Reasons to love (hate) New York

Reading the year-end double issue of the New York magazine was a frightening insight to why people chose to live in one of the world’s most expensive city that has dirtier streets, crappier subway, poorer public service, and more polluted air than all of the European cities I’ve ever been to.
In their third annual “Reasons to love NY” issue, editors of the magazine came up with fifty things that reveal more about the local culture of Manhattan than any anthropological study could possibly come up with.
I have my own reasons to love and hate this city and since I haven’t decided yet which group outweighs the other, I was ready to be convinced that this is the world’s best place in fact. So what’s here to love asked the magazine its readers? NY fanatics dutifully emailed their odes to Manhattan.
Here’s a short panorama of the survey: they love NY because they can dress however they want and no one frowns upon them, they can date five people at once and never get caught, their household garbage can end up in a Chelsea gallery anytime, they can order up pizza from the Italian restaurant right across the street, or get their laundry delivered, they can get a pack of Camel Lights at 3 am in the morning in walking distance, they can hook up with someone on the day of a breakup, they live in the only city that has a nostalgia for crime and last but not least because people in NY wipe their hands with antibacterial after traveling one stop with the train but not after picking up after their pets on the street.
These and a bunch of other vital things are why they love this unique city.
Honestly, I couldn’t give a better summary of why I hate it.

MoMa Milieu

Contemporary art is a perfect reflection of the amoral times we live in today. If you want to know where we’re headed, pay a visit to the MoMA. Look around, breathe in the fragrance of the 21^st century and capture the essence of our modern age – and if you come out without being unreservedly depressed you should consider becoming an artist TODAY. These days, you can apparently create literally whatever and not even bother giving it a title (why the effort?). All you have to do is to put a price tag on it and in New York, it would most probably sell.
I used to feel “left out” and simply stupid wandering around in contemporary art exhibitions. I always felt I’m probably just too conservative to understand “art” and there is a good reason for, say, a totally blank white canvas or a 6 square feet large pink, glossy floorboard to be exhibited in the most reputable museums of the world.
But as I’ve spent more and more time studying art history, visiting and re-revisiting the best modern art museums in Paris, DC and New York, I grew more comfortable with modern art. I have a certain taste, preference for artists and periods, and can tell the difference between seemingly identical works of Picasso and Georges Braque.

I think I’ve seen and learned enough by now to boldly say: most of the contemporary exhibits that today occupy entire floors of New York’s most reputable modern art museums should not be on public display.
What is happening nowadays with mainstream contemporary art is, for me, a disaster. Not that there aren’t many contemporary artists who I acknowledge and appreciate. There are quite a few. But the tragedy is that they never make it to the elitist “mainstream” club and will never be seen by millions of visitors each year in the Upper East Side of Manhattan. I wish I knew who ultimately decides that two dozen oversized paintings of faceless nurses bleeding here and there in the most obscure body positions and color combinations must definitely be seen by thousands of people from around the world every day. I would love to introduce them to my eight year old sister who kept asking me all the time: “Anna, what about this is art?”
I wish I knew what to tell her.

"Merry Whatever"

Just when I realized how politically incorrect I have been in the last two weeks sending out my verbal and virtual "Merry Christmas" wishes I saw this sign on the street in a shop window on Times Square:
"Merry Whatever - Happy 2008."
Despite the fact that I come from a city that has one of the highest Jewish population and has been historically considered to be the most religiously tolerant one in the region, P.C. language has not yet encroached upon our Holidays in Hungary. Thank God! (...or any deity you believe in.)
But of course, when it comes to multiculturalism and diversity of religious affiliation, Budapest and Manhattan can hardly compete with each other. So considering the practical and profit oriented WASP business culture of this country it does make some sense to simply refer to “Holidays.”
But notwithstanding the numeric minority of Christians in New York City, I staunchly oppose “Merry Whatever”. Whatever can’t be "merry". Being PC is one thing and staleness is another especially in the case of quasi-popularist euphemism treadmills aimed at the most sacred day of the year.
I am afraid, MTV’s Broadway sign was the latter one, a linguistic first degree assault on Christmas. On a holiday, that way too many people spend in solitude or in multiplex cinemas in this city.
So, as for myself, I stubbornly refused to be trendy this year and stuck to “Merry Christmas” even to all my Muslim, Jewish, and non-Christian friends. None of them were offended and they all seemed to be happy with the old fashioned terminology.

