2003-10-06 - 3:13 p.m.

I walked through the little traffic-free side street, a tiny little half block thoroughfare bisecting two crooked streets. It snakes around the corner, lined with slightly rundown brownstones with window boxes and cement stoops. On the corner is my new favorite coffee place, J0e. I went in, smiling at the worn wooden benches on the little stoop out front, the metal dog bowl of water for passing-by dogs. I ordered coffee, debated the chocolate covered macaroons, and saw a tray of Amy Sed@ris' black and white cupcakes, decorated with those plastic toothpick things with the plastic halloween heads on them. This totally and completely made my day, and her cupcakes are neighborhood legend. I've read about them everywhere, seen her making them in photos, and there they were, at Joe. It was way too early for me to eat cupcakes, though. Maybe I'll go back.

And then I walked towards the park, and smiled at everyone who passed me, and watched the sooty little brown sparrows hopping on the sidewalk, through the sqares of sunlight. I watched an old man feed a squirrel out of his hand in the park - and stopped and watched the squirrel, after a preliminary crack into the peanut shell, presumably to identify what was inside, run between the wire fence to eat, watching the sidewalk but out of the way of sniffing dogs and ominous footfalls. And I watched an accident between a cabbie and a livery driver, a lively debate, and the final scene of the cab driver getting into a squad car in handcuffs.

Pretty eventful, all around. I went to the other J0e's, for pizza, and am now off to get a pedicure and go grocery shopping. Maybe some boot shopping.

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