WOO-WEE! LOOK AT ALL THEM TALL BUILDINGS!

Went up to New York City earlier this week for a magazine awards ceremony (the short version of the story: a bodyguard-adorned Martha Stewart won, we didn't). I spent a beautiful spring afternoon wandering around, catching up with friends and taking a Clark Griswold-like 55-minute sprint through the newly reopened MOMA, which now looks 45% more like the Paramus IKEA, only without the helpful pre-painted footprints to vector you into the Swedish meatball buffet line at the kafeteria.

Every time I go to NYC, there's at least one "only in New York" moment, and this trip was no exception. As I was walking past Penn Station towards Chelsea, the entire station disgorged itself -- apparently an underground track fire prompted a mass evacuation, and suddenly there were thousands of additional people out on the streets. Or maybe everyone was just trying to score scalped tickets for that evening's Duran Duran concert at Madison Square Garden. It was kind of hard to tell.

What was telling, though, was the absolute lack of panic--if anything, people were amused by the disruption. Of course, if the same thing had happened at, say, Metro Center in DC, you'd see nothing but throngs of attorneys attempting to beat each other back with their Blackberrys as they tried to fight their way up the (broken) escalators.