CNN Moms

Growing up on CNN I was always trying to imagine how these perfect looking anchors with flawless
make up and hairdo can look like when they wake up at 5 am before dawn and instead of smiling “Good Morning America!” into the camera yawn a prolonged ‘mooorning to their dearly loved husband. My first day at CNN gave me an unforgettable revelation and answer to my immature ponderings: guess what, they look like any “man on the street” (or MOS, by media jargon).
Ok, maybe from the aesthetically more gifted clan.
When I first met the anchor who was sitting right across me for the last 4 months, I uttered a relieved sigh seeing she was indeed human. Then my eyes rolled down to undergo another shocking discovery. Not only was she human: she was pregnant. Reeeally pregnant. I guess you can’t be more human than that but that’s something you can never tell from your couch watching her updates on Wall Street trade indexes or the latest merger of the month.
Amazing how professional pregnant moms can sound on air and how naturally they can switch over to random baby care topics ranging from the daily record number of diapers to babysitter drama. The more I walked around in our trillion-dollar building the more I felt that literally every second woman seemed to have an unusually large and suspiciously round belly. And no, this time it actually didn’t have anything to do with world famous American obesity. CNN moms simply flooded Time Warner Center this year. This made me wonder whether I missed some sweeping libido booster cupid-tsunami this year or Time Warner just simply pays CNN moms a decent enough paycheck for maternity leave. Well, it turns out that the second guess was as far from the truth as one can get. Namely because in the US moms get (read my lips) “ze-ro” paid days when they pay their duties to society and give birth to a new proud member of the American citizenry. The US and Australia happen to be the only industrialized countries in the world that don’t recognize that parenting is as tough a job as any respectable work on the labor market. While in most EU countries it is a mother’s codified right to have an average of 3 months of maternity leave, most US companies fail to provide any financial assistance for the new moms. When Maggie left us a week ago, although she gave her professional-as-always anchor-self, her tummy-size was alarming and we couldn’t stop wondering when the baby eventually would plop out. On her leave I asked when she would be back and she said she’ll be back February. I gave a puzzled look and thought of my mom who being a decent European social welfare mom took out a seven year leave when me, my brother and my sister arrived one after the other. But that’s Europe, where governments don’t just preach family values but use tax revenues to defend them. Here, being at home for more than a couple of weeks is a huge financial sacrifice and by the way: they’re the epithet of women labor inefficiency.
The phenomenon might not seem so perplexing and hyper-feminist if we consider Workaholism and
Productivity as America’s true secular religion but if I were an American, I’d rather satisfy myself
with a slightly smaller chunk of the world’s GDP and raise my children in peace, at home.

I feel it in my fingers...

When I moved here, I knew I was going to live in a different time zone, but no one warned me that living on “American time” will also mean that the week will start with Sunday instead of Monday; daylight saving time will come a week later than it is supposed to; that mid-November-Thanksgiving starts around Halloween, in late October, and Santa starts knocking on doors before most Americans recover from their ten course Turkey-day dinners. I am seriously afraid, that on Christmas Eve people will be celebrating New Year’s Eve...
I have the feeling that I jumped not only a time zone but a month zone too. I usually feel that Christmas comes a little earlier each and every year as it is supposed to. But here, it came brutally early. I started to hear Christmas carols and see red-white-and-green decorations a month and a half before the Big Day which eventually coincided with Halloween, creating a slight holiday décor traffic jam of Superman costumes, Thanksgiving pumpkin pies and red nosed reindeers.
At first I was distressed as most of us, gift sprinters, who do Christmas shopping on the day before and spend the entire pre-holiday week under the familiar mid-December chronic stress. Why on earth can’t they leave me alone in early November with hip-swinging Santas, and glossy Happy Hanuka postcards? Naively I thought it was my inalienable right to maintain my bad habit of last minute present-hunt.
Well, not in this country. Especially not in this city. And particularly not in my case, working in the same building with the fanciest shopping mall in NY. Time Warner Center (TWC) has its pros and cons. Normally, lots of pros and few cons. Well, in December, the cons seem to triumph as TWC happens to be the second most favorite destination of my beloved British shopping tourists. I have been under constant attack of all the tacky holiday décor-wonders the most expensive shopping mall in NY has to offer for more than a month now.
At first the Nutcracker offensive seasoned with jolly jingle bells assaults made me want to organize my own little “Remember? Santa’s coming to town in DE-CEM-BER!” protest movement…then as time flew by and I learned all the Christmas songs by heart, bought couple of presents 3 weeks earlier than I was used to, (partially alleviating the severe pre-12/24 symptoms, by the way) I realized, how much I was enjoying the abundance of colorful lights, flashy shop windows and holiday edition gingerbread lattes.
Obviously, now that the streetlights go on almost midday and my winter coat becomes my second skin it all makes much more sense than a month ago. And I can’t say it bothers me that I could smell those wonderful pine trees piled up neatly on the street on my way back home either. Extending the best 2-day Holiday of the year into a 2-month event is not a bad thing, really. After all, it’s about that dusty, old 4 letter word, that so many people seem to have forgotten about here. Love, actually. So if you can enjoy all the fun stuff it comes with its Big Day for a little longer, why not?

