The assignment, maybe the first one, was to describe a place. I chose the Gethsemane Chapel at Riverside Church, a tiny and dramatic space where my parents were married.

Wait. I hear a voice that’s interrupting me right now. The voice says, “What exactly do you mean by a ‘dramatic’ space? Couldn’t you describe the space and let the reader decide, rather than imposing your adjectives and your judgment, especially when it’s a confused and unclear conclusion that you have drawn?”

Who is this voice?

It belongs to Judith Crist, I swear.

Much of the world knew Crist as a famous and sometimes caustic film reviewer. She found mass appeal, writing succinct but oh-so-smart criticism for TV Guide, kicking off film coverage for New York magazine and appearing on the Today show. Her writing career stretched back to the glorious old New York Herald Tribune, and she was famous both for her put-downs and for not being Pauline Kael or Andrew Sarris. In an era when film critics traded blows and barbs and had followers with almost religious dedication, Crist kept her eyes on her responsibility as a reader’s representative. She was tough but fair.

She was that way in the classroom, too. When she died earlier this month at 90, she had only been away from her job as a professor at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism for a few months. She taught one particular class there longer than anyone ever had. I was lucky enough to take it.

I remember that early assignment, the one about the chapel. I wrote that the church was quiet, which was fine with Professor Crist, but then I added that there was “no CNN” or other noticeable sound. When I got the paper back, Crist wrote that my sentences were “space-wasting and ridiculous,” because I was defining a place by what was not there, rather than concentrating and explaining what was. She said she had never seen CNN in a chapel.

From the start, Crist was crystal clear about her beliefs: Shoot for clarity. Choices are important. Don’t waste the reader’s time.
This passion was delivered in an understated and ironic style. But she could be cutting in the classroom. I do vaguely recall at one point crying in a subway station. The class was tough, and so was the teacher, but I met her at a time in life when I was strong enough to hear what she had to say.

I adored her. I told her as much, and she invited me over, but I was always intimidated by the woman. She was an icon from my childhood who was even more imposing in person. Scared or not, I believed what she said. She taught me not only to be dedicated to the written word, but also to be unashamed about the dedication.

The Times closed its obituary with a comic-strip reference I remember hearing firsthand. “Amid all the easily loved darlings of Charlie Brown’s circle, obstreperous Lucy holds a special place in my heart,” Crist said. “She fusses and fumes and she carps and complains. That’s because Lucy cares. And it’s the caring that counts.”

I will always think of Judith Crist pretty much the way she thought of Lucy. The caring counted and it always will.

Christopher Moore lives in Manhattan. He’s available by email at ccmnj@aol.com.

Why Cuomo, Bloomberg and even Christie should be talking that day

The plan for this year’s 9/11 commemoration sounds an awful lot like last year’s, especially since word came down that no public officials will deliver remarks. No speeches, especially anything deemed “political,” shall mar the reading of the names of those lost on that terrible day.

This news has been cheered, especially by some newspaper editorial boards that should know better. Newsday, in particular, says the reading of the names has an “elegant simplicity.” That’s in line with Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who last year told NY1 that the families of the dead “don’t need political lectures,” as if any speaker would aim to annoy the crowd.

The reading of the names, which at this stage seems to do little to put a still-raw historical act into present-day context, is considered sacrosanct. But our elected officials have been silenced again. Not to mention—although someone should—our poets, academics and religious leaders, probably in order of importance.

The no-speakers stand seems tremendously popular. But it’s also ridiculous.

