Metropolitan Diary

Walking the goldfish

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‘And other Dear (Metropolitan) Diary entries’

A couple of weeks ago, my story (‘The time I had a blind date with an eye doctor‘) came by way of a suggestion by my friend Mary Ann. (Thanks again, Mary Ann!) This week’s is thanks to an idea from another friend, Jim. (Who writes a very cool blog called ‘Forged in Buffalo’. Plug plug plug.)

Jim reminded me that my stories used to appear fairly regularly in the New York Times. Honest. There is this column that appears on Mondays called The Metropolitan Diary. As the Times website puts it, ‘Since 1976, Metropolitan Diary has been a place for New Yorkers, past and present, to share odd fleeting moments at Bloomingdale’s, at the deli around the corner, in the elevator or at the movies.’

You can well imagine that I’ve overheard my fair share of ‘odd fleeting moments’ (emphasis on ‘odd’), and that I haven’t been shy about sharing them. Only now I share them with dozens of followers of my blog rather than with thousands of readers of the New York Times.

Hmmmm. Continue reading

The Cat Is The Hat

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‘Hey! I don’t do this for fun, you know!’

I am often amazed at the resourcefulness of New Yorkers. Just look around and you can’t help but be impressed by how they can turn almost any activity — playing bongos in the subway, playing Sponge Bob Squarepants in Times Square — into a money-making proposition.

Now that Autumn has arrived, and theatre season is back in full swing, I was reminded of a terrific example of New Yorker make-a-buck-out-of-anything ingenuity. And, since it’s Monday, it’s a perfect time to tell you the story — and also to tell you about the Metropolitan Diary.

It’s special feature that appears in the Times every Monday, where readers send in anecdotes about something that happened to them — or that they observed happening to someone else — here in New York. The anecdotes can be sweet, or sad, or funny. Personally, I’m partial to the funny ones.

If your anecdote is selected, it gets printed. In the Olden Days, you used to get a New York Times mug if your story got printed. These days, everyone’s feeling the pinch, even the New York Times. So you just get the honor of having your story printed. Which is still pretty cool.

Here’s an example (one of mine, natch), printed on Monday, Jan. 1, 2007:

Dear Diary: Continue reading