a day downtown

Cloudless sky.  Sweet breeze.  Too beautiful to stay home.  I am meeting Jill downtown at 5:30 to see a movie, but leave around noon to walk around.

It seems as if everyone in Manhattan has the same idea and destination as I do.  The subway is packed, and the streets of Nolita are swarming with people.  It’s easier to walk on the road than the sidewalks.

My first stop is a little shoe store on Mott Street I discovered last year. 

I bought a great pair of cherry red sandals, and lived in them all summer.  Fortunately, this season’s shoes aren't as comfortable.  While the salespeople are friendly and helpful, their taste (or is it honesty?) is questionable.  I overhear a customer saying that she is looking for a pair of shoes to go with a red and black dress.  She picks up a pair of two-toned beige shoes and asks the salesgirl what she thinks.  The salesgirl responds, "I think those would look great."  I want to say, "Are you kidding?  Those wouldn't go at all."  I don't.

I stop in little boutiques I’ve never seen before.  In one, the Swedish owner tries to convince me that horizontal stripes on a dress are really more slimming than vertical ones.  I think he believes what he is saying.  I don’t. 

I walk over to Soho to use a credit for All Saints, a birthday gift from March 2011.  Amid clothes with unusual drapings, uneven hems, and downtown graphics, I manage to find the most conservative thing in the store (except for maybe AS's great white T’s).  I use my credit and get a grey cotton cardigan.

By then it’s after two and I am hungry.  I pass a little Israel place called Taïm’s that looks appealing.  

It’s crowded, but so is every place. I order a falafel sandwich filled with hummus and other things I can’t pronounce, let alone know what they are.  I take the sandwich to a nearby park.  It is oozing with stuff, tastes great, and must be a hundred thousand calories, at least.

I meet Jill at Sunshine Theater to see The Iceman, a chilling, violent, totally mesmerizing new movie.  And by 8, I am back on the Upper Eastside —a place so different from where I've just been, it could be another country.