discuss me with your friend, and then stare at me in unison. Compare "pole-dancing" to "reading on public transport" and you will see that the courtesy standards for each are subtly but importantly different. There is no need to comment on whatever you're commenting on to your friend and then encouraging him to look at me and reply to your comment, whatever your comment is, and I'm offended even though I can't hear you because I'm quite sure it is not the modern cut of my herringbone coat or the stylish design of my shoes. Get some tact! You suck!

Teenagers on the subway who are engaging in your not-at-all subtle mating rituals and sitting on each other and then holding conversations across the subway car! You, there, girl, stop pulling your hair back so tight and why are you wearing fake nails you are all of thirteen years old where is your mother. Guy with the pants, guy, why are your pants falling off? Why are you hunched over and using foul language? The world is your oyster and you are all acting like douchebags. This is not your private subway car and even thought you are all amused by each others' antics, no one else is, do you see any of these taxpaying hard-working adults laughing at your antics? No. Teenagers, gettoffamylawn. You suck!

Oh, Hispanic middle-aged guys who get onto the train with your ponchos and your wide crinkly smiles and your instruments and your jangly harmonious Spanish ballads and sing for everyone, you do NOT suck. You can stay.

untitled

So I'm going to tell you something embarassing. Every year since 2002, I've stifled this ludicrous impulse to say "Happy September 11th", although I never seem to catch myself in time before saying it inside my head. Seconds later I always think, sheesh but that's inappropriate.

It's inappropriate but it stems from something true, I think. That's how we commemorate holidays, you know? Happy Halloween, Happy Fourth of July, Happy President's Day. I mean, why is it a happy President's Day? You start to think of the word Happy as a meaningless addition to a named holiday, simply a way to say "It's ____ Day!" My President's Days and Memorial Days aren't any Happier than other days except usually I'm off work, which is swell. So what does this word Happy mean and why does it spring so undesired to my mind in the morning every year, usually when I'm pouring the water into my tea cup and realize the date? It's definitely not a Happy day in September, but what else do you say? Solemn September 11th, perhaps?

Every year, too, I try and think of the right way to mark the day, since tagging it with Happy isn't really winning awards. I didn't lose anyone personally close to me in the attacks. I had some friends who were running away from downtown but they are all physically fine. In 2002, I celebrated (see? can't say that either), well, commemorated by taking the day off, doing things that brought me pleasure. When I was still working in the city, with a view downtown, I'd always stare out my window at nothingness, at the absence of what I was noting, perhaps even grieving if that's not too dramatic a word. I've never been to the World Trade Center site (I still can't call it Ground Zero) except to walk past in on my way to that stupidly inconvenient movie theatre in Battery Park.

Most years, I've simply let the day pass, noting it in the morning over tea by watching the reading of the names. I like the reading of the names. I think there couldn't be a more simple, powerful way for us to remember what really happened on September 11th - a lot of people lost their lives. I like hearing the names of strangers because in hearing it, I am honoring them without any unnecessarily dramatic show of grief. There is power in words and names, and there always has been. I switch off the television when people start eulogizing but I always listen to the names.

Odd, too, is that I never cry on September 11th. Odd, I mean, for someone as highly, almost excessively emotional as I am. I mean, I cried in Hocus Pocus, people. I cry at McDonald's commercials. But somehow I am left sombre and dry-eyed on 9/11.

Perhaps because I am actually pretty contrary by nature and things that are supposed to evoke a very specific type of emotion usually find me resisting. Or perhaps because I feel like there are enough legitimately heartrending tears flowing in the world, even six years later, as terrible fallout from that day, and mine aren't needed - only my attention and my awareness is required. Or perhaps because I am just not moved to cry, I think every year, and that makes me feel heartless when I know I'm not.

So I don't cry, I don't have a tradition - every year I approach it differently but always with the same reservations, the same conflicting reactions. I suspect that other New Yorkers are in this boat with me. I say New Yorkers not because I am a 9/11 snob (and they are out there, people who think you can't have any grief for the occasion if you were not physically here) but because for us, it wasn't just the horror of the lives lost but also the horror of the gash left on our landscape. The air pollution and the fear and the jarring change in people's days and lives were these almost insulting aftereffects of all that grief. Aftereffects which even in the shadow of the larger tragedy had their own consequences.

I think, too, well, I suspect, that a lot of New Yorkers have gleaned this sense of perverse pride after 9/11, pride in the way people bonded and strengthened, pride to see all those stereotypes about our unfeelingness shattered once and for all, pride even to see the rest of the country stop berating us and start rejoicing us. It's a dirty sort of pride, perhaps we wish we could have had all that camaraderie without the towers' collapse, but it is nonetheless pride.

So we are left with no Hallmark phrase to recognize the day, the sense that 9/11's aftershocks have not stopped yet, and this weird perverse pride and possessiveness about our town/our tragedy. Well, I know that's where I'm left. How do you neatly package bedfellows like grief, resentment, defiance, disconnectedness? They don't fit together neatly. I feel every year as though I have been given an extra hand and I need to use it for something but I don't know what. I already had two hands! What am I supposed to do with this other one?

And I think maybe a lot of New Yorkers who are here every year and passing through and by the city's shows of remembrance, also are a little bewildered at what, if anything, is asked of them. It isn't often that I feel heartless, or feel as though I am not engaging enough in the world around me. But today always leaves me a little disconnected from everything but the immediacy of my fellow subway travelers, to whom I'd never say Happy September 11th anymore than I'd say Merry Christmas. I see people around me and all I can think is that at some point today we're all thinking about the same thing. Is that a commemoration?

I guess that's my answer. I don't need to say anything or do anything, since everyone knows it's there. Maybe that's the only way I've found to mark the day - just riding on the subway and knowing it's there.

[Edited to note, after inspection: this is all bullshit! Well, no, it's not, but apparently, I do commemorate the day some years, unsurprisingly, by writing about it.]

infrastructure

It's a uniquely disturbing experience to turn on the TV and flip networks only to find the same MTA spokesperson telling people in no uncertain terms that our mass transit system is so bad, it's going to break up with us over Facebook and then sleep with our sister.

Favorite quote of the morning: "The subway is just not going to get you from A to B today."

airstrips and cheese sandwiches

Stuart and I have a great tradition of summer adventures where we get in the car and drive someplace we heard about once, without spending too much time planning it out.

Yesterday found us driving to deepest Brooklyn (and a little Queens), wandering around the abandoned hangars and airstrips of Floyd Bennett Field and the deserted sand of Jacob Riis Park Beach. It was beautiful, exciting, relaxing, communing - all the marks of a good adventure.

A good friend of mine from Kenya once noted that there's nothing wild left in the US - we pave and sign-post and renovate and captivate everything here. It's mostly true. In a way, it's the mark of a well-run country. Marnix was comparing it to Kenya, where whole swathes of the country exist outside any organized overseer not by choice, but by default.

Although FBF and Jacob Riis are both owned by the National Park Service, they had that feeling of graceful abandonment, of land and structures given over gently but irreversibly to nature. Hangars with broken ceilings and opportunistic vines. Cracked, sunken tarmac on wide, sweeping runways. Lots of little organizations taking over little parts of the Field for their own esoteric purposes - model planes, WWII aircraft enthusiasts, community gardeners. It reminded me of what Marnix said, and although for the most part I appreciate our ordered landscape, it was nice to break into a little abandoned corner of the world without anyone politely directing your attention.

The weather was showing its own independence, veering away from the glorious heat of July into an altogether more Septemberish day. It was windy and grey, with high, swift clouds and a damp chill edge. Not the sort of summer day people write home about. But for picture-taking, and fast driving, for crosswords and sandwiches on the beach and digging of toes into wet sand, for holding hands in companionable solitude, well, it was just what we needed.

And it didn't even rain until the minute we got home, where we curled into the couch for quesadillas and Doctor Who while the storm raged on outside. A perfect adventure day all around.

click here to see the full set in regular old flickr.

parklife

I was sitting in the park, reading, when the hawk caught my eye and then caught his prey, about 20 feet from me. It was easily the coolest damn thing I've seen all week, and people, it has been a cool week.

As Stuart wryly pointed out when I expressed my excitement, "Citygirl Wowed By Cruel Pretty* Animal".

What can I say, it's not everyday I see a red-tailed hawk swoop out of a tree and nonchalantly pin a pigeon by the throat to the ground. Maybe YOU do. If that's the case, you lead a strange and varied life.

Anyway, I have many other stories to tell you about moving, and closets, and cheese, but I wanted to perk up your Friday with some life and death awesomeness. Ain't city life grand?

* mad points for the Westerfeld reference.

saying goodbye

Stuart and I drove up to Astoria yesterday afternoon, to pick up the last tidbits and turn over the apartment to our landlord. I navigated the car down shady streets past places we knew and loved, places we knew and hated, places we'd never tried, places we'd made fun of for years.

We emptied the apartment and hung around the echoing living room, where Stuart first told me he'd move to New York. And the dining room, where we ate and played trivial pursuit and sat to make the offer on on this new apartment. And the bathroom, where we'd scratch the door like cats when the other was in there, because we have no boundaries. And the office, which we painted bright red to deter Jen from calling it the nursery. And the bedroom, where Stuart proposed. And the hallway, where we culminated many battles of tortilla-flinging.

Leaving Astoria is very emotionally fraught. I lived there for five years. I've grown (a little) into an adult in that apartment. I've learned to love a neighborhood that looks a little rough around the edges, that isn't particularly hip but that's welcoming and laid-back and full of surprises.

When we were done at the apartment, we stopped by the Greek bakery and picked up some savory pastries. We stopped by the Mexican deli and got some Mexicokes. And we took them to Athens Park for one last time, to watch the crazy tramps drink hooch and argue, to watch the skateboarders make the old Greek guys insane, to watch people talk with their hands like they do in Astoria.

