Friday, March 10, 2017

A New York minute.

Yeah, I know I go on about New York, about how much I love the ever-changing city that's been my home throughout my ever-changing life.

Of course, it saddens me to see bookstores closed and Starbucks open. It saddens me to see the Philadelphia-sized development of the far-West side, with no requirement on the part of the city to the developers to build or extend mass-transit to that underserved swath of our island.

Of course, all that gets me and irks me, the same way it makes me steam to see taxpayers charged to build giant stadiums--emblazoned in at least one case, with the name of an extortionate bank--then offered tickets at prices the common man can no longer afford.

Of course, there are times, when you see rats on the subway or garbage as high as an elephant's eye, that I wish I could blow up the whole thing, replant the old-growth forest and return the gneiss to the Mohawks.

But then there are moments like the moment I witnessed last night.

I was in the front seat of a cab heading east on Central Park South. My driver was from Bangladesh and had a lead foot.

Up ahead and without consideration, a south-east Asian yellow cab driver executed an ugly three-point u-turn across four-lanes of traffic, slowing everybody down and causing a general ruckus.

My driver screamed at him and they both started fingering and cursing--the lingua franca of New York.

We passed the scene and were stopped at a light adjacent to the Plaza. A French-African cabbie stopped his SUV and rolled down his window to yell at my driver.

"You driving too fast. Zoom zoom."

"Twenty-five, man, twenty-five."

And they jawboned until the light went green.

A Bengladeshi yelling at a southeast Asian, tempered by a West African.

Maybe in my day that was a Jew yelling at the Irish adjudicated by an Italian.

But it was the same.

A glorious hodgepodge of people--working their asses off to make it in this, Trump or not, greatest city.

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