Wasted

Pointing to the water bottle on my desk my boss asked me the other day:
"Are you using the same one every day?"
"Yes," I said. "Why? Is that so weird?"
" I bet you take your own bag for shopping too," he added with a hint of sarcasm.
" I tend to," I replied.
" You're so green..."

Honestly, I thought it's just rational. At least in Europe.
Here, I fight a daily battle with every CVS and grocery store accountant in the neighbourhood NOT to pack my one bottle of milk and one box of cereal or one granola bar into a DOUBLE bag. Each and every day I see an honest disappointment in their eyes when I dare to interrupt their daily routine of double-bagging with my obnoxious "No bags please." I feel their evil eyes in the middle of myback when I check out. What an outrageous refusal of taking the billionth plastic bag that I don't need at all!
Despite all our desperate efforts, in less than a week we accumulated about a hundred plastic bags in the apartment, that takes up an entire cupboard in our miniature kitchen. A mission impossible to use them up all.
Fortunately, we have more forward looking grocery stores in the 'hood.
Whole Foods (the local buy a-super-organic-apple-tasting-apple-for-3-dollars-bio store) now came up with a brand new anti-bag policy. They give you 10 cents off if you DON'T ask for a bag (i.e. you have to REFUSE it, otherwise they still pack things automatically). Plus, they proudly remind you at the counter that THEY don't double bag stuff. Green Heavens! What an achievement in this country.
But the bagomania is just one side of the coin. The other fixation is here is paper cups.
You literally have to hunt down places in NY where you get a decent cup of anything served in a mug, coffee- or teacup. Even if you consume it on the premises. Although Starbucks operates on a predominantly take-away concept, if you really want to sit down and drink your grande skim macchiato with five barristas shouting in your ears paired with the obnoxiously loud iTune of the day, at a table that is the most ergonomically unfit for sitting in the world, you are welcome. But mugs are a big no-no again almost everywhere.
With the rising PR importance of Corporate Social Responsibility campaigns, Starbucks has made some vain efforts to reduce the amount of paper waste it is responsible for. Lately, it's "Green Team" published a memo that said:
"If only 50 customers a day in every store were to use reusable mugs, Starbucks would save 150,000 disposable paper cups daily. This equals 1.7 million pounds of paper and 150,000 trees a year."
Now reverse the logic and think about how many trees people fail to save by holding on to their emblematic white and green cups that make the otherwise mediocre-quality coffee so special.
These two everyday examples are just few of the many.
The US is generating more and more municipal solid waste per capita every year despite all its recycling efforts. Now its global waste contribution is about 250 million tons a year, which makes it the trash-king of industrialized countries.

The problem is, that the simple act of accumulating stuff is too inherently vowen into American culture. Be it useless kitchen appliances, workout machines or solid waste. The scarcity of resources is virtually absent in their way of thinking. From the Westward expansion to today's outsourcing rush, there has always been a way to supply the excessive demand of American consumerism. In fact, that's exactly what keeps its economy running despite their flimsy dollar. It is painful to admit, but this excessive consumerism is the fundamental element of the American economic machinery, recycling, reusing and not-consuming are just not part of the picture.
Remember what was Bush's message to the American people after 9/11?
He sent them shopping. And so they did. Bringing a shattered economy back to full speed.