I'm going to tell you all about what it's like here, in Brooklyn. I've got years to tell you that. But yesterday, I really left Astoria, which I've loved and adored for years. I figured the place that brought me so much change, and so much joy, deserved its own little goodbye.

pallas athena

Channeling my inner goddess for good luck and wisdom tonight.

e pluribus unum

It's finally feeling like spring here in the Big Apple. We got teased a month back with mild sunny days and then we were plunged like screaming newborns at baptism into the cold rainy gloom again. It was torture.

Today, Stuart and I dragged our pale winter-weathered selves blinking into the sunshine, with thermos(es?) and books and blankets in hand, to Astoria Park for the afternoon. For reasons I swear I will go into soon, as soon as The Jinx Cloud has passed (hopefully this week), this is* our last spring in Astoria and I've been getting very nostalgic at every turned corner **. The flower guy knows me! There's a new cafe! How can I ever leave my home of five years, that I love and identify with so much?

Which brings me to one of my favorite things about Astoria. It's this modern day Babel. I get this flush of satisfaction when I'm in a shop and I hear the proprietor talking in an accent, to someone else with a different accent. Neither of them are speaking their native tongues. It's Greeks and Brasilians and Czechs and Poles and Pakistanis and guys from Jersey (ha) and every stripe of person you can imagine. I come from a huge mishmash of people, too, so I guess I feel at home here. I mean, I guess the whole city is this way but Astoria pulls it off with such charm and ease.

The subway was really crowded last night, at 1 AM. It's hard when that happens because I'm exhausted and quiet and I don't much feel like listening to you talk about that stoned guy, at the bar, MAN, he was so wasted! But I reminded myself, this is why I love it here! Enjoy this! All these people and their stories, people with whom you'd never socialize, with whom you're nonetheless rubbing elbows.

And it's true. It's comforting. I guess sometimes it's irritating when the crush of humanity is everywhere but the alternate - living in a world isolated by cars and parking lots and subdivisions - doesn't make me feel part of the world around me. In the park today, a few Brasilians walked by; a guy was asking a woman about Ceasarians. He noticed me watching, must have seen that I understood the language, and laughed and said, "curiosity!" in Portguese. I answered, "killed the cat!", right back. We laughed.

The park was full of noise. A jazz trio competed with the kids practicing soccer and the parents playing with their kids and the passel of teen girls cooing at dogs and the trains on Hell Gate and the cars on the Triboro and the speedboats whizzing by on the East River. Stuart raised his head from drawing and laughed, pointing out that this is what passes for quiet in New York.

And my god, I love it.

* Probably. PROBABLY. I can't talk about this without killing all of you before your eyeballs finish the sentence to avoid the Jinx Cloud, also known as I Am Of The Greeks And Thus Superstitious. But I've decided that the blockage on my brain is too great and after Something Which Should Happen This Week, I will tell you about it without needing to kill you. Or use quite so many capitals.

[ed note: By the way, does anyone know how to do those nice linky pop-up note things? I love those and they'd make these asides a lot easier, don't you think?]

quick, quick:

Someone get me two of everything.

Long ears, along the side, please*.

outtakes to a referral letter*

To Whom It May Concern:

Although I was originally not a supporter of Krissa's doctrine of eating kittens for breakfast, I now heartily endorse her and all attendant eating habits to your organization. Kittens are a leftist conspiracy plague that threatens our great nation.

Krissa does not own any pets.

When you first meet Krissa, the third arm protruding from her chest might take you aback, but please keep in mind that it's the very third arm which will help you carry your groceries, because that's the kind of freak she is.

Krissa is strong and helpful.

I would like to take this opportunity to praise Krissa for the steps she's taken in curing her habit of throwing pots and pans at the heads of passersby. This might seem like a hindrance, but Krissa has turned it into a campaign for justice. She now ONLY throws pots and pans at those individuals she deems subversive to society.

Krissa cares about her community.

Although Krissa voted Democrat in this past election, please be assured of her strong moral fibre, family values, and staying-the-coursedness. Her projected vote for Hillary Clinton in 2008 is expected to be reversed after many hours of re-education therapy paid for and supported by her dad.

Krissa votes will vote Republican.

Sincerely,
T.C.T.H.E.K.I.A.W.
(The Committee To Heartily Endorse Krissa In All Ways)

* completely fabricated and in all other ways bears no reality to any current or future referral letters.

screw horsepower

Today, Stuart and I had to dig my car out of snow.

Correction: Today, Stuart and I had to dig my parents' car out of snow.

Update to the correction: Today, Stuart and I had to dig my parents' rear-wheel-drive Toyota 4Runner (see how nifty that is? NOT actually four wheel drive) out of snow.

Addendum to the update of the correction: Today, Stuart and I had to dig my parents' rear-wheel-drive Toyota 4Runner out of snow that had been PACKED INTO SOLID ICE OVERNIGHT.

FINAL ADJUSTMENT to the addendum to the update of the correction: Today, Stuart and I were much aided by our neighbor GEORGE who helped us dig my parents' rear-wheel-drive Toyota 4Runner out of the snow that had been packed into solid ice overnight, and George mostly helped by LAYING SHOULDER TO THE CAR WITH STUART AND PUSHING.

That's right. Two tons of screaming metal actually requires humanpower, not horsepower, to get out of a fortified rampart of ice-packed snow. But you never see that in the Chevy commercials, oh no. Not built FORD TOUGH, is it, if it needs a few hundred pounds of man behind it, shoving for Britain.

Two lessons I learned today:

Always pay it forward, as we did with Carl this evening who was struggling to get his Saturn over Mount Vesuvius. And yes, Neighbors Who Just Looked Out the Window At Us Like Chumps, we DID open your driveway gates and use the slope for leverage, JERKS.

Secondly, even though you take the subway and spit-polish your sense of superiority for not being a car owner and you know we all do, New Yorkers, never ever laugh at those mounds of expensive mechanical machinery under two feet of snow. THOSE PEOPLE MIGHT BE YOU ONE DAY.

Thus endeth the lesson.

someone's been listening to too much James Taylor

I know there are a million reasons to love New York, viz.:

1. Street hot dogs
2. The way five different people will answer a tourist's transit question on the subway with five different ways of getting there and twelve different restaurants to try when you get there [note: I am one of these five people always, what is it about me that makes tourists ask me questions? I don't MIND, I mean, but I'm just wondering.]
3. the pizza
4. The gays
and 5. my local supermarket stocks every available part of the chicken plus also brown iguana soup

... but I may just have heard reason million-and-one. Our newly-minted governor was obviously having a difficult time getting his demands across to someone, so he told them, "I am a fucking steamroller and I'll roll over you and anybody else."

I am a fucking steamroller! Our governor described himself as a STEAMROLLER! A fucking one! It's just so many shades of awesome, it might actually beat that time that Tom Cruise was praising J.J. Abrams and exclaimed, "two J's!" as if it was any sort of indication of his awesomeness that he had two of the same letter as a first name.

This is way better than that.

I mean, could that get any more awesome? It really, really could not. How proud am I that I voted for that guy? SO PROUD.

exercise your right

All the cool kids are doing it. C'mon. Just give it a try. It feels good. I'll bet your mom won't mind. You know, it gets me kind of hot.

And other exhortations of peer pressure AS WELL.

kerchunked

I went into my polling place today, signed in all the right places, and then stepped into the booth as my 156-year-old polling instructor fiddled with the settings on the side. The settings that, purportedly, go from D to R depending on whether you're registered to vote as a Democrat or Republican in the primaries.

Once in the booth, I kerchunked the red lever to the right to begin voting. Only my little black markers wouldn't budge next to my chosen candidate. Wouldn't - freaking - lemme just - maybe if I - ARGH. But the Republican levers worked fine, so it wasn't that I was nudging them wrong. So I opened the curtain.

Me: "I can't flip the levers for my candidates, but I can flip the Republican ones."

156-year-old I'm going to call Rose: "You have to push them down."

Me: "I know."

Totally uninvolved but pushy matriarch in line who thinks I'm a dumb youngster unaware of the voting process, who I'll dub MABEL: "You can only vote for ONE, sweetie, ONE party."

Me: ignores her.

Rose: "Gotta vote your party."

Me: "I get that. I'm trying to say that the Rep levers work, but the Dem ones don't."

Mabel: "Are you registered Republican?"

Me: "NO, I'm aware of how it works, I'm a registered Democrat and I'm trying to vote that way."

Rose: "Then don't push the Republican ones."

Me: "I understand. Could you please check?"

What ensued then was four different "instructors" looking at the machine and realizing that Rose had set the machine to record a Republican vote.

Vaguely Irish middle-aged man who I will name Malachy: "Well, you've already moved the red lever, see, so now you've lost the vote."

Me: "I didn't lose the vote. She incorrectly deployed the machine. You're saying, what, I can't vote today?"

Malachy: "Have to vote on a paper ballot."

It took them another ten minutes to locate an envelope that I was meant to fill out. They gave it to me and seemed surprised when I pointed out, after filling in my information, that there was no ACTUAL BALLOT IN IT.

Malachy: "Well, that's what we have."

Finally, another official brought me a ballot and I inked in my votes and gave it back to them. Only when I left did I realize that Rose hadn't even signed the AFFIDAVIT on the ballot that says an official received my envelope.

So I may not have voted at all today because my voting officials were inept. And no one even took a moment to apologize to me - they simply kept saying that I'd "lost" the vote because I'd taken for granted that when I stepped in and pushed the lever to the voting position, my party affiliation had been correctly noted. So I'm going to the Election Board website and look to see if they need workers or volunteers for the November elections, because that shit was just bananas.

Somewhere, my dad is laughing into his breakfast that I was practically being coerced to vote Republican.

sweet autumn

Good lord, it's fifty-seven degrees outside. HURRAH!

I'm going for a walk.

"liquid, sane, unruly, musical, self-sufficient..."

Mannahatta

I was asking for something specific and perfect for my city,
Whereupon lo! upsprang the aboriginal name.

...

Rich, hemm'd thick all around with sailships and
steamships, an island sixteen miles long, solid-founded,

Numberless crowded streets, high growths of iron, slender,
strong, light, splendidly uprising toward clear skies.