For eons, and in cultures of all sorts, leaders have been expected to draw conclusions and share them with the people they are elected to serve. It’s one of the responsibilities of leadership, to find words in impossibly difficult situations, to give voice to our common experience.
Sure, it’s hard. And yes, leaders mostly fail to meet the challenge. The exceptions, though, create historical moments. What if someone had told Abraham Lincoln not to give the Gettysburg Address because nobody wanted to hear him tackle a hot-button issue? Can you picture Franklin Roosevelt, during World War II, being given a list of names of deceased soldiers to read and told to say nothing else?
Sixty-seven years after FDR’s death, though, our politicians are terrified of politics, or at least being deemed “political” by the dumbed-down culture that confuses the words “politics” and “partisan.” Ours is a world with little interest in the common good or even the slightest healthy debate about what that might mean. The civics class belongs to another age, not ours. We love our cell phones, not our post office. We outsource wars or figure someone else can volunteer. Somewhere along the line, the Me Decade became a new Me Century. “Don’t be political” is pretty much our only rallying cry.

It’s been this way for a while now, so it is unsurprising to see us privatizing our grief, too, and wrongly insisting that 9/11 events belong only to the deeply affected families. The reading of the names has been a powerful and valuable tradition and should continue if others want it to, but when do our leaders lead and take the ceremonies on that awful anniversary to another level? Never?

The irony is that we have a couple of politicians around who might be able to speak a memorable phrase or two. Gov. Andrew Cuomo gives good speech. Bloomberg has a talent for telling people what they don’t want to hear. That might help inspire something substantial. Give, gulp, Gov. Chris Christie a chance to say a few words. Maybe he won’t even call anyone an idiot during his turn on the dais.
Throw in a few others, knowing that picking and choosing is an admittedly messy business. Then let the speakers dare to give us a slightly new way of thinking of that horrific moment and this anxious one.

The point isn’t the quality, year to year, of the speeches. It is that in decrying politics of all kinds in any sensitive situation, we create a content-free culture. No wonder we wind up with political campaigns about peripheral issues.

There is no getting around the need for politics or political speech. Banning it is a lousy way to commemorate anything in a democracy.

Christopher Moore is a writer living in Manhattan. He is available by email at ccmnj@aol.com and on Twitter @cmoorenyc.

On July 16, I decided to go to an exhibition at the Museum of the City of New York, so I went online to get additional information. One particularly compelling detail emerged: the exhibition had closed July 15.

I missed it.

It’s a familiar feeling and extends way beyond museum exhibits. Last year and the year(s) before, there were the plays (Good People, with Estelle Parsons, among others), movies (Winter’s Bone) and concerts (Barbara Carroll, any night she performs and I’m not there). Yes, living in New York City means being right in the center of it all. Swell. But living here also means missing more than most Americans are ever even offered.

So many of us walk around with a list, sometimes in our minds and sometimes on our schedules, of things we hope to catch before they leave. I stopped my Time Out New York subscription after becoming too good at chronicling, at any given moment, what gallery opening was happening without me. Keeping track of club dates and Restaurant Weeks and music festivals, even when out of town, eventually made me wonder about my own mental health.

Other cities are different. There are places where you catch a touring Broadway show and a few fine other performances, throw in a night at the opera or symphony, see the occasional flick…and you’re done for the calendar year. The local performance center shutters in the summer. You’re keeping up—at least enough to feel equipped for dinner-party chatter.

Our town is different. Right now we’re heading into the dog days of August, right? But not really—not here. There’s that Monet garden recreation at the Bronx Botanical Gardens through Oct. 21. The Jewish Museum, at 92nd and Fifth Avenue, has an unusual exhibit on the artist Edouard Vuillard, one of my favorites. At least I think he’s one of my favorites, but that hypothesis needs to be tested—before time runs out on Sept. 23. Oh, the plays. Don’t I need to see Tribes, that interesting off-Broadway one in the Village? And what about that woman from England on Broadway, the one pretending to be Judy Garland?

There are ways to play this game successfully. The experts advise going right after the opening crowds leave the exhibit/play/whatever. Don’t wait. That’s easier said than done, though, especially when there are jobs to do and lives to live and money worries. Some people even choose buying groceries over theater tickets.

