Braved the walk to work this morning. Wasn’t so bad. What I’m not looking forward to is doing it again this evening. You know, if anyone had fears that NYC was losing its edge, a transit strike the week before Christmas is about as edgy as it gets.

Home, 63rd Street: This is not so bad. Not too cold out here. It’s been colder.
59th Street: Okay, I’m now glad I put on my leggings.
52nd Street: Oh yes! Totally forgot there would be random NYPD all over the place. Looks like this walk won’t be too terrible after all.
45th Street: There is a surprising lot of traffic for carpools-only allowed in the city.
42nd Street: 20 down, 30 to go.
38th Street: Just saw a guy on a razor scooter.
33rd Street: Mmm…more NYPD. Just what I ordered for breakfast.
24th Street: Wishing I had learned how to Rollerblade a little better.
18th Street: I’m officially a Sallycicle.
13th Street: Thank god for egg sandwiches and hot coffee.

Now I get to thaw out for a couple hours before setting out again tonight.

One thing I’ve learned from the strike: I need new sneakers.

On the way home, not too much more eventful, other than noticing that drunken tourists need to be extricated from the city during this strike. Or pushed onto 3rd Avenue traffic. They’re fucking up my stride, yo.

Here’s an incredibly grainy crap picture (taken via phone) of the loveliness that was 42nd Street this evening (looking west).

In staying home, however, I realize I’m missing out on potentially great run-ins with other pietons, so tomorrow I’m going to be a self-imposed martyr and put on my leggings and walk the 60+ blocks to work.

A full report to follow tomorrow.

Nice job raising him. Here’s hope that there are no siblings awaiting the citizens of NYC, half- or otherwise.

Getting off at Bloomie’s, I caught possibly one of the best subway “acts” I’ve seen in a while. My words won’t do it justice, but picture this: 70-something male, greasy, chin-length gray hair combed-over, army fatigues. Playing “Besame Mucho” on a crappy $75 Casio keyboard. Now here’s the best part: he was accompanied by three dancing dolls: GI Joe flanked by two Barbies.

I simply had to give him a buck.

Whipple’s eyebrows: WTF? Is this some ploy he uses to distinguish himself from all the other celebrity sycophants -er- “reporters”? And they just keep getting bigger. Seriously, I want to take a weedwacker to them. I should start carrying around scissors in the off chance that I might run into him on the street sometime. I will snip those bad boys. I will.

Now that it’s officially nippy out there, I’m struggling with whether or not to take my air conditioners out. On the one hand, on the really cold nights the wind kind of whips around my apartment. On the other hand, it’s so freaking hot in my steam-heat special that I usually awake parched as a camel in the Kalahari. A little breeze usually evens things out a bit.

I hesitate to remove said a/c units, because (a) I have basically nowhere to put them without the place looking more ghetto than it already does, and (b) last year I my foot had an unfortunate incident involving my bedroom a/c and bottle of wine.

Anyone take theirs out yet? Anyone intending to hold out until they see their breath inside their apartment? Anyone want to come over and pull mine out in exchange for a beer?

1. It drives me crazy when people walk four abreast on the sidewalk. Since these people are generally tourists, I always do my best to crash through them whenever possible. I like confirming New York’s reputation of housing the rudest, most vile individuals on the planet. Especially for people from Atlanta, who talk too loudly and wear fanny packs.

2. I’m generally amazed at people who zigzag all over town. Me, I walk a straight path between distances. If I’m about two feet from the curb, I generally stay about two feet from the curb during my whole journey on foot. People who ramble from one side of the sidewalk to the other slay me. Why? It’s not like they’re window shopping while walking to the bus stop, or trying to avert errant dog poo. What’s up with that?

3. Perhaps the thing that annoys me to distraction is people who walk on the left hand side of the sidewalk. I really want to know, why, when this is a country in which people drive on the right hand side of the road, that one would walk on the opposite side? Is there some unwritten rule I don’t know about?

Any die-hard left-side walkers out there? Please send in your thoughts - I’m curious. Perhaps if you enlighten me with the logic behind why you walk where you walk, I’ll give up shoving left-side walkers out of my way for the new year.

Why is that? Why do we see such a plethora of electric razor ads in the three weeks before Christmas, but nary a blade the rest of the year? Seriously, what is up with that? Do they think we poor clueless gift-buyers, 12 hours before all stores close, are going to run into the local Duane Reade and demand to buy the latest-and-greatest Remington, in the name of greatest-and-most-appropriate-presents-in-the-history-of-Christmas?

Or do the ad buyers just figure we have no idea what else to fill out the Christmas stocking better than an electric razor? After all, men grow beards every day. Problem is, nothing takes the place of that old reliable .29 cent Bic in the shower (contrary to all the ‘Queer Eye for the Straight Guy’ you can watch).

I don’t know. This is all very vexing, and has been since I was 10 and figured something was up when I had no idea of the existence of electric razors until I would see them appear on the TV right before Christmas, like “Charlie Brown” or “Rudolph,” or “Emmett Otter’s Jug Band Christmas” (for those of you who had cable back in the day).

Any thoughts, kids?

Since I have a few presents left to buy for my peeps, I decided to wander over on my lunch hour today to check things out. Hopefully I wandered through the aisles and aisles of little red & white booths, searching for the perfect present that heretofore I had no idea existed. Though I was heartened by the quality of some of the jewelry places, and enjoyed perusing the few booths dedicated to children’s puppets and toys, mostly I found the typical array of generic middle eastern hippie clothes/incense vendors, shitty silver jewelry kiosks and stinky do-it-yourself soap merchants.

Honestly, I might as well just go shop the street vendors around Times Square. Ick. So, dear readers, if you’re considering taking a peek at this, or the two other Crap Fair locations in the city (Bryant & Central Parks, I believe) in the hopes that you might find the Greatest Christmas/Hanukah/Kwanzaa Present Ever, don’t bother.