Like many people, maybe you, I sometimes long for a New York I have never lived in, one that is more tactile, with phonebooks. In my dream, I wear sumptuous cashmere sweaters to work at the Shop Around the Corner, and I decorate my desk with bouquets of fresh pencils. And in the evening dusk, I write a stack of letters with the stationery I've collected, just for a night like this. I am Meg Ryan, and I have such nice hair, and my life is really so peaceful and beautiful. I have never seen someone pee from the train platform onto the tracks.
At Christmastime, my fantasy is rendered, miraculously, useless. For every street with bright lights blaring through the windows of a fast fashion outlet in Soho, for every street that almost makes us believe that New York is only commercialized, cultureless crap, there is another street. There, everything is soft and warm, spiced lattes spilling out of local shops, blown ornaments winking at passerby.