The most precious commodity remains time. It gets eaten up. At summer’s start, I wrote in my Google calendar an exact date for that trip to the Museum of the City of New York. The day came and I didn’t go.

So I never saw The Greatest Grid: The Master Plan of Manhattan, 1811-2011, which was a smart look at longterm planning in the city. At least that’s what the New York Times said on its front page. And what my mom said after she went and issued a report. Mom won this round.

Sometimes, though, I score. My pal Liz and I went two weeks ago to the Morgan Library, which leaves me a bit cold when I see the books locked up there like they’ve done something wrong. But the Winston Churchill exhibit, especially the audio of his fantastic speeches, made it all worthwhile. What an election-year treat, seeing a political leader who rallied people in common cause instead of talking down to them and dividing them up into special interests.

So much to see and do. That’s one of the things that drew me to the city. Then, amidst all the rushing from the reading at Barnes & Noble to the Film Forum retrospective, I realized the ultimate irony: My favorite thing to do here is simply to walk down a street.
There’s a lesson there. But I might miss it, hurrying to get to the next big thing.

Christopher Moore is a writer living in Manhattan. His email address is ccmnj@aol.com and he’s on Twitter @cmoorenyc.

Christopher Moore is a writer living in Manhattan. He’s available through email at ccmnj@aol.com and on Twitter @cmoorenyc.

Is it too late to complain about Rep. Charlie Rangel? Or the Board of Elections? Or the way people voted last month?

I thought it was, given that the congressional primary election was held June 26. That night, we learned that Rangel had beaten back a serious challenge from State Sen. Adriano Espaillat.

Or we thought we’d learned that. As I write this, though, the Rangel lead over Espaillat has narrowed considerably. The June primary is making July news.

Now it turns out that the Board of Elections, consistent with its ongoing efforts to screw up, did not report correctly the early returns. Everybody is ripping into the board—and rightly so. But our state, local and legal leaders need to actually do something. Wanted: a system for tallying ballots that is both accurate and reasonably fast. Then we can go back to worrying about the quality of the candidates, like Rangel, who has become, sad to say, a considerable embarrassment.

His ethical lapses include improperly using his office to raise funds from businesses and, my personal favorite, not paying taxes for 17 years on a rental property in the Dominican Republic. His ability to function effectively has been seriously hampered, but our political elites gutlessly lined up for him during his recent re-election bid.

But who really deserves the disdain in all of this? Voters. They finally got a congressional primary that mattered and most still could not be bothered to participate.

I couldn’t participate. After the lines got redrawn, I moved out of Rangel’s 15th Congressional District without even leaving my apartment. Nobody ever sent me anything about how my congressional district has changed—I googled it. Repeatedly. Then a smart neighbor told me Google was right.

Now I’m living in the district of Rep. Jerrold Nadler. He’s fairly verbose. I once saw him almost talk his way through a fire drill. I was interviewing him and people were leaving the building. It was awkward; he just kept speaking. At least he says smart things, like when he saved Bill Clinton’s butt during the impeachment hearings.

Even living in a new district, I kept getting calls from the campaign of Clyde Williams, another Rangel challenger. “I’m getting your mailings and your messages,” I told the staffer, “but I’m not in the district any more. You really need not to waste money and time on me.”

The Rangel race amounted to one frustration after another, and it contains lessons for people all over town. First off, we could have used a little less clubhouse politicking on the part of Rangel’s supporters, who should have known better, and more from his opponents, because there were too many of them. They split the anti-Rangel vote. They needed to get in a room and decide who was going to run.

I get that Rangel delivers for his district. He votes well, which is not nothing. Certainly, when I moved into his district, I was thrilled to support someone with a keen understanding of congressional maneuvering, a progressive unafraid to do the horse-trading of an effective legislator. Eagerly, I backed an esteemed veteran as he took the chairmanship of the House Ways and Means Committee. I thought Rangel rocked. But hey…my excuse is I was coming from Jersey. Even today, Rangel is the least embarrassing congressman I’ve ever had.
Unfortunately, that’s not saying much.

