No pictures because my camera is too heavy for my smallish-newish purse, sorry.
So I'm in Manhattan again, happy as a clam. We're staying on Bleecker Street in an apartment, yes on Bleecker! My younger one is at camp, my older one (18 in a few days) has little use for me, and my husband is working around the clock on a production. Happy i'm telling ya.
Watching people in the street I get the impression that i'm not the only one who feels privileged to be be in New York City. Everywhere is a palpable sense of giddiness, of excitement. Isn't this the city where anything can happen? And if not here, then where? In New York as in Paris, the possibility of a chance encounter hangs in every gaze exchange. People dress accordingly. As my husband pointed out, in Los Angeles there is the Right way to dress and the Wrong way, and i think that's pretty true of most of the country. In New York, everything goes. And when you get to look exactly like yourself, you look better, more interesting, more alive. The result is so interesting that you could sit on a bench for hours just watching people and you would be perfectly entertained.
Nowhere I've ever been do older people look more stylish and full or life than here. They have stars in their eyes, they are not bored with the city and never will be. I see them and make a secret wish to be just like them one day: old, stylish, happy in and in New York (I'm of course speaking of those with money, i know this is crass, but fantasies usually are.)
I'm flabbergasted by the number of French people in the streets of NY. The French might hate america (or so i'm told, usually by Americans,) but they sure as hell love Manhattan. It's an uncomfortable number of French people for me, as I prefer to be the rarity than the norm. Apparently, France was not hit by the recession, because the French are here to shop. Mostly they're here for the sales, and Broadway in August is one massive sale. The French must have a sixth sense, like those baby turtles that scramble awkwardly toward the ocean, they are single-minded and decisive, and when they get what they want, ahhh... climax!
I thought it must be funny for French people to see huge "SALE" signs displayed everywhere, because in French it means 'dirty'. Just a thought.
Speaking of dirt: everything in New York is dirty and/or fabulous. The juxtaposition of piles of trash and models in high heels would never happen in Paris. Paris hides its trash with the greatest of care. New York loves to joyously hang its trash for all to see. It piles up over the course of the day in gigantic mounds, platic bags, crates etc. in front of stores and apartment buildings. In the morning, everything is just washed fresh, hosed down by the myriads of men in wife beaters who come in and out of doors and trap doors, gates and manholes and whose life purpose it seems is to act as trash Facilitators. 'i'm wOrking here." they seem to say, but you can tell they too rather be here than anywhere else.
I'm off to buy a bit of foie gras at Chelsea's market. It being impossible to find (illegal I think) in LA, i better gorge myself before i get home.