Actually you can engage New Yorkers on the subways in conversation. Barry Finn and I were very successful in that last spring. Of course, the folks we were talking to turned out to be recent emmigrants from northern New England, but we didn't know. And then it turned out that the people across from us were from Vermont. In fact no one in the whole damn car was from New York!

Cheerily,
Charley Noble, who has relatives alive and well in Brooklyn