Letter to the Editor:

New York's Finest - they were called heroes a little less than two years ago. And rightfully so. But tonight...well, let's just say that I haven't felt quite so much like an animal in ages. Went to the pride parade, and was (I thought) very understanding of the street closings and whatnot along the parade route. Even after the parade ended. I could understand the need for crowd control and everything. Makes sense that the police are antsy, their job is stressful, and, on most days, I respect their work. But I couldn't help beginning to wonder on my way home. It's 11:00 at night and streets are still closed (the parade ended around 5:30). In a fairly arbitrary fashion. Now, I truly hope that there was a method to the madness that I simply missed. Numerous streets were closed to both pedestrian and car traffic. Carrie and I had to walk several blocks out of our way just to arrive at the subway stop. I wanted to ask a policeman why smushing so many people onto a sidewalk (when there were completely empty streets available) was necessary but feared arrest/harrassment. understand the need for crowd contol, but quite frankly, it would seem that allowing the crowd to spread out into the empty streets would reduce the number of people crashing into each other and therefore diffuse the whole situation. But that's just my opinion. I could be wrong.

In other news, it's been a lovely, very musical weekend in NYC. Went to Carnegie Hall this afternoon (for free!) and a wonderful concert for Leonard Cohen last night. Hopefully will have time to write in detail later, for now must sleep as seeing David in morning, then catching train to Long Island for one more night with Matt and picking up my car to drive to Cleveland on Tuesday.

ps - ooh..."night with matt" sounds dirty...alas, it is not.