...

The summer air, the bright sun shining, and the sailing
clouds aloft,

The winter snows, the sleigh-bells, the broken ice in the river,
passing along up or down with the flood-tide or ebb-tide,

The mechanics of the city, the masters, well-form'd,
beautiful-faced, looking you straight in the eyes.

...

A million people - manners free and superb - open
voices, hospitality, the most courageous and friendly
young men,

City of hurried and sparkling waters! city of spires
and masts!
City nested in bays! my city!

poem from walt whitman, photo from stuart

passing through

A few days ago, we were sitting in Union Square watching the people go by when we got that sinking feeling of inevitability - someone with an earnestly outraged tee-shirt and a clipboard was heading RIGHT FOR US.

Guy With Earnest Tee-Shirt And Clipboard: "Hi, I'm with the Green Party, are you registered voters in this state?"

Stuart, in teeth-baringly friendly John-Cleese-Type Accent: "Oh, I'm TERRIBLY sorry, but we're just here on vacation."

I knew I married well. Now if I could just teach him to simply hang up on telemarketers.

rosalind is your love's name?

This might be my favourite picture from this past weekend's performance - Jaques and Orlando squaring off for a little battle of words as Rosalind (dressed as Ganymede, can't you tell she's a guy?!) looks on from behind a tree.

Yes, a tree. That's one of the best things about Barrie - she sees "trees" in the script and she puts ladies holding flowery parasols on stage. Also, she never misses a single knob joke in that old pervert Shakespeare's clever dialogue. And who doesn't love a good knob joke?

Be sure to check out their website for info on this upcoming weekend's shows and say hi to me if you're there - I'll be the one laughing at the knob jokes.

[More pictures from this weekend here.]

in the melting pot

Look, I live in Astoria. Which, for those of you who don't know it, is in Queens. For all the bottoms of Manhattanites' noses that I see when I say that, I can proudly claim to live in the most diverse borough in the city and certainly one of the most diverse concentration of people in the world. And that's a source of pride, because, hey, I'm a diverse peoples too. How many people do YOU know who are second-generation Irish-Belgian/Greek by way of Brazil, Egypt, and Africa? Oh, and Argentinian, if you want to get place of birth in there? If I belong anywhere in New York City, it's in Queens.

This is my caveat, then. I appreciate diversity as a quality in a neighborhood, I love Astoria because of it, and I usually don't mind the graceless clumsy dance of language that happens when people try and speak to each other in this common ground we call English. Usually, someone either speaks English well or they don't, and I adjust my responses and expectations of clarity accordingly.

But this was just weird. I called my local Post Office to get a firm quote on P.O. box sizes and prices, and to find out what ID they needed, before I headed over. The gentleman that answered the phone was certainly foreign, but very clear and precise.

At first.

As the conversation wore on, it was like his comfort with the English language was fading right before my very... ears. When we started talking, his accent colored every fifth word, maybe. By the end of the conversation, all I was catching was "Fnummphh Sninsnin Gblarr PHOTO Tweennnk". This isn't, like, a phonetic translation of what he said, mind, but you get the general idea. And the more I politely misunderstood and asked for him to repeat himself, the faster he went!

It was touch-and-go there for a second when I forced myself take a deep breath to avoid laughing. I couldn't help but imagine that somewhere on this hardworking, gracious gentleman's person, there was a meter like on a camera battery, that was running very quickly from TOTALLY INTELLIGIBLE to GARBLED PANIC. RED! RED! RED! I had managed to literally exhaust his supply of English! Not bad for an afternoon's work.

Going in to pay for the box and secure the code should be fun! And before you get all bitchy and self-righteous, I do mean FUN. Towel of Babel, AHOY!

now with more passing over

So I celebrated passover seder last night at Shana's house which might strike some of you as incongruous since I will also be celebrating Greek Easter next weekend ("greaster" to people in the know, i.e., me). I've got to say, with the gentle (gentile!) hangover I have this morning, the Jews, they do holidays right. All the well-meaning people at the table kept saying that four full glasses, it's more of a GUIDELINE, you know, but Noah to my right was very committed to the obligation and I took it like a man and drank (a minimum) of four half-full glasses of wine. Let's say I stopped counting after Noah insisted that I pour him and myself a glass between two of the official glasses so when it came to pour an official glass, well, I poured another one, okay? And not Noah in the biblical sense, either - this Noah does kickboxing.

Tonight brings even more passover (2006! Now with more passing over!) because Barrie is hosting HER first seder and there will also be wine, because the Jews and passover, they love the wine, bless them for it. By tomorrow, I fully expect to be checking into Betty Ford but also maybe the JCC. My mother is reading this in horror about the Betty Ford part so let me take this moment to assure her, I will be a little more lenient with that four-glass guideline tonight. Maybe.

I don't talk about religion on this blog because well, I don't really talk about religion. I'm not really religious. I celebrate greaster with my father because it means a lot to him to have me alongside him in church, and it means a lot to me to be there alongside him, and I take Stuart with me because it means a lot to me that he'll come with me to church in the middle of the night. And also because he'll read the phonetic parts of the hymns with me and point out the words we know because we're S-M-R-T. And he wasn't even baptized like I was and sort of duty-bound to do this! My wonderful heathen husband, coming with me to church.

But if I were to open myself to a hailstorm of opinions, I would say that last night was really moving, even if I wasn't bringing my own faith to the table. People talked about the traditions they'd had growing up, what being Jewish meant to them (as far as I can tell, a lot of it involved camp) and most of all, I could see how much it meant to Shana that so many people had gathered around her table. It's not really about my faith or lack thereof - it's about hers, and Barrie's, and my father's.

Plus, all that wine! I gotta tell you, that's more wine than I usually encounter in Holy Week. Also, more loving sarcasm and more feminism. All good 'sms. Plus, more wine tonight! Judaism, I gotta say, you've got it going on there. Although I am apologizing, inside, for the time last night where someone said a prayer that starts "with every generation" and I really - please don't hate me for this - couldn't help thinking "a Slayer is born!" I really don't think Judaism minded, though, because I think Judaism knows that Buffy rocks.

On a sad note about tonight, though, I really made an effort to look nice. It's important you know this because I'm currently wearing a black tee shirt and brown cords and sneakers, but I started OUT the day wearing this gorgeous shirt with brown heels. Brown heels that betrayed me half an hour into the day and made my heels bleed. THANKS, BROWNIE.

So when I got to work, I had no choice but to change into sneakers. And that left me with no choice but to take off the gorgeous shirt because I wouldn't debase it by pairing it with sneakers. So now I'm wearing a black tee shirt and sneakers and I look about 200% less glamorous. I feel SO DEFEATED BY FASHION.

This, in turn, is okay, because I have saved ten of my American Dollars to go get Daisy Mae's barbeque from the barbeque cart at 50th and 6th avenue and a jar of sweet tea that will sit on my desk all day, being all tea-like and making me happy and atoning for the craptacular outfit. So if you see fit to rain on my lunch break, heavens, SO HELP ME I WILL THROW DOWN. Now with more throwing down!

So, uh, that's my Good Friday. Good being a relative term, right?

yippee ki yi ...

So, whilst the war rages on in Iraq and the people of New Orleans struggle to rebuild and Australia sends relief to a devastated coastline and Milosevic is buried and, well, the world turns, New Yorkers are obsessed with this coyote.

Let me rephrase: I am obsessed with this coyote.

There's a coyote! In Central Park. Apparently, this isn't the weirdest thing in the ENTIRE world - there was a similar incident in 1999. Still and all, there's a coyote roaming around Central Park consistently evading capture by whole swarms of police and Parks Department people. What's much more amusing than actually reading the relatively mundane articles about this coyote where everyone tries desperately to avoid using the word WILY but can't, in the end, and cave to the inexorable pressure to use the word WILY but then giggle moronically to themselves after they do (Channel 7 reporters, I'm looking at YOU) is actually discussing the various ways a fucking COYOTE got onto the island of Manhattan.

Because the news and articles keep suggesting he came from Westchester, and I'm thinking, Metro North? Surely not. He'd have to leash himself. Henry Hudson Bridge? That toll can be seriously prohibitive when you've got no pockets. Maybe a cab? Oooh, rollerskates! The news keeps saying he might have swum across the Harlem River but this is obviously a very urbane and sophisticated coyote, surely he'd know better than to swim in a body of water for which you need tetanus shots before even entering. Plus, I don't know, THE CURRENTS.

This would be a good time to make a joke about the other definition for the word coyote, namely the human border smugglers. Instead, I'll just sit here and giggle about a coyote riding Metro North. Coffee? Paper? Umbrella? Coyote.

@*&$$@*$&!?!?

Someone explain to me how 27 degrees counts as the first day of Spring? My hair is still wet, after my shower, and I can't bring myself to leave the house.

Spring? Really?

spring sprunging

Is anyone out there a New Yorker with a window box? We don't have any garden access but I've been suddenly overcome with the desire to grow flowers outside our living room windows. It's pretty sunny there, all day long, with a northwestern exposure, and I've been reading some tips about what sort of flowers might grow best.

I know I've said that I'm the Darth Vader of the plant world and I am, but for one, outdoor plants I can at least rely on getting watered by the planet as well as watered by me, and secondly, everyone should get a second chance to change what's flawed about themselves, and I want the plant world to give me a second chance. You could say I'm standing under the plant world's window, holding up a boom box and playing something appropriate, like Poison's Every Rose Has Its Thorn or something. Whatever, I want a window box.

Advice? Links? Snide remarks?

[ Totally unrelated but also related to New Yorkers so not completely unrelated: Stuart and I are selling our lovely bed to make room for a bigger bed ... if you want to buy a bed, we're the people to sell you our bed. How's that for a sales pitch? ]

why childhood is invariably a better condition in this weather

I just spent the last few minutes convincing Stuart that it would be a positively BRILLIANT idea to take our pizza pan that mom and dad just gave us (mom, dad, look away from this post now before I break your heart) and go sledding with it in Astoria Park, on Charybdis Slope. Incidentally, isn't that the least auspicious name for any activity that involves hurtling down (on a piece of slick metal) a very short slope that terminates in a small railing and the East River? Can you even THINK of a worse idea? Loves it.

