2001-07-17 - 4:24 p.m.

Anyway, we're heading up 10th Street, and I'm looking at all the beautiful brownstones, thinking that I'd love to take a picture and post it here, and then I come to my senses and realize I can't even link, let alone post pictures. And I'm looking at the building where they had to cut down two construction workers yesterday, as they somehow fell off a scaffolding and were hanging by their waist ropes. Suddenly, at a red light on 4th Avenue, a skinny, gnarled old man approaches the cab, limping, filthy, holding a dirty, creased coffee cup and a cane in one hand. He approaches Warren Fang, and asks for some change, holding out his empty (dirty) hand. And WF digs in his pocket and says, "Let me put it in the cup, not your hand." So the guy switches the cane to the empty hand and holds out the cup, and gets his change. I don't know, that disturbed me.

Anyway, I'm trying to write this in my notebook, and we're bouncing along the potholed street, so I tell him to let me out on the corner of Avenue A, and I walk the 5 blocks to the restaurant. For about the millionth time, I have to marvel at Tompkins Square. When I was in high school, we'd cut class and take the train to the city, where St. Marks Place was the epitome of cool. And I remember that park - scary, dark, full of junkies and petty thieves and punks and assorted undesirables.I was too scared to set foot in there. And now? It's beautiful. It's full of big old trees, and the lawns are green now, and there's a playground full of kids. One of the good things Rudy has done for this city, I have to admit. It's becoming a gentrified neighborhood, and I felt like a nostalgic old geezer, remembering when those streets were full of junkies and whores, when a trip to an after hours club in Alphabet City felt like a daring excursion. And they're still there, along with pockets of the ethnic neighborhoods that characterize that area. But now there are yuppies, lawyers walking little fou-fou city dogs, and little knots of college girls, wearing colorful skirts and cute little sandals and too much perfume. It's an interesting contrast at every corner - the smell of patchouli from the incense guy, juxtaposed by the sight of a guy in a suit, talking on his cell and looking at his watch. The group of four girls, dressed to the nines, with shiny hair and lip gloss, talking about which bar has the cutest boys, oblivious to the man passed out behind them in a doorway.

I'm happy to be back.

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