Face it, the summer is over.

I hate to admit it. I am bit of a weather dork. I mean, to an extent that sometimes I find myself checking weather in Anchorage or say, something even more random like Somalia. Trust me, those places always manage to make you feel better.

Apparently I should be careful with Anchorage. Specially with Sarah Palin.

Either how, today was literally the first day of fall in New York. And like it or not, it is autumn in New York. I am excited. I will get corny and cheesy with this picture of the West Village now.



It is time to reclaim the New York of the proverbial romantic comedy. Check the 10- day forecast here. The summer is over.

And look to your right. The latest addition to The Antifits- Our own embedded real time Weatherman. Now be excited. Tell Your friends about it.

Face it, this is the place to be seen checking weather. How could you be anywhere else!

Manhattan's on sale, and we ain't invited.

(Illustration courtsey: Gary Hovland for The New York Times.)

Look at the illustration closely. And then read this.

Twenty- five blocks between us is a world apart

In case you have been wondering all this while where this blog comes from, it is Café Esperanto. Right in the village, MacDougal Street to be precise, always open, ideas come easy in this place.

Café Esperanto is my idea of the West Village- Marc Jacobs, more chic-than- thou hipsters, 5$ latte’s, and unbridled creativity. And lord, it is always open. For that to sink in, let me do it another way. It never closes.

That's Esperanto on MacDougal, and a loud cheers for Kenny for introducing me to it. Once he got it right.



But all that is going to change. I am moving for the summer to the Financial District.

They say that the Financial District has had resurgence. I am two blocks from the seaport, stones throw from Strand, and Gold Street is the buzz apparently.

Apparently, a walk around my new neighborhood revealed that buzz is a very relative term.

I almost shed a tear for the West Village. God knows if I will ever make enough money to someday come back to the New York you see in romantic comedies. After all, I lived in Bob Dylan’s Positively Fourth Street, and I have done the great bars of Bleecker with pajamas and flip- flops, not thought much of bars with a twenty beers on tap, made plans at three in the morning and yet survived to tell the tale.

So, this is a very last post from Café Esperanto, from a place where they don’t need to know that my order is a Non- Fat Chai Latte and the waitresses could be lingerie models up in the fashion houses by the meatpacking district.

Mind you, the seedy shit was fun too. Even all the angels that came from outside (Long Island), had no halo, had no father..



I know I am just moving twenty-five blocks downtown and I will be fine. But if New York has taught me one thing, it is that the bloody darn neighborhood matters.

And Financial District better have had a resurgence.

In today's Manhattan, we could do with a little bit of a slump.

It’s always good to be back in Manhattan.

And like as anyone would tell you about New York, a lot can happen in twelve days.

One of New York’s financial firms, Bear Sterns, collapsed. JP Morgan brought it for 270 Million; ten times divided its worth.

And such are the times that JP Morgan is seen as a liberator, rather than having pulled of a coup.

They say that the city is in a recession.

A lot would be said about it. A lot will be heard about it. But as of now, New York prices have not gone anywhere. Real Estate looks as strong as it did a while ago, and for anyone having a doubt that Manhattan has been on a roll for a while, to quote a New York Times Fashion and Style report by Michael Barbaro and Christine Haughney, witness the Marc Jacobs-ization of the West Village, the surging average price of a two-bedroom apartment in Harlem to $1.1 million, and the rise of $15 tubs of ice cream in, of all places, the Lower East Side, at Il Laboratorio del Gelato.

But as much as the bankers moisturize Manhattan with all that liquidity, as a humble Liberal Arts major at New York University, a little bit of a slump could not be all that bad.

More so, if it keeps the rents down, good dinners more frequent and helps me keep that West Village existence intact.

Damn, I love New York more than ever. And a recession does not do that too many cities.