Dahling I love you but give me Park Avenue...

This past week I was back East visiting. I was in Eastern Connecticut on the shore for my friend's birthday and in NYC a day or so on either end. New York was conspiring to be its most attractive: the weather was perfectly balmy without being too warm, the skies clouded over only once and then briefly, and I think I have finally gotten used to the fact that in this post-Giuliani city, the general filth I remember has been replaced by an almost uniformly well-scrubbed sheen. Even getting to the Airport is now a cinch, thanks to the Subway and the new AirTrain system.

Of course intellectually I know that the city is about three times more expensive than what I can (barely) afford in Los Angeles, and that if I did live there it would have to be in a 12th floor walk-up in Queens with 12 room-mates. I also know that this brief bit of glorious perfection weather-wise is marred as I type with monsoonal storms, which will be followed in succession by the personal horror that is Winter then the months -long mud fest that precedes Spring. I don't forget that the very thing that most people hate about LA I happen to love: the idea that we shut ourselves up in our little individual cars and don't interact that much with our fellow man. In LA we live in our own little bubbles. I like my bubble. It has AC and I get to choose the radio station.

But walking down Fifth Avenue after a day of shopping, daydreaming about one of those fabulous apartments (or even one of the less fabulous ones in the Village) I start to get seduced into thinking "what if?"

Photo: my cell phone