Paris on Fifth

When you're not at work, you can enjoy the midday pace of the nearby Fifth blocks, and catch up with one or two familiar faces who, despite the onslaught of fro-yo stores & nouveau-bars, are still hanging around.  Connie, who I hadn't seen for ages ("it's the humidity, honey"), panhandling by the bank at 10th, looks good, and though missing her mother, gone a year ago, is enjoying the peace of her own apartment.  The elderly sentinel outside Timboo's, convalescing from sickness, is always ready for a cheerful little Romney-trashing, and wry, gravel-voiced updates on the bar's reincarnation: the new sidewalk tables "look like Paris".  Elderly ladies of the block carefully going about their business, on small errands that take them down the street and never up. And Keith, breaking a twenty in Neergaard.  Those lilting religious pronouncements tinge any day with a hint of apocalyptic splendor.