Where on 95th and Amsterdam a man with white hair wearing a suit and holding a brief case says to the four-year-old boy who is crying, face against the man's thigh, "You want to spend time in your room? No? No? Then man-up! I said man-up!" but the boy just keeps on crying.

Where on Broadway and 105th a bald man in expensive looking casual clothes says, into his phone, "I'm stuck in Fort Lee--the traffic is terrible--I can't get out."

Where a man sporting a bow-tie and a heavy Maine accent delivers a report on Central Park's ducks to his tri-poded video camera.

Where, on the morning after, when most people on the planet are still alive, the 10 year old says, "Guess we didn't all die in an earthquake!" and the 3 year old says, "What?!" and the 11 year old says, "That's just what some idiot thought was going to happen," and the 10 year old says, "Albert Einstein could have predicted it and been wrong but that wouldn't make him an idiot and anyways you don't have to be an idiot, just really, really religious," and the 3 year old says, "Idiot!" and the 11 year old says, "I guess I think that if you're really religious and think the world is going to end on a particular day because the Bible says so, then you're an idiot, even if you're Albert Einstein."

Where special units officer Erlich 362 rests his hand on his gun while ordering a mini everything bagel with butter, two blueberry mini muffins, and coffee with milk and extra sugar.

Where a a little white girl in a stroller pushed by a brown-skinned nanny sings, "Da-da-yeinu... Da-da-yeinu..." and a white boy walking to school in the opposite direction, dragging his wheeled-school bag behind him, sings back to her, "elu hotzi hotzianu hotzianu mimitzrayim..." and the boy and girl smile at one another but the nanny scowls and walks faster.

Where on 107th between Amsterdam and Broadway the rain falls on but doesn't erase a red-lettered love note to either a person or the current month, or perhaps it's a question missing its final punctuation?

Where at the KGB bar a woman touches the novelist's corsage and laughs, and a man watching them says, "There's nothing marital about that interaction."

Where, in a nasty tone, an African American woman standing on the island half way across Broadway yells, "You don't see the LIGHT?" at a young white woman with a handicare-walker who jerkily struggles across the street as the light turns from a blinking to solid red.

Where on the M5 bus a man with earrings, oversized sunglasses, dog tags and a t-shirt that reads "Bin Laden Killed End of Terror" stares straight ahead while the model's eye on his Lord & Taylor bag scares away potential critics.

Where as the express pulls into 72nd ST a very thin woman with four children under six and an unweldy stroller tells the oldest son to get the almost littlest girl off the train but the two kids start fighting and strangers saying "oh my god!" shove the two kids at their mother's back through the almost-closed train car doors and on the platform the mother lackadaisically spanks the little girl saying over and over in a bored voice, "you don't do that fucking shit on the subway..."

Where the potted tulips in the lobby surrender to gravity.

Where on the corner of Amsterdam and 98th an elderly woman wearing an ankle-length purple down coat pushing a black shopping cart steps off the curb and, without any of the normal human gravity or fear, goes down softly, slowly, like a butterfly folding her wings, and as she crumples whispers "I'm alright" to the Samaritans already moving to help her, and she is alright.