Merill Lynched

Stanley O’Neill, CEO and bank veteran left investment giant Merill Lynch after the company posted a quarterly loss that Wall Street has never seen before. O’Neill is not the first and most probably not the last martyr of the wide-ranging hedge fund house-cleanings these days. Heads are falling left and right at Citigroup, Bank of America, Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers and Morgan Stanley, just to name five of the big-shots on the US stock market. With the housing mess still unresolved, an ever so severe credit crunch, soaring oil prices and the full blown crisis of the subprime market, it’s tough to be a CEO these days.
…Especially if you have to tow home a moneybag worth $161 million as a "compensation package." Pocket change compared to, say Yahoo shotgun Terry Semel’s $230 million paycheck. Big is beautiful in America and people are used to big numbers here… but many raised eyebrows on today’s news. Think about it: the company suffers a $8.4 billion historical loss and the guy gets paid a fortune. Something is seriously wrong with this country. Am I the only one who’s jiggered about the fact that an average chief exec in the corporate world takes home 364 times more cash than the average Joe?
Two weeks ago the IRS (i.e. the US APEH) reported that more than 21% of the nation’s total income went to the top 1% and the income gap grew to its widest since the 1920’s. The rich get richer and the poor get poorer each and every day in America, and despite occasional media frenzy and harsh outcries from Democratic rallies, nothing, literally nothing has been done to reverse the tendency of growing income disparity.
Bush’s notorious tax cuts made the wealthiest American families the undisputed winners of his reforms and when it comes to corporate salaries, as a true non-interventionist Republican, he elegantly delegates the problem to shareholders, saying it is business’s business: the government has not much to do with boardroom paychecks.
Let’s face it, he’s not the one chewing on sour grapes and Wealth is not a new phenomenon in America. Think about Ford, Carnegie, or the Rockefellers - icons of the American dream, the dream that is fuelled by extreme success-orientedness, accumulation of material goods and appreciation of hard work. The word "equality" in the Constitution was never supposed to mean equality of income – Bronx kids and Harlem-dwellers know this just as well as the Founding Fathers did.
In America, the fact that the rich get ultra rich is perceived as an axiom of market capitalism, and apparently, enough shoulders are shrugged on Capitol Hill for the news of the day to become a non issue in the blink of an eye. Meanwhile Robin Hood bides his time.

A Cosmopolitan, please!

When I ordered my first Cosmopolitan cocktail in Manhattan on a Saturday night, and savored the first sips of my meticulously decorated Martini drink I felt Cosmopolitanism in my veins. Here I am, I thought, in the middle of this hip little arty lounge in downtown New York, packed with people apparently from all around the world and it really doesn’t matter where everyone comes from. Or does it…? The question kept bugging me until, in the form of an assigned reading and a deus ex machina, the issue of world citizenship banged on my naïve head that presumed that the idea of global identity is inextricably connected to metropolises like New York, Paris or London and internationally standardized Martini cocktails.
Strikingly enough, the Stoics waaay back in time have already philosophized about Cosmopolitanism, so there’s nothing new under the sun (except for the loungy ambiance, maybe.) Though for them it had less to do with obnoxiously tall skyscrapers, jetsetters and a globalization than with the universalizability of values, allegiance to the world and an equal regard of people, all of which I bluntly believe in. Having spent all but three weeks of this year away from home I am slowly acquiring an international identity which, weird as it might seem , has nothing to do with the deep devotion to the homeland I come from. Anyone who has ever heard me talking about Budapest, Tokaj wines, or Hungarian history can prove this here. I never felt that the miles I have behind me pushed me further away from the land of my birth.
On the contrary: I regard myself more and more as a Cosmopolitan Patriot, one who feels equally at home in her own society and in other societies but who, at the same time is rooted in a specific national context. To have a global perspective, you need the local perspective, which is why I consider myself exceptionally fortunate to have the opportunity to be totally immersed in a different society and which is why it is exceptionally regrettable that the majority of Americans don’t even have a passport. New York, in this respect is definitely not representative of the US: here, most people either just arrived, are just temporarily here, or on their way somewhere else.
Finishing the last sips of my well-prepared cocktail, as I looked around in the bustling bar, I saw rooted Cosmopolitans and rootless Cosmopolitans. For some, it didn’t matter where they came from, for others it very much did. I am inclined to belong to the former group and I don’t think it makes me less of a New Yorker.

