carpe diem

An tiny elderly lady with walker on Brodway near 100th Street. Affixed to the walker, a tattered, hand-letted sign: "Impeach Bush." That's not the sort of thing you see in Raleigh! I marveled as I passed her. Or even in Cobble Hill.

I also went to Chelsea today. I don't think I was ever in Chelsea before, at least not that far west, to 11th Avenue. The cheesy congested quality of 23rd street at Seventh Avenue gives way to serenity and unpretentious-looking townhouses that probably cost a zillion dollars apiece, then, as you get closer to water, to industrial-looking spaces now being used as ultra-trendy art galleries and fashion boutiques. On the way to the New Museum of Contempary Art, I walked up Eighth Avenue from the 14th Street subway stop, a sunny cold morning, before turning onto 22nd Street, astonished by the old-fashioned-looking little stores, some with ancient Deco-looking neon, that alternated with sex shops, and thought how New York this battle is always taking place between the past and the future. How odd pieces of the old city survive, not just the grand things built for the ages, like the Public Library at Byrant Park or the Metropolitan, but the strange little scraps that nobody thinks about too much. Until one day they are gone.