I figured I was crazy this morning, when I put a sweater in my gym bag, but it’s one of my favourite light fall sweaters, a faded charcoal grey, and it looks so good with the perfect suede hobo bag I happened to find myself buying at lunch. What, can I help it when a purse sale happens in my very own conference room? Can I? No.
Where was I? Oh, sweater. I thought I was a little delusional, packing a sweater for what was sure to be another 80 degree September day. And it looked that way, in the morning, before the rain storm. But when I went out at four to pick up a little pick me up coffee, suddenly I was chilly in my sweater, and the coffee in my hands was the perfect warmer. Nevermind that I spilled it all over my desk when I got upstairs, that doesn’t fit in with this beautiful moment I’m sharing. Incidentally, I won’t want to drink a mocha for the next few months since my whole desk smells like one now. Great.
It seems, then, that the rain may have swept away the very last of the warmer September days, and with it comes New York’s best season. Autumn is where the city really shows her colors, and not just in Central Park. The Hudson usually looks dingy and swampy in the summer, but in autumn’s gentle lights it has the deep blue luminescence of the ocean it empties into. The streets in the late afternoon slanting light sparkle, the brownstones and brick townhomes of the village look like the backlot to your very own perfect life.
People look better in autumn, too. I won’t deny that the women of New York shine in summer, with their tanned shoulders and their big sunglasses, but October and November bring out a more serious, more subtly sexy wardrobe for our leading ladies. The scarves, wrapped around throats and shoulders, the tall brown boots and the collegiate look are the rage every season, no matter what the fashion magazines try to tell us about style. Winter in New York is brutal and rarely an outlet for fashion, so we use fall as our runway, the autumnal browns and the eye-catching jewel tones. Fall is a good time for new bangs, new boots, matching wool with cotton, and long walks.
Men, too, have it really great in autumn. I always feel a little bad for the men of New York in summer. Those suits! It doesn’t matter how breathable the salesguy told them that suit was, they look uncomfortable in the 90 degree weather. It may be the only time you’ll see a guy looking enviously at a sundress. But in the fall, their suits look perfect, just like they should. The more casual guys among us get to pull out the sweaters without six layers of scarves and coats, they get to wear cordoroy which looks so handsome on them, and those lucky enough to be fair-skinned with dark hair get that beautiful pink glow to their cheeks that makes women melt a little.
Yeah, the parade is its most beautiful in the fall. Several of our favourite indulgences, like coffee bars and Central Park, are at their most applicable. Dates, in the fall, have the most intimacy and fervor, without the clammy sweatiness of summer or the biting edge of winter. The city is, for at least a few weeks in October, literally perfect.
Perhaps it’s just me. October has always been my favourite month, with pumpkins being sold at the green grocer and argyle being sold at the stores. All my preppiest fashion indulgences make the most sense, all my friends have pink cheeks and laughs that carry down the street on a crisp wind. October reminds me of everything I moved to the northeast to enjoy. When my friends took me to Bar Harbor in 1999, I literally could not believe my eyes. Every corner turned, every little hill summitted, was like walking into a chalk drawing a la Mary Poppins. I stood at the tops of winding road and just stared at the red and gold trees and the blue sky and the shining grey gravel of the lane.
And now, our anniversary is in October. So is Stuart’s birthday, and the day he arrived in the country, and my brother’s birthday, and Halloween, and hot apple cider and pound cake and mulled wine. But most of all, October is my favourite time to be a New Yorker.
Everyone’s wearing their finest, everyone is at their best, and today, I finally flipped the calendar on my work desk in anticipation of it all, you know, right after I’d spilled my coffee all over it. I can’t wait to get out there and meet friends for dinner and Alias, to feel just a little cold in the shade, and to get another cup of coffee. And maybe a few scarves.

On Friday night, we stayed up past our bedtimes tinkering on our computers. Stuart wrote and played Civilization and I ordered various birthday and anniversary surprises for him. On Saturday, we woke up late and hit our favourite diner for lunch, and then dragged ourselves to the park to lay in the shade and read. I watched kids run around and no less than two wedding parties take photographs under Hell Gate bridge, while Stuart listened to a Kanye West CD he’d bought at a stoop sale on the way to the park.