Blackberry Buzz

As a suitable finale of yet another incredibly sunny weekend of the local Indian Summer, my friend and I were walking down on 8th Avenue to an allegedly “veeery good” French restaurant Sunday evening. Having had a rather early brunch, by 6 pm I was impatiently craving a well-prepared bowl of soup and some authentic, moldy Roquefort cheese (just to mention two from my long list of gastro hard-to-finds). When we were still looking for the place around 6.30 with a grumbling stomach, I got a little edgy. Then, he elegantly pulled out his BlackBerry, and it took about 1.2 seconds to Google the exact location of “Tout Va Bien” that happened to be one block down the street. Normally my way of finding a restaurant would be to ask someone for directions, but given the massive number of eating-out places around Hell’s Kitchen (i.e. Midtown West), this time his supermodern solution was probably more efficient and undoubtedly more stylish.
As with every new digi-device that is thrown on the market today, at first I was skeptical and completely ignorant about these handy little BlackBerry phones. But in no time, I had to realize that it is spreading more rapidly than any other smart digital device in corporate America.
When it made its debut in 1999, it was a status symbol of CEOs. Then, it reached lower and lower levels of the corporate ladder every year, chaining more and more unsuspecting employees to their virtual work desks. Today, my boss, my gym instructor and my friend next door have the same models – along with about 11 million other wireless devotees from Utah to Ukraine.
The beauty of this wonderful new gadget is that you can browse from your phone without wireless connection, you can Google your destination on your way, you respond to emails on the subway and since “your desk goes with you everywhere you go,” infamously long American work hours are now unofficially stretched out to a full day. You are virtually never off the hook.
As a keen devotee of Thomas Friedman’s notion of the “Flattening World,” I am utterly amazed by how these new American "digital steroids" and "ubersteroids" can facilitate the push and pull of information and tear down barriers of communication. But I am not sure I was very thrilled to have my tasty entrée interrupted three times by real-time emails that could probably have waited until we finished the dessert.

New York City's Poperahouse

Americans have a special talent for coining linguistically correct, but absurdly nonsensical oximorons. They easily link together two totally antagonistic, incompatible terms and come up with terms like: pretty ugly, terribly good or all natural artificial flavour. Normally, "Microsoft Works", "Peace Force", "Government Organization" and "Opera for All" would all fit into the same category too. Well not this fall in Manhattan.
The New York City Opera’s 25-bucks-a-seat promotion is more than appealling for snappy culture aficionadas, like me, who happen to live on a student budget. Don Giovanni, Cavallera Rusticana, Carmen and Agrippina are among this month’s favorites but there are more to come as we ease into the season.
To totally dispel the myth of opera, NYCO`s website offers an encouraging list of opera Q&As covering such opera related trivia as "what to wear" or "what performances to pick as an opera freshman". So, popular myths like “opera is for blue hair only”, or “opera is antiquated and boring” are crushed one by one by giving an honest argument and alluring invitation to the enchanted world of librettos.
In line with its original goal to be the “popular version” of its elder neighbor, the Met, the New York City Opera is as American as apple pie. True, one can still buy tickets for over a hundred dollars for any performance, but these new initiatives are openly aimed at popularizing a form of entertainment that bears the historical badge of elitism and exclusivity – concepts that are so foreign to the American mind.
You might think that "Opera for All" is just a new-wave example American hypocrisy. But when you do a quick sociological monitoring of the crowd in the break you see rich and poor, black and white, Asian and Caucasian, you name it!
It looks like, the NYCO realized that opera has great potential in socializing people into high culture. But to appreciate it, people have to understand it and more importantly they have to afford it. Twenty five dollars for an average student in New York is the price of going out for a dinner or a couple of drinks. For most of them, opera is not, and probably never will be, a tempting alternative, but for more and more people it is.
Obviously, NYCO is not a charity organization: it counts on its newly recruited opera fans to become frequent visitors and passionate opera consumers when they graduate and will eventually be able to afford to buy better seats. But until then, they are more than welcome to sit in discounted first row seats and informative lectures. After all, stage is the whole world, and all must play a part.

