The New New York

We’re standing on the corner of Minetta Lane and 6th Avenue in Manhattan after a show, and the earlier blue sky of an unseasonably warm day is now mottled with thin grey clouds. A glass skyscraper lofting above the low buildings way downtown perfectly reflects the sky in such a way as to make itself almost invisible, and we pause to admire it before crossing the street.

The new-looking shops across the street alternate between cute little cafes and smoke shops and boarded up, vacant store-fronts, and when I point this out to Katie she agrees.

“It used to be:” she says, pointing left to right as she recites, “good pizza, porn shop, porn shop, smoke shop, porn shop, IFC theater.”