SW paints it RED in NYC

I'm sitting in the foyer of my hotel in Quebec, waiting for my room to be ready. CLEARLY THEY DO NOT KNOW WHO I AM.

Sigh.

I had a very enjoyable 3 days in NYC with Canadian M and American M. Together, we managed to avoid doing anything that one is supposed to do in NYC apart from eat NY pizza and bagels. I have no idea of the majesty of the Statue of Liberty or the poignancy (?) of the WTC memorial site or...you know, all those other NYC things.

But the main point was catching up with M&M (I hadn't seen Canadian M for about 5 years). And, surely, you wouldn't catch beatnik poets (I think it's safe to say the three of us, in NYC GUISE, are the modern version thereof) climbing the Statue of Liberty.

I did go to, for the first time in my life, a baseball match (NY Mets Vs Arizona Diamondbacks for all you HARDCORE BASEBALL FANS who read secret wombat). I believe I cheered at the appropriate moments and cleverly milked the joke whereby I made casual reference to basball players of yore, such as "Is shoeless Joe Jackson playing." M& M didn't explicitly state it, but I'm pretty sure they were both impressed AND suitably amused at my historical wit.

Iplayed tennis at Flushing Meadow, site of the US Open. You could almost smell Ivan Lendl's wristbands.

I think I could live in NYC for a while. It would be a pretty intense place, but SO much is going on. People-watching is brilliant. A million people have written billions of words about NYC; I won't attempt to add to that other than to say that:

1. I am told -- and I would have assumed -- that NYC is not representative of the rest of the USA.
2. I am impressed at the way that New Yorkers seem so comfortable confidently voicing opinions. I don't think I shy away from my opinions, but I do tend to test conversational waters before I dive in, and I probably modify the way I express opinions depending on the prevailing crowd. New Yorkers seem happy to just get it out there, well-informed or not, kitsch or not.
3. I often felt like I was on a movie set -- the way people spoke seemed almost scripted. For example, I don't think I could ever say to the street-corner bagel and pastry guy, while I chose a pastry: "Ah, nothin's talkin' to me. Gimme a bowtie!"
   

Photos will follow.