Christopher Moore is a writer living in Manhattan. He’s available through email at ccmnj@aol.com and on Twitter @cmoorenyc.

When I went there, though, my prescriptions were not ready—even after I’d been assured by phone beforehand that they would be filled. I will never get back the hours I spent standing around waiting for the men in white coats to get their work done.
Currently, I get my prescriptions filled by Frank at Duane Reade.

If bigger is not necessarily better, well, neither is smaller. This is something I’ve been thinking about as the Bloomberg administration and West Side Council Member Gale A. Brewer are working with many others to save small businesses. Proposed regulations would limit the scope of some storefronts, to encourage fewer banks and more independent shops. Just last week, Bloomberg went further and unveiled plans for a new office to help businesses, especially smaller ones, “navigate city bureaucracy,” as the Wall Street Journal put it.
I’m backing both proposals. But I stopped believing that every mom-and-pop store deserves to succeed around the time I noticed that mom and pop were treating me like crap.

Sometimes, small places screw up. My spouse and I go through dry cleaners the way the Octomom goes through Pampers. Some of our clothes recently played a dramatic game of lost and found. We go back and forth between the expensive cleaner who keeps calling to say he forgot to charge for one of the shirts or the woman with the ecofascist lecture promoting a special clothing case—one we would have to pay for—so as not to use up plastic dry-cleaning bags. In a city with so many dry cleaners, why are all the annoying ones in my neighborhood?

I’m not alone in my mixed feelings about the occasional small business. “I was overcharged,” a harried-looking woman told a merchant in front of a little city market on Broadway in April. “At this point, I’m not coming back.”

“Why are you not coming back?” the fellow said, evidently having missed the part about her being overcharged.
“Because I don’t like this,” the woman said.

I don’t like it either. Yesterday when the three men at the diner counter in lower Manhattan chatted with each other and ignored me, I didn’t like it. I walked out. Whenever someone takes a phone call instead of dealing with me, when I took the time to show up in person, I don’t like it. The young waiter at the unsurprisingly now-defunct Italian eatery who was texting instead of taking orders? The gentlemen at the pricey restaurant uptown who take away plates before we’re finished eating them? I don’t like any of it.

When I was growing up, my parents owned an independent bookstore. The place had nearly a three-decade run. When it was over, I zipped into Barnes & Noble and bought a membership card. I was exhausted from all the years of fighting the good fight, being on the side of the little guy. Now it turns out that Barnes & Noble, after killing bookstores across the nation, is the little guy in the battle against Amazon. Talk about what goes around, comes around.

Let’s do what we can to create a fair playing field for small businesses. Then, within those establishments, let’s set up rules on how to treat customers better. Surely, fine service must be central to what smaller businesses offer their communities.
What I want in a store or restaurant, big or small, is to be noticed, appreciated and treated well.

Christopher Moore is a writer living in Manhattan. He’s available by email at ccmnj
@aol.com and on Twitter @cmoorenyc.

If the mayor’s move makes us think about serving sizes, it’s a winner

Let’s start with this: We know our mayor is great with limits—for other people.

He famously took stands against smoking in restaurants, bars and public parks. His administration has tried to limit everything from the size of newsstands to the number of cars entering Midtown. Then last week, the mayor, surrounded by piles of sugar cubes, said he wants to limit restaurant soda cups to the 16-ounce size.

The only limit he has not really liked is the one allowing a mayor two terms. So he found a way to get that overturned, with very few high-profile New Yorkers daring to stand in his way.

So I get why Mayor Michael Bloomberg drives some people crazy, especially if they happen to like supersizing their beverages. There’s something unseemly about a billionaire who cannot stop telling other people what to do. And there’s not much that’s warm and fuzzy about the guy to help his medicine go down.

