Jul 8, 2008

Hot off the presses

These photographs of news stands in the NYT made me think of my local vendor, on seventh avenue, which is manned by a guy so fast off the mark that the words "New York Magazine" have barely left your mouth before he hands you the latest issue. Presumably there's a brief couple of milliseconds where he's waiting to see whether you're going to say The New Yorker or New York Magazine, his hand poised over either, but then the final syllable is out and — bam. It's wasted on me, of course. I'm never in that much of a rush. In fact, I'm conscious of speeding up my delivery a little, maybe to give him a sense of being useful, but more probably to suggest that I, too, have places to go and people to see. And then I wander off, my nose in the magazine, back to my usual dawdle.

No comments:

Post a Comment