Across the street today, as I exited to go buy lunch, across 53rd Street I suppose it was, there was a cacophonous shave-and-a-haircut-two-bits beat played with sticks and spoons on tuneless objects by a looping train of men and women. It was some sort of picket line for who knows what. Is there anything sadder than a picket line, sometimes? I don't mean the big old lines that take up the entire block, with the giant rat, the ugly anti-deity, looming front and center. I mean the anonymous ones where it's six or seven people and you can't read the fine print on their placards, and they're segregated from the tourist traffic by three or four steel barricades, and that's all, not even a cop on guard to maintain the peace. But I guess it's when no one cares that it really matters.
Illustrated by Louise Asherson