I also understand—oh, boy, do I—that it’s hard to hear that we’re too fat, especially during tough times. When First Lady Michelle Obama started her healthy eating campaign, I resented the hell out of it. I was newly unemployed and that woman was running around the country talking about vegetables. But my pals in New York City schools told me she was exactly right to tackle the obesity epidemic; it plays out in ugly ways in the lives of children (and adults) in this city and nation.

Bloomberg is right to take action. His critics say the limit on soda size is random. It is. Wherever we start tackling this issue, it’s going to seem subjective and maybe even silly. But we have to start someplace, somehow.

Yes, there are scientific reasons to question the mayor’s specific proposal. Some people think diet soda is even worse than the sugary variety. Others want to target specific foods instead of beverages. There’s a camp that prefers an education-only approach, with nothing punitive.

Perhaps Bloomberg has picked the wrong piece of this monster topic to begin with, but he’s trying to come up with a political answer to a health crisis. Starting with sugary soda, where there has already been some slippage in usage and a growing agreement, makes political sense.

Even if the mayor’s decree falls flat or gets overturned by the next mayor, the whole enterprise will have been worthwhile if it initiates a discussion about portion sizes. Because let me tell you: I’m really not all that old, and in my lifetime there has been a drastic change in what gets put in front of you when you say “small,” whether you’re ordering a beverage or a food item.

The simplest criticism of the mayor’s plan has its logic backward. Opponents say rebellious guzzlers will just order more than one soda. But that’s the whole point. Right now, we’re playing restaurant roulette. People need to be reminded what exactly one single beverage size should be. Is that subjective? Sure, but some of us are tired of the subjective decision to serve us, way too often, way too much food and drink.

Who’s to decide the proper serving size? I pick me. And Bloomberg. Yeah, the mayor and me. ’Cause he looks OK and I just lost 10 pounds in four weeks.

Basically, the one thing I did consistently and consciously was stop drinking sugary soda. It worked. I had Diet Cokes on special occasions: Mother’s Day, Memorial Day and the night I saw Linda Lavin in The Lyons. I cut out the sugar-laced variety—and, sadly, French fries.

I wasn’t trying to be trendy, I swear. I was just taking slightly better care of myself.
Starting with soda just made sense.

Christopher Moore is a writer in Manhattan. He is available by email at ccmnj@aol.com and is on Twitter @cmoorenyc.

Shifting elections away from anniversary date is a mistake

The move is shortsighted and contrary to the public interest.

The decision in question: shifting the state primary from Tuesday, Sept. 11 to Thursday, Sept. 13. The governor and the state legislature have decided that Sept. 11 is, as the New York Times put it last week, “a day for reflection and not for politics.”

The mindless attack on anything deemed political really needs to stop—especially when it comes to this significant anniversary on the national calendar. There are political implications to almost everything, but especially to the most serious attack against Americans on their own soil.

The governor and the legislature have it exactly wrong. Sept. 11 is a perfect day to go out and vote. To exercise freedom. To express opinions. To take part in the democratic process. One of the terrible little realities of Sept. 11, 2001, a day of much bigger atrocities, was that voters were stopped in their tracks. It was, after all, a municipal primary day.

Granted, this year, New Yorkers statewide are being asked to vote in too many elections. The state needs a sensible, streamlined approach, voting machines that inspire confidence and an open-minded attitude about same-day registration, among other electoral innovations. Not needed: any more of this reflexive, silly and downright dangerous dislike of anything deemed “political.”

I use the quotation marks on purpose, since almost everything falls under the definition of politics, according to what they say in freshman year poli sci classes. Politics is about the struggle over limited resources and who gets what. Politics is sometimes, but not always, about partisan struggles, although that’s the way it’s usually viewed today. In truth, there’s nothing more political than a lively Board of Education meeting or a bad personal relationship, even if nobody is ever outwardly aligned with a political party.

