Wednesday, December 21, 2005

New York Report Three

Patient and her attendant have spent the day in their…what to call it?… bed stander. It is very nearly too small a room to be a bed sitter because the sole chair must do double duty as night table, clothes rack, or landing pad for odds and ends ferried in on behalf of the patient. The patient is not hungry, and she is hungry. It’s a problem for the attendant, who has so far observed the dietary niceties for himself with beer and tootsie rolls…to the snuffly, coughing disapproval of the patient.

Actually our hotel is clean and comfortable even though the room is little larger than the California King bed.

I went out this morning to fuel my caffeine hunger at Starbucks. I know, I know, some people don’t like Starbuck’s coffee, but it’s not under-roasted like the coffee in some local coffee houses. Tastes like coffee. Scours your nerve endings. The crowd was very unlike the gang at my (local) Tucson Foothills spot. There were lots of young people. Not high school kids; a post- college group with lots of very good looking young men and women. No golden geezers.

I had plenty of time to watch the crowd milling past outside. The huge purse…sometimes carried by men…is in. I suppose the guy’s bags are actually couriers’ bags but considering how well dressed some of the guys were I doubt they were couriers. Back packs are in, really in.

The courier bag makes a lot of sense. Busy professionals are so lumbered with ipods (saw plenty) cell phones, lap tops, and palms that they could hardly stuff all that stuff in their pockets without spoiling the look of their fitted overcoats. Of course women in this strike-struck city need some place to stuff dressier shoes while they are hiking to work in their tennies.

Incidentally, I know why they call this the city that never sleeps. Who could sleep with the screams, sirens, garbage trucks, and assorted shouts of joy and despair as crowds empty out of the bars that line our street.

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