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I first thought of writing some commentaries on life in the city of New York
about five years ago and the first title which sprang to mind was "Dog Poo
Road".
About a year after I first arrived in New York, I was working for a large health
insurance company in midtown Manhattan, fairly close to Grand Central Station. To
get there from the lower east side, I would take the M14 bus up to 14th Street and
across town to 3rd Avenue where I would transfer to an uptown bus to 41st Street.
A few weeks after establishing this route, the City embarked on a project to
clean up and "gentrify" 14th Street so for more than a year the buses
across town were re-routed. In particular, the M14 was diverted along 15th Street
from 1st Avenue to Union Square and beyond. Because of traffic congestion, it was
usually quicker for me to get off at the 2nd Avenue stop and walk to 3rd Avenue
to catch the uptown bus. The only problem with that was the need to be extremely
careful when walking along the footpath to avoid the little (and not so little)
deposits left there by the canine inhabitants of the nearby apartments.
The title of this series is therefore a reflection of one of my early experiences
with this city.
Pooperoni PeterBy way of contrast, here are some things which have nothing to do with New York.
Waltzing Matilda