My problem now becomes that since I am not a very small child, I do not have the proper accoutrements. Where is my snow suit with the footie grips inside plastic snow boots? Where are my nylon mittens? Where's my damn SNOW SUIT?

I grieve the inevitable approach of adulthood that has decreed that I no longer need to possess a one-piece snow suit. Off to Charybdis we go, woefully wrong-dressed.

bag bag bag redux!

The internet pulled through for me - you guys helped me find my perfect bag. It was suggested in the comments that I head here and here to see the results of someone else's similar search, and sure enough, that lead me to this bag. The promise of all those pockets plus orange interior plus a zip-compartment (flaps bother me) was enough to add it to my search list.

On Monday, an ass-bitingly cold MLK, Jr. Day, I took my list and my walking shoes and I hit six stores, ending up at the Container Store. I had a sneaky feeling this was the perfect bag so I made sure to inspect all the awesome runners-up first. And I was right - it was my perfect bag. So without further ado and with much, much gratitude, here are my photos. Thanks, internet. You rock.

eyesore

Today is like a huge belated card from Friday the 13th. Friday totally overslept, missed his big day, he's so sorry! To make up for it, though, here are some of the doozies he's already sent our way.

Westchester is having serious power problems, schools have lost power and are sending bewildered kids home, whose parents are at work in the city and cannot figure out how to get back there because hey! Metro-North is having huge problems thanks to a derailed train! Oh, and a truck flipped over on the GW Bridge, so the city has restricted truck travel from the bridges because of the high winds that are barreling down the rivers!

And hey, on a personal level, I scratched my cornea! I don't know what I did when I was sleeping (I usually reserve clawing my eyes out to WEEKEND sleep?) but I did something. All morning, my right eye has gotten steadily more inflamed and painful, stinging every time I blink. I'm wearing my glasses instead of contacts which, HEY! Has been SO much fun in the rain! Really! Thanks! And now, even though our magazine is on deadline, I have a 4 PM eye doctor's appointment to see if I need salve, or antibiotics, or a patch. Yeah, A PATCH. Just strap a parrot to my shoulder and pass the rum, me hearties. I'll be your local urban pirate, totally lacking in depth perception! Fun!

I also have my volunteering gig tonight, which was already complicated by the fact that we're two days behind deadline in closing the magazine so I was going to be jumping ship for my committment at 5:30PM anyway. Now the entire evening is thrown into uncertainty by what the doctor will say. Can I really read to kids with an eyepatch on? Should I go home after the appointment and rest my eye?

Thanks, FRIDAY THE THIRTEENTH. You rule. PSYCHE.

< /STRIKE!>

HARK! the herald angels board members sing vote!

Even if they vote to take on the arbitrator's plan, it may not take effect today, and even though it means the TWU blinked first and has agreed to take it on faith that the negotiations will yield them what they need, and even though the city and the agency and the union are all out money and time, I'm relieved.

Although maybe I'll still borrow Shana's bike one day, just for fun.

apropos of nothing...

... I was just having a much-needed relaxing lunch with Newman and I mentioned that if this went into next week, I'd really be looking into borrowing a bike and biking in to work because the car thing is going to get real old, real fast, and I hate being a part of the traffic problem.

He nearly spit his drink out laughing.

While he doesn't think I'd DIE, exactly, (those were your words, Newman) he thinks I'd probably have some very funny stories involving my face and the pavement.

Do the rest of you think this too? Are there any expert city bikers out there that think it'd be the height of stupidity to take up biking during this strike? Or would you suggest I proceed with caution but go ahead and give it a shot?

Advice? Hoots of laughter? Snide remarks?

over it!*

I spent four hours in a car last night. Not that the company wasn't great, but Paul and I left work at 5:30, spent 45 minutes getting just to 23rd street to pick up Scott, then another THREE HOURS GETTING TO ASTORIA. On 3rd avenue, we were going about a block every three minutes. I saw dead grandparents actually walking faster than us.

But when I got to Astoria, man, sweet freedom! I jumped into my own car at 9 PM and was happily surrounded by a veritable puppy pile of lovely sympathetic friends by 9:28PM, in Brooklyn. We ate and laughed and listened to music until 11, and by then one more guest was added to our apartment - Neff needed to get to LGA in the morning and Stuart and I couldn't help wanting to help, so we waited til he'd packed, did the four Brooklyn dropoffs and one pickup, and got back to Astoria to catch exactly four hours of sleep. Then I woke up, drove Neff to LGA in my pyjamas, and came back to shower before the 7AM commute into the city.

Today, I'm leaving here at 3:45 and we're going to try to go over the bridge from Stuart/Scott's downtown office and fight our way north through Brooklyn. I'm hoping it won't be another four hours, but if it is, well, there's always the I Spy game.

Aside from my awesome friends and Stuart for being THE best copilot ever, the people I really have to thank here is my parents for having the uncanny foresight to leave me with their car this week and for filling the tank. The loves I've got for them knows no bounds.

* If you're already sick of hearing about driving around Manhattan in frantic, useless circles and then collapsing in bed, you'd best not visit the blog til the strike is over. Believe me when I say it's all anyone ever talks about anymore here.

for your visual edification

Exhibit A - Today, in Paul's car, I will have:

gone from Astoria to Houston st with Paul, Stuart and Scott (4), dropped off Stuart and Scott (2) and picked up Steve (1)
gone from Houston to 50th street, started work
ended work, gone from 50th street down to 14th street, to pick up Scott (1)
gone from 14th street to Astoria with Paul and Scott (3)

Exhibit B - Then in my car (whenever I get to it after post-work gridlock), I will:
go from Astoria to Brooklyn, to Jen's (1, hello, that's me)
from Jen's in Brooklyn Heights to Park Slope with Stuart, Kate, Stan, Biscuit, and Shiv (5) in the car to drop off Shiv and Biscuit (2)
from Park Slope to Fort Greene to drop off Kate and Stan (2) and pick UP Jason (1)
from Fort Greene to Astoria to collapse into bed, with Jason crashing onto our futon for the ride in tomorrow

Exhibit C - Then tomorrow, in my car, I will:

go from Astoria to Houston street with Stuart, Scott and Jason (3) to pick up Steve (1), making 5 in the car
go from Houston to Chambers to drop off Stuart and Scott (2)
go from Chambers up 8th avenue to Port Authority to drop off Jason (1)
go from Port Authority to work with Steve (2), park car in garage, start work
end work, go from office to 23rd street (1) to meet Shana to exchange packages
go from 23rd street to Chambers to pick up Stuart and Scott (2)
go from Chambers to Astoria to have dinner, collapse, and do the same thing every day, alternating cars with Paul, until the strike ends.

How do other people drive so much every day? I MISS THE SUBWAYS PLEASE.

stricken

To be fair, that wasn't so bad. Stuart and I woke up at the asscrack of dawn, moaned and whined our way through our morning preparation, and met my co-worker Paul at 30th avenue in his little car. Our fourth, one of Stuart's co-workers, met us there and we all got in Paul's car and suffered through 20 minutes of traffic at the Queensboro, happily bitching about our companies and health care and anything else we could think to complain about. It was only at the QB that we faced real traffic - once we got into the city, it was smooth sailing down 2nd avenue to Houston, to drop the downtown guys off and pick up Paul's co-worker Steve and ride 8th avenue back up to Midtown.

My big fear, that the parking garages would be chock-full, wasn't a problem at 8:40 when we arrived (we'd waited for Steve for 20 minutes because of a timing miscommunication) and now I'm sitting with a bagel and tea with just enough time to write this and get to my all-day training down on the 42nd floor.

This afternoon, Paul and I leave at 5, head back to Queens, where I then grab ingredients for tonight's cozy little friend get-together down in Brooklyn, and jump in my (parents') car, which was set to spend the week with us anyway, since we need it to get up to RI for Christmas weekend. The parents were here this weekend, actually, and we had an absolutely lovely time with their visit.

In fact, I guess, I can't complain too much about the strike. I've got nothing but solidarity for the transit workers that are striking, so I've been trying not to sound like I'm the one with the huge problems, since I don't have to strike to get my company to pay attention to me (they just don't, it works out okay). Tonight, after our get-together, I'll play happy taxi for my Brooklyn friends and then Stuart and I will head home and do the same thing tomorrow, and the day after, until the MTA and the TWU can see eye to eye on something.

How's everyone else holding up?

all I have to say about the convergence of a strike, an all day training session I can't miss, and the below freezing temperatures:

fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck.

More coherent thoughts after the hellish workday.

the city politic

Dear Mike*,

My name is Krissa and I'm one of your constituents. I live in Astoria and vote in the 22nd. And I'm a Democrat and I voted Democrat in 2001. It's time that I tell you a few things, because I think you'd like to hear them. Consider this the extra sheet attached to my vote (if I decide to vote for you), as my caveat, my explanation, my extra space.

I'm not going to claim to be a political whiz. But I'm a naturally curious person and so I've followed your campaign and New York City politics with some modicum of commitment. Also, I'm a firm believer in the city stage as a good platform for democracy. People really care about their neighborhoods, Mike, as you well know, and while it's easy to ignore what's going on in Washington because, hey, NBC's must-see lineup is so stellar, people don't ignore what's happening to their schools, their streets, their jobs.

Democracy on a city stage is a beautiful thing because it's messy, it's complicated, but it's often triumphant. Or, it should be. If your constituents are willing to come to meetings to discuss their problems with their local councils and their borough presidents and their City Council, then you need to be the mayor that listens to them, and to all the corresponding bodies. I'll bet it's quite a din you listen to every day, Mike, and one of the reasons I'm writing to you is to tell you that I understand and appreciate that, and I think you've done a very good job of listening to people.

