Steamboats Are Ruining Everything

The out-of-towners

Kind of jumpy today in the New York Public Library at 42nd Street. In the midafternoon, the fire alarm sounded. And sounded and sounded. The siren is accompanied by strobe lights, which make it hard to ignore. No one got on the intercom to say it was a test, so I unplugged my laptop. A ten-year-old with hunched shoulders tried to enter the room that a group of us were leaving, did a 180 when he realized it wasn't an exit, then raced down the stairs ahead of us.

In fact, it was a test, but the guard at the door had to make a few hurried phone calls before we were reassured. "It's for next week," the guard explained.

It was very next week on 42nd street today: lots of cautious-looking middle-aged couples, blandly dressed. Their clothes didn't have the flashiness or shoddiness of real tourists, and their gait lacked the intensity of native New Yorkers, who glared at them. I was glared at once, too, probably because I had made the mistake of putting on a blue permanent press Brooks Brothers shirt this morning. It wasn't until I got on the subway to go home that I saw a scruffy college-age person, bearing a backpack a foot and a half taller than he was and struggling with a Metrocard vending machine.

Shallow background

A few weeks ago, I bought a T-shirt from American Apparel, a company that disavows sweatshops. In the vitrine of their store in Nolita, they were then featuring a Florida voting booth from the 2000 presidential election, complete with the confusing "Do you know whether you're voting for Buchanan or Gore?" booklet. It may still be there, for all I know.

So a detail in a photo of Benjamin L. Ginsberg on page A24 of this morning's New York Times caught my eye. Yesterday Ginsberg resigned from Bush's reelection campaign, where he had been the chief legal counsel, because it turns out that he's also the legal adviser for the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, so-called. In the photo, to his left and the viewer's right, is something that looks like an oversize TV dinner, opened on a tray table. I could be wrong--I can't find an online photo to confirm my hunch--but I'm pretty sure it's a Florida voting booth from the 2000 presidential election. Cute, huh?

[Note: I didn't want to see the gentleman's face anymore, so I've turned the photo into a link.]