Cafeteria Refills

I got even more confused about the "Desktop Dining Dilemma" (see below), when I discovered our corporate on-site cafeteria on the 10th floor of the building: Park Cafe, the Cafeteria of CNN is the jewel of Time Warner building, my favorite place in the whole office. Our address being "One Central Park", there's not much that takes away the view of the breathtaking 180-panorama of Manhattan's green lung, one of the world`s largest public parks. Even after a month, each and every day when I go up for lunch I am stunned by the view of skyscrapers lining up on the border of the enormous green park that NY is so famous for. I do have to admit that the first week I felt a twinge of conscience when I was hedonistically savoring my parenthetically superb lunch meals with such a picturesque background being a new intern...but that 20 minutes on the top of the world recharges me more than any double-shot-cappuccino or candy bar others tend to take. I recently read an article that said Americans waste about one full hour by doing various non-work-related things which comes up as extra costs in productivity for their employers. Taking my precious break in the middle of the day when everyone else is superbusy wasting time with random things in front of the screen probably makes me less of a rockstar intern....but definitely makes me more efficient and cheerful for the afternoon than the rest of my respected colleagues on the fifth floor.

Desktop Dining

On the day I arrived to CNN one of the first things my beloved boss warned me was to take time to go and get lunch when I am hungry. "These guys never eat, " she said, pointing to my two producers sitting across her. "I eat all the time," she added smilingly and this time it had less to do with the notorious American overeating habits than her final stage of pregnancy. Here we go, I thought to myself: Corporate America 1.o1 - "workpeople don't care to eat", or at least workaholic producers don't...
Now, of course this came as no big surprise. We all know that Americans work hard and work more than many other nations in the world. They're proud of it as they think this is what drives their economy and not consumerism or Mexican immigrants. We also know that they like to eat fast and when they do, they are notorious for eating junk. So it's really not a big surpose that a new survey found that the vast majority (75%) of American workers tend to eat their lunch at their desktop instead of stretching out tired muscles, schmoozing around a little with colleagues and focusing for one second on what's indispensable for every human being: Food.
Meals in America in general are degraded to simple acts of fuelling up the nutritional system when it comes to workday lunches. As opposed to Jean-Pierre in Paris who would easily spend an hour or more out somewhere savouring a plat du jour in a random brasserie or cafe on the corner, John, the conscientious American worker 'grabs a bite' or 'something to eat' and speeds back to his cubicle to munch on a Sub, a pizza, some chips or a muffin, in exceptional cases a tossed salad...delicately served on top of the keyboard, piles of files or random documents - consumed while checking emails, watching the latest Colbert Show on Youtube or getting updates of highly important Lindsey Lohan anorexia gossip from YahooNews.
This disturbing and common phenomenon of "desktop dining" in our office made me wonder: is it just the modern side-effect of the wide availability of take-away food and a different concept of eating in general, is it an extreme version of American workaholism, or just simple hypocrisy that makes the average American worker "eat in" instead of taking the time to "eat out"?

Ősz New Yorkban

A warm Indian summer day in October makes every city look more beautiful - even New York. Last week the first warm jackets hit the streets, high heels were exchanged for winter boots and even the long distance runners of Central Park felt a bit chilly without adding one more layer of clothes. Fall came relatively late though, much to the delight of most city dwellers but less for the gratification of department stores whose fall collection didn't sell very well on Fashion street. But don't shed any tears for the local fashion industry, Manhattan would be the last place where even the most off-season clothes wouldn't sell well.
So, it was a real treat to have a last weekend spent without a jacket or worries about sitting on the cold ground outside. If only New York had more cafes with outside terraces and intimate public parks where you could sit down and enjoy sunshine through the falling leaves, a non-paper cup of coffee and the weekend papers. As simple as it might seem this trio is hardest to find in New York. You can get one or the other but not all three together. At least not around Midtown.
Since they became my beloved Sunday morning trinity in Paris and indispensable parts of a perfect start of a weekend day, I started to wonder how people spend their perfect Sunday mornings. So, I took a stroll for a couple of blocks down on 9th and did a quick field research. Local restaurants jam-packed with brunchers, numberless Starbucks addicts queueing for their grande-nonfat-sugarfree-hold-the-whip-caramel-macchiato, herds of conscientious ipod-joggers hurrying to Central Park to burn those happy-hour martini cocktail calories off, WholeFoods early birds with eco-friendly plastic double bags full of superorganic bioveggies that despite their astronomical price don't even get close to the real ones we have in Europe...a rough panorama of a blissful Sunday morning a la NewYork.
If only they knew the beau perfection that lies in an undisturbed, taxi-honkless sip of finely brewed espresso with a touch of October sunshine.