I also think you understand what it takes to run a city in that way. You've had to be tough in the past, cutting programs that you felt were bleeding too much money from a weak economy and hugely deficited budget. You've had to deal with NYC being used as a touchpoint for national politics but then getting ignored when it comes to paying the bill in aid and funding. You've faced down Albany many times, and your brother-in-party-and-little-else, Mr. George Pataki. You've openly disagreed with both national and state opinions, and I respect that, too.

I believe you do so because you understand that as Mayor of New York City, your top priority is here. Perhaps that's why you went so buck-wild over the Jets/West Side Stadium debacle, Mike, and I will say I think that was a touch too far. Did you listen to the entire city's population saying that given the odds of getting the Olympics, they didn't want the stadium? They didn't want it, man. Overwhelmingly, people thought it'd be too big a hassle, too big an expense, and too big a burden on a city just getting back to its feet. You didn't listen, and I think you know that was a failure on your part, to your main clients - the people.

I do think, however, that you've brought the various accomplishments of prior administrations to completion - the crime rate is better, the hospitals are too, we're fairly dealing with the homeless again - and you've worked to correct some of the class and racial tension that has existed since then too. You've built upon the good accomplishments of your predessors without taking on the divisive agression of Guiliani, for instance. You're assertive and bulldoggish when you think something needs to be addressed, but you're not vainglorious, and you appoint good people to help you do your job. Some people who know more than I do about the education system say it's getting better there, too, but I don't know as much about it and it seems really complicated.

I'd like to see you, if you're reelected, pay more attention to the gay-marriage issue, because while it's not your decision to make - that's up to the state - it is something that a lot of your people care very deeply about. I'd also like to see you work more with the MTA, because I think our subways are a very weak point in this city, both on a day-to-day basis and on a safety level.

Basically, Mike, I might very well vote for you because while I have my disagreements with you, I can see how hard you're trying, how committed you are to the city, and how willing you are to put party politics behind you and work with anyone and everyone that will help you get your mammoth tasks done. I cannot say that I see the same dedication to the right-now issues in your opponent, and he doesn't seem like the appropriate mayor for today, for New York in the 21st century. Or, even, if he's mayoral material at all. He has had a lot of time and my natural party inclination to prove that to me, and he has failed to do so, which speaks volumes with the leg up he has, being a Democrat and a city politician (neither of which you were).

Please know this is a difficult decision - I am a staunch Democrat. My father says I'm a one-issue voter, but I disagree. There are many reasons I am not a Republican. I am not a Republican because I do not agree with their stand on social issues, I do not support the exaltation of Christianity in our national decisions, and I do not like the Bush Administration. I am not rabid about this, and I understand that there are good Republicans out there, but I have avoided voting that way because of my disagreement with their platforms on the issues I care about.

Know that voting for you is fraught with cautious trepidation. And I'm not the only one; there are many New York City Democrats that are willing to - again, cautiously - give you a second chance to keep fighting the good fight for what the city needs. Consider that a great honor, Mr. Mayor, that so many dedicated New York City Democrats are considering voting for you, in spite of your party affliation. It is a compliment to your committment to New Yorkers first, parties second. Keep that in mind, Mike Bloomberg. If you are re-elected, think of the city first, continue quietly working for those day-to-day successes, and be strong about standing against your political party if it's for the good of the city.

If you can do that, Mike, I think we'll all get along fine.

Best of luck,
Krissa

* caveat: I am veering from my strict regime of never writing about politics because the upcoming mayoral election (hee hee I wrote "erection" at first) is very much at the fore of my mind. I think I am not alone in this, many New Yorkers are struggling to understand the race and their options. If you completely disagree with me on every level, may I suggest simply telling me you disagree, in polite terms (May I suggest: "Dear Krissa. I disagree with you because of ______. Sincerely, ______".)

Know that I will not delete anything, nor will I argue back, but if you are rude or agressively violent, ranting on for pages and pages, or completely off-topic, I might just close the comments. Please do not use my comment box as a place to attack people. If you have something to say, say so without being rude or off-topic or personal. Thank you so much, darlings, I know we can get through this together.

we interrupt this camping miniseries to bring you some weather*

So I've been planning for weeks to buy my new brown Frye boots this week from my special discount place near my office, that has them for half price. Today, I came to gym/work only in my sneakers, intending to make the trek up 8th avenue to buy the beloved Fryes. At 11:15, with already wet sneakers, I could stand the suspense no longer and grabbed my umbrella, my wallet, and headed out the door.

I should have called first. After a five block trek in the driving rain, crossing streets that are more like shallow streams, and fighting with other people's umbrellas and hordes of lost be-poncho'ed tourists, I arrive at the store to see the metal grate pulled down. They're closed today. Who knew my buddies with the great shoe prices were Jewish. Seriously, WHO KNEW?

So there I am, with plans for tonight that involve a fair amount of walking through Brooklyn, in my sopping wet sneakers and soaked-to-the-knee jeans. I formulate a quick plan - who'd sell wellingtons or rain boots around here? So I start walking another ten blocks to the Daffy's on 57th and Broadway. Daffy's, I am sure, will have rain boots.

Daffy's, it seems, has a discouraging dearth of rain boots. So, in a last ditch attempt at not getting trench foot and/or being miserable for the entire day, I go across the street to the Gap. Maybe the Gap sells rain boots. What do I know? It's, at this point, my only option.

This is where the story gets funny.

Ten minutes later, I walk out of the gap with a pair of little boy's tough-leather wallabees. Yeah, you heard me. Size six little boy's shoes that have the lace across the top. Look, I figure, they're not rain boots but they're also made for the most destructive little tyrants on the planet - little boys. And anyone who's making shoes for little boys is going to think to themselves, "will little boys sensibly wear rain boots or take taxis when it's pissing it down?" And they will answer themselves, "NO THEY BLOODY WILL NOT," and then proceed to construct relatively durable little-boy wallabees. This is the thought process I am relying on, right now.

This is where the story gets tragic.

As I step outside of the Gap and try to simultaneously re-don my trenchcoat and open my umbrella to the torrential flooding from the sky, a gust of wind rips around the corner and sends the metal pole of my umbrella on a direct and successful collision course with my forehead. This stunning achievement on the part of today's weather meant I dropped my trench coat from the shoulders I was slinging it across. Dropped it directly into an enormous puddle. Dropped it directly into an enormous puddle - INSIDE DOWN.

And then, because it's only funny when this happens, a bus drove by and soaked my back as I bent down to pick up the jacket from the pond it was floating in.

At this point, basically, I can either give up, go berserk and rip my clothes off and go running down Broadway screaming until they either douse me in liquid nitrogen to put me out of my misery or lock me up in Bellevue for the rest of eternity, or I can Get My Shit Together And Figure Something Out.

I briefly contemplate the first option. By briefly, I mean, I stand there stunned, in the rain with a wet back, wet feet, wet legs, and a wet raincoat that was known as my last salvation from the wetness. I stand there for about two minutes. Two very long, agonizingly self-pitying minutes. I am fighting back tears that, like, long to join their people in the puddles on the ground.

So I do what any sensible person does. I fight my way across the street again, slip into Daffy's, and buy the cheapest rain-coat thing I can find that isn't a dreaded rain poncho. It turns out, it's a brown puffy jacket made almost entirely of polyester and plastic, with a fake fur collar. It cost me twenty dollars and I will probably love it until the very last gasping second of Time Itself because I do not have to be wet everywhere, just everywhere but my torso.

So, fifty bucks later and still wet-pant-legged, I sit at my desk with relatively dry feet and a relatively dry torso. My poor begraggled tan trench coat is hung over the chair and I've borrowed a coworker's space heater to warm my jean-legs into a semblance of dryness. Until the ark itself floats by my 43rd floor window and beckons me to join, I'm staying right the fuck here.

And ordering lunch delivered.

N.B.: Other considered titles for this post include but are not limited to: "how to spend fifty bucks without even trying", OR "a sopping advertisement for visa check card", OR "how I completely forgot everything I ever learned in girl scouts".

all hail the great pumpkin

I figured I was crazy this morning, when I put a sweater in my gym bag, but it's one of my favourite light fall sweaters, a faded charcoal grey, and it looks so good with the perfect suede hobo bag I happened to find myself buying at lunch. What, can I help it when a purse sale happens in my very own conference room? Can I? No.

Where was I? Oh, sweater. I thought I was a little delusional, packing a sweater for what was sure to be another 80 degree September day. And it looked that way, in the morning, before the rain storm. But when I went out at four to pick up a little pick me up coffee, suddenly I was chilly in my sweater, and the coffee in my hands was the perfect warmer. Nevermind that I spilled it all over my desk when I got upstairs, that doesn't fit in with this beautiful moment I'm sharing. Incidentally, I won't want to drink a mocha for the next few months since my whole desk smells like one now. Great.

It seems, then, that the rain may have swept away the very last of the warmer September days, and with it comes New York's best season. Autumn is where the city really shows her colors, and not just in Central Park. The Hudson usually looks dingy and swampy in the summer, but in autumn's gentle lights it has the deep blue luminescence of the ocean it empties into. The streets in the late afternoon slanting light sparkle, the brownstones and brick townhomes of the village look like the backlot to your very own perfect life.

People look better in autumn, too. I won't deny that the women of New York shine in summer, with their tanned shoulders and their big sunglasses, but October and November bring out a more serious, more subtly sexy wardrobe for our leading ladies. The scarves, wrapped around throats and shoulders, the tall brown boots and the collegiate look are the rage every season, no matter what the fashion magazines try to tell us about style. Winter in New York is brutal and rarely an outlet for fashion, so we use fall as our runway, the autumnal browns and the eye-catching jewel tones. Fall is a good time for new bangs, new boots, matching wool with cotton, and long walks.

Men, too, have it really great in autumn. I always feel a little bad for the men of New York in summer. Those suits! It doesn't matter how breathable the salesguy told them that suit was, they look uncomfortable in the 90 degree weather. It may be the only time you'll see a guy looking enviously at a sundress. But in the fall, their suits look perfect, just like they should. The more casual guys among us get to pull out the sweaters without six layers of scarves and coats, they get to wear cordoroy which looks so handsome on them, and those lucky enough to be fair-skinned with dark hair get that beautiful pink glow to their cheeks that makes women melt a little.

