Heck of a town…

Spent Monday-Wednesday meeting with bloggers and advertisers, then wandering the sun-girded grid of New York City. Perfect fall weather. Flew at 5.40 AM Monday and returned at 8.30PM yesterday, so got in three full days for the price of two. My aging feet were beaten at the end of each day. Great bibimbab at Hanbat at 35 W 35th Street. We stood in line twenty minutes at TKTS for half-priced tickets to “I am my own wife,” one actor doing a dozen roles, exploring the paradoxes of reporting (on subjects or friends), collaboration (with regimes or friends) and collecting (anecdotes, furniture or grips on reality.) I was appalled by Wooster and Greene Streets, which were filled with galleries a decade ago but now look like our local mall, all J. Crewe and Occitane. Fanelli’s bar is a lonely rowboat of authentic grime amid flotillas of chrome clothes racks and suede sofas.

(BTW, congratulations to Mike Giles, who has just sold his project Furl.net to LookSmart. Usually, I’m a late adopter — although I had a laptop in 1991, still no PDA or digital camera or Ipod — but I was one of Furl’s first beta users/reviewers.