I Like New York In June

You may knock New York if you like. I won't. I lived there in the seventies, when it was truly knockable. Let me tell you three things about the couple of days I spent in Manhattan last week.

1. On the glorious day that was last Thursday, I sat blogging on my laptop in City Hall Park, a free wireless internet zone, a sure sign of a civilized city. I was surrounded by people eating their lunches in the sun, tours of grade school children gleefully and loudly exulting at the sight of baby squirrels, a man who looked to be about one hundred and five writing avidly in longhand, a city employee on the smallest riding lawnmower I've ever seen waving at the kids on each circuit of a patch of lawn as if he were Rex on a Mardi Gras parade float.

2. I saw planter after planter in midtown spilling over with spring flowers...wave petunias, coleus, begonias, comras and others I couldn't name. Just down the hill from Carnegie Hall's 56th Street side, the Metropolitan Tower has four magnificent raised beds of impatiens. In the elevator lobby, I congratulated the security guards on the flowers, and they beamed.

3. I sat down opposite Cole Porter's piano at the Waldorf while Daryl Sherman was playing it and singing "I Like New York in June." When she saw me, she altered the lyrics to, "I like Paul Desmond's looks, er, licks, they give me a thrill."

No, I won't knock New York.