Yeah, the parade is its most beautiful in the fall. Several of our favourite indulgences, like coffee bars and Central Park, are at their most applicable. Dates, in the fall, have the most intimacy and fervor, without the clammy sweatiness of summer or the biting edge of winter. The city is, for at least a few weeks in October, literally perfect.

Perhaps it's just me. October has always been my favourite month, with pumpkins being sold at the green grocer and argyle being sold at the stores. All my preppiest fashion indulgences make the most sense, all my friends have pink cheeks and laughs that carry down the street on a crisp wind. October reminds me of everything I moved to the northeast to enjoy. When my friends took me to Bar Harbor in 1999, I literally could not believe my eyes. Every corner turned, every little hill summitted, was like walking into a chalk drawing a la Mary Poppins. I stood at the tops of winding road and just stared at the red and gold trees and the blue sky and the shining grey gravel of the lane.

And now, our anniversary is in October. So is Stuart's birthday, and the day he arrived in the country, and my brother's birthday, and Halloween, and hot apple cider and pound cake and mulled wine. But most of all, October is my favourite time to be a New Yorker.

Everyone's wearing their finest, everyone is at their best, and today, I finally flipped the calendar on my work desk in anticipation of it all, you know, right after I'd spilled my coffee all over it. I can't wait to get out there and meet friends for dinner and Alias, to feel just a little cold in the shade, and to get another cup of coffee. And maybe a few scarves.

community service

On Friday night, we stayed up past our bedtimes tinkering on our computers. Stuart wrote and played Civilization and I ordered various birthday and anniversary surprises for him. On Saturday, we woke up late and hit our favourite diner for lunch, and then dragged ourselves to the park to lay in the shade and read. I watched kids run around and no less than two wedding parties take photographs under Hell Gate bridge, while Stuart listened to a Kanye West CD he'd bought at a stoop sale on the way to the park.

Wandering home past Ditmars with the intent to grab coffee at Starbucks, we walked past someplace that's already won a place in our hearts, a little cafe called freeze peach, with couches and local babies hanging out and delicious iced tea and absurdly cheap wireless. It started raining while we were in there which made it all the easier to settle in for two more iced teas, and taking up station at two of the aging PC laptops, we did research for various writing projects and emailed each other snarky commentary about other patrons. We walked home and ordered Chinese food and I settled down with my notes and my laptop and banged out some writing, while Stuart squashed people with enormous helicopters in San Andreas.

On Sunday, we managed to wake up before noon and decided to make a day of it in the north end of Central Park. Grabbing bagels at 30th avenue, our day hit a glitch when the subway wouldn't run directly to Queensboro Plaza, we had to ride back up to Astoria Blvd and then ride all the way down to QBP nonstop. Urgh! I had to eat my bagel standing up in the train but I tried not to complain as much as I usually do when I'm hungry and shaky. We got to the park and wandered through the Conservatory Garden for a few minutes.

Reading Devil In the White City is giving me an even greater appreciation for Olmstead and what he did with Central Park. Even though I like the Garden, it's when you leave its gates and walk into that unique gentle wilderness that Olmstead made, you see the wooded island in the Meer and the way even the rocky hill is thoughtfully placed, you wish you could shake his hand.

We borrowed two bamboo poles from the Dana Center and found a shady spot to fish. Stuart ran across the street for spam and we dried it in the sun to use at bait. You'd be hard-pressed to call what I did fishing - it was more like gently feeding lunchmeats to the crafty nibblers at the bottom. Stuart fooled them, though - he caught two. Releasing them was scary since you have to gently unhook their mouths and then slip them back into the water. When we go camping, it's been decided, we're getting a second rod and second temporary permit for me. Who knows, maybe I'll even get brave enough to touch one, if I catch it.

On the walk up to 125th street, we walked through Mount Morris neighborhood and it was so charmingly Harlem..ian? Ladies in resplendent African-patterned dresses outside an old church, Neighborhood cafes packed full of intelligentsia and young teenagers shouting jokes to each other. It was a neighborhood that, had it been mine, I would have been proud to call home.

On the bus ride back to Astoria, we started chatting to these two non-natives, who'd been visiting for the week. One, a teacher from Miami applying for the Fellows program, and the other, a teacher from North Carolina visiting his girlfriend. It's amazing how quickly Stuart and I get to talking to strangers - is it something about us, when we're together, that makes us approachable? Even a woman in the Garden, watching a jewish wedding from the bench next to ours (we were watching too, what, public weddings!) talked to us about our marriage, how we met, what she thought of the bride.

The one stranger we didn't talk to was the young man hammering at a bike chain, three lampposts down from our own front door. We stood in the foyer, having a hushed discussion on whether he was stealing the bike. It was a Kryptonite chain he was hammering at, surely the sheer brashness of the attempt would bely it being theft? We couldn't decide and, in a move I'm still not entirely comfortable with, decided to just assume it was his and not interfere. It still sits funny with me because for all the effort I make to interact with my neighbors both in Astoria and the whole city, what am I doing if I'm too chicken to say something about the guy and his bike, or to the obnoxious man chasing after and terrifying the Canada Geese in the park, or the man standing next to our fishing spot fly-fishing when it was strictly prohibited to do so in Harlem Meer?

Am I taking the best the city offers, and not trying to help ease the worst her citizens can do? Maybe it really was his bike, then wouldn't he have felt assured that one of his neighbors took the pains to make sure she asked him? What if the irritated goose attacks some little kid holding her hand out? Fly-fishing can be traumatizing to the fish in the Meer, why wouldn't I point out that he wasn't supposed to?

Perhaps next time my surroundings and activities are so brilliant, I'll make the extra effort to keep the city so beautiful. Besides, it's just a bike, or a fish, I'd do something about a truly unfair or traumatic moment, right? Don't know what I'm basing that on.

I'll trail off callously and say it was a beautiful weekend and just what I needed.

on the street where you live

Of all the walks I take in New York, my least favourite is the walk from our apartment to the subway. Of the two stops I regularly walk to, this one is the less pleasant. Always the merciless sun in summer, the stinging wind in winter. The shops are strange and nondescript on this side of Astoria, and the only reason I use this station on work mornings is because I always get a seat on the train. All of which goes to explain why I usually detest my four minute walk to the station, and why the old greek lady made it exponentially better.

I always smile at the various greek ladies who stand outside their houses in the mornings and just stare at whatever is walking by. I smile at them because I think, maybe they're living with their sons and their daughters-in-law, maybe they don't like the daughter-in-law, and maybe they're the natural babysitter but they're sick to their lost back teeth of taking care of kids. Maybe they live with their husbands in that companionable emnity that seems to happen to old couples where they growl at each other over coffee but help each other up the stairs.

Maybe some of these ladies live like that, with the son or the kids or the husband, and for whatever reason, what really gets them going in the morning is standing outside their houses with a faint scowl on their face and watching the world go by. Maybe they're thinking that they've been chefs and maids and mothers and wives for a pretty long time, now that they're old they just want to stand outside and do nothing.

I really have no idea why so many of the elderly greek women in our neighborhood do this thing where they stand outside and stare at everyone. But it has a faded romantic glory to my impressionable mind so I always smile at them. They rarely smile back. Maybe smiling is just another thing these old ladies are tired of doing and with the wisdom and grumpiness of age, they just don't. So I smile at them and they scowl back at me, and even this little interaction brings me joy. So when the little old lady three houses down inexplicably handed me a bunch of flowers from her yard this morning, you can imagine how pleased I was.

"Here, take," she said, and just handed me this tall bunch of green stalks, some of the buds blooming with lavender flowers. The flowers themselves looked a bit anemic, and most of the stalks were almost two feet long, but she was smiling so who am I to refuse strange purple flowers from old greek ladies? So I took them, and smiled back, and said I'd put them in water at my office. She smiled again, it must be her morning or something because she's never smiled at me in the three years I've lived on our street, and said, "yes!"

So I walked the rest of my block, holding these awkward stalks aloft and wondering what got into my surly litle greek lady. Was I really going to take these flowers all the way to work? I certainly couldn't throw them away, nor did I want to. They're repaving the main street that leads to the station so when I turned the corner, I was suddenly confronted with about ten thousand metric decibels of tar-laying machine noise. Still holding the bundle, I picked my way across an intersection strewn with little bits of melting tar.

"Those for me?" said one of the construction workers standing around, and he looked nice enough, so I said, "I'll give you one!" and pulled a stalk from the bunch and handed it to him. It only had one flower blooming, so it seemed a strange gift, but his buddies all laughed and he said I'd made his day. I wanted to stop and explain about the surly lady, and how odd it all was, but he had tar to lay or something. I kept walking.

That's when I decided to give the bundle to my bakery lady. I hadn't stopped in there for a while because truth be told, their italian bread is delicious but their morning pastries leave something to be desired in the deliciousness department. But she's so nice, the woman who works there, with big springy curls and bright eyes and red lipstick and that boisterous italian-american accent that's not from anywhere but Queens. So I popped in and sure enough, she said, "hey, long time no see!"

"Here, I'm giving you these!" I tell her as I put the flowers down on the countertop. She said, "really?" and I said, yeah, why not! Some lady on my street gave them to me and I can't take them all the way to the office, I said. And to be nice because I believe in neighborhoods even if their bakeries don't have the best morning pastries, I asked about the lemon drop dougnut-type things.

"Oh, those are delicious," she said and I said I'd take one. And she gave it to me, free of charge she said, because I'd given her flowers.

As I walked up the stairs of the station, I wondered what would happen if I gave the lemon-drop doughnut roll away. Would someone give me a million bucks? I ate most of it, though, standing on the train platform, even though it wasn't really that great. Then I went in to work.

delivery

The sidewalk outside Life, our local Greek hoodlum nightclub, is littered with pamphlets and beer cans in brown bags. I'm walking east on Newtown, pushing forty pounds of laundry on a yenta cart. He's walking west, pushing a handtruck with one box of groceries and two jugs of Poland Spring water. Neither of us are using both hands to push our light loads.

