Re-posted from April, 2006
"Now the bricks lay on Grand Street, 
where the neon madmen climb, they all fall there so perfectly; it all seems so well-timed..."
Photo yesterday, at Ferrara's on Grand St., NYC, to pick up some Easter wheat pies. Creamy, with just the right amount of Citron. Not exactly Yankee food.
Kind of sad to see Little Italy slowly being absorbed by adjacent Chinatown - but Chinatown is great, too. In fact, wonderful. Feels like Asia. Any woman who carries a genuine Gucci or Prada or Kate Spade bag is a big sucker. This is knock-off city, for the folks with brains.
These days, the third-generation Italians have taken the Holland Tunnel and moved out to Soprano-land to try to capture the American Illusion of suburban bliss. But the suburban kids all come back to NY, not to mention the ambitious rural kids from across the USA, and across the world.
What fun it would be to own a little pied a terre in Little Italy, or on University Place, or in Gramercy Park, or anywhere near Zabar's. Thanks to Rudy and now to Bloomberg, NYC is as good as it has ever been - probably better.
Why? The parks have all been re-done, and are welcoming, friendly, with all sorts of stuff going on. The tourists, and the "bridge-and-tunnel" crowd, are back with a vengeance. Interesting things to do and places to see - endless. Places to eat - fuggedaboutit: good everywhere. The cops - out of their patrol cars and just walking their beats like the old days, and seeming reasonably friendly although they have to maintain their NYC cool. The whole place is gleaming, busy, happily crowded, ethnic as anywhere in the world, and full of the usual new construction everywhere. One heck of a town. (Only complaint: Bloomberg says we can't smoke in bars. That is truly nuts, as bad as the UK. If I can handle life, I ought to be able to smoke in a bar without a Mommy telling me what to do. How about having smoking and non-smoking bars? Hmmm, I predict the non-smoking would go out of business.)
We did not forget the cannolis.