Too bad the anti-politics crowd has got hold of the way we talk about public affairs. Cynicism increases and the people who love low turnout rates wind up being thrilled that they can keep running the nation. When you say you don’t like politics, you begin to opt out of self-government. When you don’t vote, you fulfill someone else’s agenda.

In reality, politics is a thrilling and all-encompassing business. In a new play about newspaper biggie Joseph Alsop by David Auburn called The Columnist, the famous scribe takes aim after hearing someone decry politics. “My boy,” Auburn’s Alsop says, “politics is life! Politics is human intercourse at its most sublimely ridiculous and intensely vital. You may as well say you don’t very much care for sex.”

These words are thrillingly on target. I recently finished—thanks be to God—a semester teaching college students in New Jersey. So many of the most conscientious students kept telling me that they don’t like politics. They refuse to read about it or follow it. I wanted to quote Auburn’s line about sex, but worried about winding up on the evening news.
It breaks my heart. We need our most nimble minds to embrace the public sphere, the ongoing fight over limited resources in a changing society. We need smart people of all ages to think and rethink about military misadventures and health care funding and library hours and marriage rights and class size. There’s nothing we need more than an informed, active citizenry.

Sept. 11 does not now—and never did—need to become another day for people to sit on their butts and eat hamburgers. Like many Martin Luther King Jr. Day advocates understand and insist, we need days on instead of days off. We need engagement. We need participation.

We need to vote.

When it comes to shifting the election date, the governor and the legislature are pandering, pure and simple. Is it too much to ask our politicians to stand up for politics?

I vote that we vote on Sept. 11. And every other chance we get.
Christopher Moore is a writer living in Manhattan. He can be reached by email
at ccmnj@aol.com and is on Twitter
(@cmoorenyc).

For all his chatter of hope and change, and for all the good he’s done for gay and lesbian people by allowing them to serve openly in the military, Obama was still a major disappointment on marriage. He talked about how he was “evolving” on the issue, prompting some activists to put a pithy phrase on a button: “Evolve, already.” How long, we asked ourselves, does it take for a constitutional law professor to get around to thinking this through?

That changed last week, when Obama officially endorsed gay marriage, almost as eloquently as his candid vice-president did a few days before. The announcement sent shockwaves through our media-centric and gay-friendly city, where I think it’s fair to say the president is even more welcome than he was before.

Yes, there are opponents here to gay marriage, like the media-savvy Timothy Dolan. Last year, after he compared marrying someone of the same sex to wedding (and, by association, bedding) an animal, I took the liberty of calling his office and providing a woman who answered the phone with my reaction to his ridiculous comments. “I want to get married,” I said, “and I want him to get out of the way.”

Outside of religious extremists, New Yorkers seem pretty positive on this big issue. We have a mayor and a governor who led the way on same-sex marriage. Indeed, Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s statement about Obama’s change of view contained a rare historical view. The mayor saw Obama’s comments to ABC’s Robin Roberts as a turning point—one that mattered because it came from the top.

“No American president has ever supported a major expansion of civil rights that has not ultimately been adopted by the American people—and I have no doubt that this will be no exception,” Bloomberg said.

Is history at odds with the short term? Maybe. A Manhattan-based reporter pal of mine, reporting on the news as it broke, suggested Obama was alienating middle-class straight men in the Midwest. Maybe, but if Obama is doomed, it’s not because I got married or because he now officially OKs the union. It’s because he never really learned how to manage the American economy, especially with Republicans in Congress at war with him. Now that you’re cool with my marriage, Mr. President, would you please fire Timothy Geithner?

As a former Howard Dean supporter, I’m not great at picking a winner. Still, I’d argue the president has helped himself in a couple of ways. He helped build his brand, as the Madison Avenue peeps might say. He’s going for gutsy. This is the brave Obama, the guy who failed to show up during negotiations with congressional Republicans.

