METROPOLITAN DIARY #1
What It’s All About
Dear Diary:
A friend of mine was visiting from Rio de Janeiro and staying in an apartment on the Upper West Side. I met her there and we prepared for a day out on the town.
After leaving the apartment, we got on the elevator, where we were greeted by an older woman with two small dogs.
I could not help smiling as I read the slogan on the woman’s shirt: “What if the Hokey Pokey is what it’s all about?”
“What does that mean?” my Brazilian friend asked.
How to explain it?
I looked at the woman.
She looked at me.
Then we did what any respectable New Yorker would do. We did the Hokey Pokey and we turned ourselves around.
— Joanne Goodman
2 Good Seats
Dear Diary:
It was 1993, and my teenage son was begging me to take him on a road trip from our Wisconsin home to New York to see one of Simon and Garfunkel’s reunion concerts at Madison Square Garden’s Paramount Theater.
He found a number to call for tickets in the back pages of Rolling Stone.
“I have two good seats just for you,” the man who answered said in a heavy New York accent.
“How ya gonna pick these up?” he asked.
I had no idea.
“Tell ya what I’m gonna do,” he said, before offering the name of a restaurant near the Garden. “You ask for Johnny when you get there. He’ll have your tickets. And make sure you give him a nice tip.”
My wife thought I was crazy to think this was on the level, but my son and I took off for New York. We found the restaurant a couple of hours before the show was to start. And sure enough, Johnny was there with our tickets.
And, yes, we gave him a nice tip.
— Richard Moore
Sketching
Dear Diary:
I was prone to forgetting at least one important thing — wallet, phone, keys — when I went out, but I always remembered to bring along a notebook and pen.
On days when my headphones were what I had left behind, I shortened my long commute to my job as a nanny on the Upper West Side by sneakily sketching my fellow train passengers.
Those who were asleep were ideal subjects; those who were awake would inevitably ruin the pose as soon as they become aware of what I was doing.
Once, a few years ago, I was on the D train a when I noticed a young man who was sketching an older woman across from him as she snored.
Having a clear view of his profile, I took out my supplies and started to draw the artist as he drew. I felt strangely guilty, as if I were violating his invisibility as a fellow train sketcher. Still, I couldn’t resist.
With the train pulling into 34th Street, I scrambled to finish sketching his hair while he gathered his things before getting off. As he stepped out onto the platform, I tapped his shoulder and handed him the sketch.
There was just enough time to watch him process what he was looking at: the frown from being touched by a stranger to the embarrassed laugh as he saw his face on the page.
Then the doors close, and we pulled away.
— Lila Elias
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/31/nyregion/metropolitan-diary.html
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I laughed out loud at this one! 