"Hi," I smile.
"Good morning," he says in a slight accent. I guess he's either Senegalese, or Ivorian, from the accent and the bone structure and the smile. I remember a lot of smiles, always, in the Ivory Coast.

I think about this until I've dropped off my laundry, taken my chit. I'm walking west on Newtown, now thinking about the subway changes this weekend, and pushing my empty yenta cart. He's there again, in front of Life, walking east and pushing the empty handtruck.

"Have a great day," I grin. He smiles even wider.
"Take care, okay."

People who say New Yorkers aren't friendly don't live here.

counter-tourism

I was standing in line at the crummy little cafe across the street from my mega-huge midtown office, staring with desperate longing at my cup of coffee that woman was slowly mixing sugar into. The woman right in front of me, whose husband was paying for their pancakes and who was clearly from a landlocked state, turned around, looked right at me, and then wordlessly started reaching towards the black patent-leather purse on my shoulder.

I stared RIGHT. AT. HER. Why in god's name was this strange little pantomime happening? Why was she reaching toward my PURSE? Was she going to ask where I got it? Would I tell her the truth and say, "T.J. Maxx, baby," or would I be a snob and lie and say, "Europe" or something? Or was this some new, direct form of pickpocketing, a postmodern commentary on theft and awareness? WHY WAS HER HAND GRAZING THE SIDE OF MY PURSE WHILE SHE STARED AT ME? WHY?

Seconds later, I realized her head was gesturing towards the serviceman with the handtruck that was trying to walk past me, that she was alerting me to shift out of the way in some bafflingly genuine and completely foreign approach to "love thy neighbor". My startled and horrified face shifted into an awkward moment of gratitude as I moved out of the way, and our little tete-a-tete (or main-a-bourse) was over. She bought her syrup-drenched pancakes and joined her gaggle of blonde children all wearing tevos, and I got my life-affirming black coffee and crossed the street to enter the monolith that consumes my days.

But I couldn't stop thinking about the difference between the moment where I thought that this crazy country bumpkin madam was trying to either rob me or get a jump on my bargain, and the moment where she thought to gently alert a young woman to the obstacle behind her. Am I this jaded, that someone's simple gesture of thoughtfulness causes a kerfuffle of confusion and defensiveness? What does it say that one of the reactions I considered, in that split second, was to smack her hand away, kid-from-cookie-jar style?

Or is she the weird crazy one? Who motions wordlessly to someone's PURSE, who actually puts their fingers on another woman's handbag, instead of simply nodding behind me with their head and USING LANGUAGE? She wasn't foreign or non-English-speaking because I heard her ask the cashier if she had napkins, in a very midwestern nasal drawl. Did I mention how weird it was that she put her FINGERS, the tips of her FINGERS, on my PURSE? It was just surreal.

New Yorkers, in spite of and perhaps because of the close quarters in which we live, tend to keep our hands as far as politely possible away from our fellow travelers. I've actually seen someone fall over into a pole to avoid a woman's protruding elbow on an otherwise absurdly crowded train. But how are tourists supposed to know this? My usual solution is to rudely shove them out of my way or cut deliberately obnoxious paths through their meandering chattering herds. When I'm not being incredibly nice to individual tourists who look lost (which, screw you, I do all the TIME), I am being passive-agressively evil to large cow-like gaggles of them.

Maybe this isn't fair to them, though, not knowing the lengths to which we'll go to not touch each other in the most crowded city ever. Maybe, when they fly in to JFK or ride into Port Authority, it should be one more travel advisory we give them: "Please note that the natives here do not like being touched, approached, or hugged without explicit consent. Please do not touch someone's elbow if they're about to walk into oncoming traffic - scream at them like any other civilized person. And please never, never, EVER touch a New York woman's handbag without express and often written permission. Enjoy your stay."

the weather sucks

The weather sucks and we have rehearsal every night this week, leading up to our first weekend of performances, which means we have a kitchen full of dirty dishes that neither of us can bring ourselves to clean in the hour before we leave for work and in the 20 minutes between getting home at 11 and falling asleep at 11:30.

The weather sucks and it means I find myself picking fights with everyone and everything, from a tricky doorknob to the guy on the subway who kept looking over my shoulder into my book.

The weather sucks and I think it's the reason I keep getting a headache even though I'm trying to stay hydrated. Advil isn't helping, reading the screen isn't helping, the only thing that would help is crawling under my desk and sleeping.

The weather sucks because the humidity makes it feel like you're stepping into an ocean of warm dank water, like you live in a street puddle, like you want to tear your own skin off because you're pretty sure that the feel of air on your exposed muscles and veins would actually feel sort of cool and pleasant before all the PAIN KICKED IN.

The weather sucks and it makes me hate New York in all its thereness and its concreteness and its peopleness and its breezelessness and I hate it when I hate New York because if I've got Stuart as a husband, then I guess New York is my wife or something, and she's making me sleep on the DAMP HOT COUCH.

THIS WEATHER SUCKS.

the play's the thing

If you've been wondering (and I know you have) about this play that Stuart and I keep randomly referring to in blog posts about how we're far too busy to post, is this the post for YOU. But only if you're a New Yorker or you will be in New York sometime in the next month. For the rest of you, sadly, I have nothing to tell. Go buy a tee shirt to ease your sorrow.

So! New Yorkers! I'd like to take this opportunity now that I have your rapt attention (and I do) to give you four hilarious opportunities to see me make an ass of myself. Well, not an ass, since that part is reserved for the brilliantly hilarious Dave, as our Bottom, in a Midsummer Night's Dream. So, not an ass. A fairy then, as well as a girl-ified and bitchified version of Egeus. That's Lady Egeus to you, buster.

Communicable Arts, an organization of intrepid souls that bring summer Shakespeare to the parks of Brooklyn, has been hard at work this summer and there are four awesome locations for us to enchant your imagination and make you laugh until you totally fall over. At any of these four, you'll see me wearing such bright colors as to attract bumblebees, you'll see me singing (o unholy nightmare), and you'll see Stuart playing a Wall. You can't miss that, right? No, you can't. Here, without further much ado, are the four locations and some info about all of them and how to get there. Blog readers, start your calendars.

Saturday, July 23, 12 PM
Von King Cultural Center Amphitheatre
670 Lafayette Avenue, between Marcy and Tompkins Avenue.
Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn
G train to the Bedford/Nostrand stop. Walk east on Lafayette Avenue to
Marcy.

Sunday, July 24, 2 PM
Maria Hernandez Park
Knickerbocker to Irving Aves, Starr to Suydam streets
Bushwick, Brooklyn
L train to Jefferson Street stop. Walk two blocks on Wyckoff Avenue to
Starr Street and two blocks South to Irving Avenue.

Saturday, July 30, 12:30 PM
New Lots Library
665 New Lots Avenue at Barbey St.
Brownsville, Brooklyn
3 train to New Lots/Livonia Avenue stop. Walk along New Lots Avenue 4
blocks to Barbey Street.

Sunday, July 31, 4 PM
Brooklyn Waterfront Artists Coalition
499 Van Brunt Street
Red Hook, Brooklyn
F train to Jay St / Boro Hall, then B61 to Van Brunt or
G train to Smith/9th Street, then B77 bus to Van Dyke and Van Brunt.

Let me know in the comments or by email (especially if I don't already know your pretty face) if you're going to be there so that when you come up after the play to say hello (and I hope you do), I don't spray you with mace or kick you in the shins. (Not that I ever do that. Ever.) But really, introduce yourself, I'll probably hug you.

independence

It was about one o'clock on Saturday when Stuart woke me up from my lazy sleep but it wasn't until four o'clock that we hit the road. In between was a lot of jostling and teasing and me whining, "come ON! don't you want to go on an a'venture?" and Stuart answering, "but in Sleepy Hollow, can I actually sleep?"

We sped over the Triboro and across the Bronx on 87. "Want to bet on dogs?" I asked as the Yonkers Raceway came into view. It was closed. We journeyed on, Gorillaz on the radio.

"West or East side of the Hudson?" I asked as we neared the approach to the Tappan Zee. Stuart deferred and I insisted he decide. I placed a bet in my head - he'd say we should cross the bridge and explore Nyack.

"Let's stay on this side." So we slowed the zooming pace down to a leisurely stroll in Mom's 4Runner, winding our way through Historic Tarrytown on route 9. And then Historic Sleepy Hollow. "Sure is sleepy." And on through Historics Scarborough and Briarcliff Manor.

And into Historic Ossining. "It should be a verb," we decided. "To ossin." We laughed at the clocktower in the center square - Make Time to Enjoy Historic Ossining. "Woo!" we yelled, "that was one historic Ossin!"

We didn't think we'd find anything as exciting as a dam. As a civil engineering landmark. "An Historic Civil Engineering Landmark," Stuart pointed out as he read the bronze plate overlooking the weir, with metal ballustrades covered in spiders that fed off the reservoir's teeming insects. We watched slide gently over the stone lip and sudddenly turn loud and violent, crashing on the natural rocks and stone steps of the dam. We kissed at the bottom. We got into the car and drove around aimlessly over a one-lane bridge and chasing sunlight through dense forests to kiss at the top, with the spiders.

We looked for dinner, keeping our hopes high that the perfect nook would suddenly appear on the road ahead, a surf and turf, a seafood shack, with blue and white moldings and a grey-haired cook. We found the Oceanhouse in Croton-on-Hudson and we ate so decadently as to bely the tiny size of the restaurant - no more than seven tables and run by a husband and wife team. Fireflies flickered in the windows outside our table. Stuart slurped oysters and I paired mushroom and goat cheese, followed by my steak, finished with creme brulee.