Like all of the preceding elections, this one will be about turnout. Obama needs the money and energy of millions of gay voters, along with their families and friends. He was coming to town anyway to take our money. Now he can come without the ridiculous pretense that he’s still evolving. Instead, he will be a dude who, win or lose, has a place in history. He was the first U.S. president to tell some of us that he thinks we have the right to get married. In the city of Stonewall, that’s going to resonate.

On our wedding day, the couples at City Hall were of all shapes and sizes and, yes, they were both gay and straight. There was a stunning New York mix. To me, the whole thing was a walking and breathing miracle—how I was allowed to join legally with the love of my life in the city of my heart. I think Obama would have enjoyed himself on that December morning.

I like that there’s now no disconnect between my marriage and my president.

Christopher Moore is a writer living in Manhattan. He can be reached by email (ccmnj@aol.com) and is on Twitter (cmoorenyc).

Their selfishness literally seeps through the vents into our apartments.

Oh, sure, I believe people have a legal right to smoke in their homes—if they keep their smoke within the confines of their apartments.

That rarely happens. So let’s think about a great big new in-the-apartment smoking ban. At least in my building.

Granted, I’m cranky. My clothes smell like I’ve been clubbing in the 1980s. Is there a vent in my closet that I don’t know about? Beyond my space, I noticed a few minutes ago while in the laundry room that the odor there shifts from that Tide smell to the building workers’ cigarettes.

There will be no cessation in the smoking debate in this town. Mayor Michael Bloomberg recently unveiled the latest front in what amounts to his administrative war. He wants city apartment buildings officially to go on record as to whether smoking is permitted in all indoor and outdoor locations, including—here’s the fun part—inside apartments.

Some smokers are horrified their mayor is reaching into their apartments. Not me. I’m thrilled that rude behavior hostile to my health is finally up for debate. These days, I like the idea of a building where nobody is smoking, not even the scuzzy-looking people by the front door. Those folks always seem like they walked out of The Grapes of Wrath. These untouchables seem so displaced that I almost feel sorry for them. Almost.

Mostly, these days, I feel sorry for me. Cause I cannot even figure out where the smoke is coming from. Granted, I’m not alone. The building management sent out an announcement last month about the issue. “Many neighbors have voiced concerns over the smoke that comes through the vents, doorways and windows of neighbors who smoke cigarettes,” the flier said. “Secondhand smoke is extremely dangerous for asthmatics, the elderly and especially young children.”

Oh, asthma. Did I mention I was diagnosed with asthma after a couple of years in my building? Anyway, the building flier had three tips for residents: Smoke outside of the building; use a “smokeless ashtray,” something I’m skeptical about, especially since the jerks in my building are not buying them; or “quit—that’s the healthiest option for everyone.”

Critics, citing Bloomberg’s no-smoking policy in restaurants and bars and now parks, say he’s creating a nanny state. All I know is that I like breathing again. The mayor deserves credit for being largely ahead of his time on these issues. It only takes a visit to a city without these policies for a non-smoker to appreciate Nanny Bloomberg anew.

I get that there is another side to this issue, but there’s so much smoke in my apartment that I cannot see it clearly.

Oh, and not to sound old-fashioned, I’m not thrilled with the marijuana smoke, either. Or, more specifically, the incense on my floor that’s doing a lame-ass job of covering up the marijuana smoke.

Sorry, smokers, but at least I admit to the ugly stuff in the recesses of my mind. Earlier today I was walking on West 38th Street. Strolling behind a smoker in an ugly jacket (he evidently spends his dough on cigs and not clothes) as the awful smell wafted back toward my nostrils and lungs, I actually began to wonder whether even that awful little moment should be legal. Why should this dude be able to smoke on a busy sidewalk? I want fresh air, or the nearest possible approximation offered in this big town.

This is real life, not an episode of Mad Men.

Christopher Moore is a writer living in Manhattan. He’s available by email at ccmnj@aol.com and also on Twitter
(@cmoorenyc).