Wandering home past Ditmars with the intent to grab coffee at Starbucks, we walked past someplace that’s already won a place in our hearts, a little cafe called freeze peach, with couches and local babies hanging out and delicious iced tea and absurdly cheap wireless. It started raining while we were in there which made it all the easier to settle in for two more iced teas, and taking up station at two of the aging PC laptops, we did research for various writing projects and emailed each other snarky commentary about other patrons. We walked home and ordered Chinese food and I settled down with my notes and my laptop and banged out some writing, while Stuart squashed people with enormous helicopters in San Andreas.
On Sunday, we managed to wake up before noon and decided to make a day of it in the north end of Central Park. Grabbing bagels at 30th avenue, our day hit a glitch when the subway wouldn’t run directly to Queensboro Plaza, we had to ride back up to Astoria Blvd and then ride all the way down to QBP nonstop. Urgh! I had to eat my bagel standing up in the train but I tried not to complain as much as I usually do when I’m hungry and shaky. We got to the park and wandered through the Conservatory Garden for a few minutes.
Reading Devil In the White City is giving me an even greater appreciation for Olmstead and what he did with Central Park. Even though I like the Garden, it’s when you leave its gates and walk into that unique gentle wilderness that Olmstead made, you see the wooded island in the Meer and the way even the rocky hill is thoughtfully placed, you wish you could shake his hand.
We borrowed two bamboo poles from the Dana Center and found a shady spot to fish. Stuart ran across the street for spam and we dried it in the sun to use at bait. You’d be hard-pressed to call what I did fishing – it was more like gently feeding lunchmeats to the crafty nibblers at the bottom. Stuart fooled them, though – he caught two. Releasing them was scary since you have to gently unhook their mouths and then slip them back into the water. When we go camping, it’s been decided, we’re getting a second rod and second temporary permit for me. Who knows, maybe I’ll even get brave enough to touch one, if I catch it.
On the walk up to 125th street, we walked through Mount Morris neighborhood and it was so charmingly Harlem..ian? Ladies in resplendent African-patterned dresses outside an old church, Neighborhood cafes packed full of intelligentsia and young teenagers shouting jokes to each other. It was a neighborhood that, had it been mine, I would have been proud to call home.
On the bus ride back to Astoria, we started chatting to these two non-natives, who’d been visiting for the week. One, a teacher from Miami applying for the Fellows program, and the other, a teacher from North Carolina visiting his girlfriend. It’s amazing how quickly Stuart and I get to talking to strangers – is it something about us, when we’re together, that makes us approachable? Even a woman in the Garden, watching a jewish wedding from the bench next to ours (we were watching too, what, public weddings!) talked to us about our marriage, how we met, what she thought of the bride.
The one stranger we didn’t talk to was the young man hammering at a bike chain, three lampposts down from our own front door. We stood in the foyer, having a hushed discussion on whether he was stealing the bike. It was a Kryptonite chain he was hammering at, surely the sheer brashness of the attempt would bely it being theft? We couldn’t decide and, in a move I’m still not entirely comfortable with, decided to just assume it was his and not interfere. It still sits funny with me because for all the effort I make to interact with my neighbors both in Astoria and the whole city, what am I doing if I’m too chicken to say something about the guy and his bike, or to the obnoxious man chasing after and terrifying the Canada Geese in the park, or the man standing next to our fishing spot fly-fishing when it was strictly prohibited to do so in Harlem Meer?
Am I taking the best the city offers, and not trying to help ease the worst her citizens can do? Maybe it really was his bike, then wouldn’t he have felt assured that one of his neighbors took the pains to make sure she asked him? What if the irritated goose attacks some little kid holding her hand out? Fly-fishing can be traumatizing to the fish in the Meer, why wouldn’t I point out that he wasn’t supposed to?
Perhaps next time my surroundings and activities are so brilliant, I’ll make the extra effort to keep the city so beautiful. Besides, it’s just a bike, or a fish, I’d do something about a truly unfair or traumatic moment, right? Don’t know what I’m basing that on.
I’ll trail off callously and say it was a beautiful weekend and just what I needed.