And as we drove home through the firefly-lit night, marveling at the stars, only an hour from our home, we congratulated ourselves happily. We were proud of the dam and the Oceanhouse, as if our streak of independence itself had crafted them out of thin air, as if the sheer act of exploring had brought these delights into existence, freed them for others to enjoy as well. We were proud of our sense of a'venture.

minding his business

I'm sitting at a Starbucks on Court and Joralemon in Brooklyn, and I'm looking out the window after a particularly pleasing paragraph and the last dregs of my black tea. This dog walks by.

Let me clarify. A dog just WALKS BY. Midsized, got collie in his bloodlines somewhere, sort of mangy dog just walks on by. No leash, no owner ambling after him. Just a dog. And he's walking like he's got someplace to be. Like this happens everyday, dogs just walking down the sidewalk.

At least three other people on the street turned around to watch the dog go by.

Odd.

Dear Queens,

I would like to send a letter with my condolences to your entire borough. I just read the article about you in the New York Times. It broke my heart a little to hear so many people, even your own residents, give you the bum rush. So, Queens, I'd like to thank you for a few things. Things that, Queens, only you've got.

Thanks for having Astoria. She's a great daughter and I know she's probably your favourite. She may not be as pretty as other borough's choice neighborhoods but damn if she don't got a certain kind of funny class. She's got a great sense of humor, is sort of a party animal, and loves her food. This makes her sound sort of fat. She probably is sort of fat. That's okay with her, and that's okay with me. Astoria is the kind of friend that's never at the right parties but she's never really bummed about it because there's nothing that can't be fixed by an evening hanging out with her, drinking white zin out of plastic cups and watching cheesy eighties films with Bill Murray in them.

I'd like to also thank you for the elevated trains. The rest of the city you hang out with was all, "no way! you can put them underground? LET'S DO THAT." and you sort of got lazy about it. Maybe you didn't get to the sign up sheet in time or maybe you thought all that underground thing was sort of a fad or something, and if there's one thing you're no good at, it's fads. You leave that to that slut, the Bowery. So you kept your rickety, screetching, loud above-ground trains, at least a few of them. And you know what? They work for you. They're shelter for your people who forgot their umbrella. They're awesome for when you absolutely NEED to make a cell phone call before you get home. Best of all, though, you know that they give you the best thing about Queens - the view.

Really, I'd be remiss for not thanking you for your airports. Man, I live ten minutes from LaGuardia, which I have to compliment you on. Ten minutes! Who lives ten minutes from an airport and still has a nice view and a short commute? I do! Even JFK, which is out there in the ass-other-end of the borough, has that handy little airtrain at the end of the E. You think of everything, Queens!

But most of all, Queens, I've got to thank you for your sense of humor. Your more sensitive people, people like me who choose year after year to stay at your side because you've got the right stuff, we got a little miffed and saddened at the article, at the second-choice-Olympic bid jokes, at the ways in which Manhattan and it's -ites constantly and unthinkingly snub you and your virtues. We've got your back, Queens, and we were all fisticuffs and "but all the restaurants!" but you didn't care. You didn't care when all the snobs in Manhattan had to take cabs to get to your brief shining moment as the home of MoMA, because they had no IDEA what trains came here. You don't care that Fresh Direct won't even deliver to the neighborhood that houses its warehouse, and you don't care that most maps don't even show you to tourists.

Thanks for being tough, Queens. You're a lot of things, but the loser borough, you're not. You're Corona and Swingline and ConEd and the Triboro and tennis and Rosie and falafel and the airports and the cheating livery cars and dirty snowbanks and glorious sunsets and ladies who lunch and wild rosebushes and Steinway pianos and bridges and chubby Latino babies and row houses and souvlaki and Trade Fair and backgammon and nescafe frappes and warehouses and P.S. 1 and Jackson Hole and community and history, and you're my favourite borough, baby.

for richer, for poorer

If you live in New York City and have a lot of money, I suggest you spend every single weekend this summer in the glitzy Hamptons, sitting poolside and sipping grey goose.

However, for those of us that don't, I suggest the following extremely gratifying plan. Look at the schedules for Celebrate Brooklyn, Central Park's Summer Stage, the New York Metropolitan Opera's Met in the Park, the New York Philharmonic's Music in the Park, and the Film Festival in Bryant Park. And those are the free ones. If you're willing to drop about fifteen bucks, then go to Lincoln Center's amazing Midsummer Nights Swing.

Look at the schedules. Pull out your palm pilot or pocketPC or small squawking dicto-bird and jot this stuff into your calendars. Leave yourself post-it notes, reminding yourself not to miss this stuff. Me? I've already got a date with Stuart for Puccini's Tosca, two Philharmonic concerts (one all Dvorak), Lyle Lovett and a Nick Drake tribute, three movies, and my eye on some salsa lessons under the stars. All written down in about 20 minutes.

When I was about twelve, I went to my first Philharmonic in the Park. My mother took me, and she bought me the tee shirt that said, "Priceless Music, Absolutely Free". And that's the point. It's this stuff that makes the city worth it. So book yourself some free culture - and enjoy your glorious New York summer.

native wildlife in the BK

"He can't even talk yet but he can point to the ice cream cart," a spry blonde woman said, pointing to the little cherub in the stroller. She unwrapped the king cone for him, and he mushed it directly into his face. It was then that I noticed his legs were covered in sand, probably from an invigorating turn in the neighborhood sandbox. I laughed, in a friendly way, and she did too, saying, "that'll be a full body wash down when we get home."

"That's why they make them that small, so that they fit in bathtubs," I answered, and kept walking into Prospect Park.

As the boys played the footie, I sat with Keena, a six month old German Shepherd who'd been tied with generous leash to the tree I was sitting under. She had the enormous ears and paws of her eventual size, and her owner (dad if you're so inclined to call him that) would take a break in the match to come by and get covered in kisses. Keena would leap at the edge of the leash she'd forgotten she was tied to the minute he went back to the game. As he disappeared over a hill at one point to go find a toilet, I watchd her eyes as I stroked her worried forehead. I've never seen a dog look more desperately miserable as she did, or more gleeful and full of uncontained joy as she did when he came back.

"Jonah STOP IT," was what the woman yelled as a towheaded little dervish span directly into Shiv's legs while she talked about the shoes she wanted to buy. If the little tyke had slammed just a few inches over into the back of her knee, her leg might have done that oddly helpless crumple. Her eyes registered irritation and politeness that only rumbled her for a minute - by the time the errant bounceball had been corralled by his mother, she was composed again. The mother, either not noticing the fender bender or not thinking it was worth a smidgen of shame, didn't apologize to Shiv.

It was chilly on the Q train home, and I was wearing the beloved sweatshirt of Stuart's that I'd carelessly (shamefully!) left behind in a store and gone back two stops and ten blocks to get. He had gone on home, sweaty and tired from two hours of the footie, and as I rode home finally, a couple boarded at Atlantic, and parked themselves and their young son across from me. They were obviously on their way OUT for the evening instead of heading home on account of the fresh looks on their faces, the filled juice sippy cup, and the total lack of mud/ice cream/sweat on the little toddler. His parents both had almost waist-length hair, his dark and black, hers fine and grey-blonde. I wondered if pulling on those sheets of hair had been a pastime for him when he had been at that age where he could do little more than lie tummy-up in a crib and wave his arms and legs like a sea anenome. What remarkably patient parents. The little charmer was about two now, and he spent the entirety of the subway journey making coy faces at me and then looking away when I winked or smiled.

As he got off the train, I smiled again, and he said, "buh-buh" which I understood to be the toddler equivalent of doffing your hat at a fine lady passing by. I laughed, said goodbye to him, and told his mother he was gonna be quite the heartbreaker some day. "He already is," she laughed.

And the train sped on to Manhattan, away from the wilds of a Brooklyn Sunday.

the true meaning of the words street price

I was on a long lunchtime walk when it occurred to me that I was both 1. hungry and 2. enjoying my brisk walk. The solution to this rare dilemma is always a street dog, known to the rest of the world as "a hot dog sold from a cart on the street corner" but since that's far too many words, it's just known as a street dog.

So I stopped at the next cart (in midtown they're only a block apart) and asked for a dog with ketchup. I pulled a single out of my wallet and started poking around for a quarter while saying, "how much?" The smiling grey-haired vendor said, "one dollar" and pointed to the sign.

I stopped fishing in my bursting wallet for a quarter. "That's a good price", I told him. Usually, they're at least a buck and a quarter, or a buck fifty. Two fifty, if you're stupid enough to buy one in Central Park. "Yeah," he said, "I sell for one fifty, I only sell ten, but I sell for one dollar, I sell 20. Good price, I think," he said, and I laughed back, saying, "that's some good economics, man."

Maybe my dollar dog was made from grade J meat instead of the usual paltry grade D, but man, the simple joy of entry level economics working the way it should more than made up for the inevitable parasites.

the subway, a short story of two hours

so at 1:10 i bought a soup and pasta salad at whole foods and headed to the uptown platform for the N/R/W at Union Sq.

then i got on the N and it started moving.

then at 1:15 i was stuck underground for 30 minutes on an unairconditioned train with my hot (but un-utensiled) lunch.

then at 1:45 the train turned back to Union Sq. and they told us there was a track fire at the 5th avenue station and the trains uptown were locked for now.

then at 1:50 i came aboveground in a harrumph and went INTO whole foods again to get utensils and eat at the cafe there.

then at 2:20 i got back on the train and waited for 20 minutes for it to start creeping forward at a glacial pace.

then at 2:40 i got off at 42nd because they'd said the trains would terminate there and the damn thing kept GOING so i'd missed it.

then at 2:45 i got onto the next train which unbeknownst to ME was a freaking Q so then i skipped my stop entirely.

then at 2:50 i got off the Q at 57th and walked halfway the length of the platform and crossed over to the otherside to catch a downtown train.

then at 2:55 a downtown N arrived and I jumped on it only to realize i was at the southernmost-tip of the train and would thusly come out at the 47th street end, not the 49th street end.

then at 2:59 i got out at 47th street and walked three blocks to my office.