Metropolitan Diary [View all]

Nice Sandals
Dear Diary:

My husband and I were visiting New York in early summer, and we went to Townhouse Bar for happy hour the day we arrived.

The back room with the piano was just starting to get crowded, but we found seats — he on a couch next to a handsome man and I on an ottoman.

I said hello to the man sitting next to my husband and complimented him on his leather sandals.

He said they were years old and that he loved wearing them. That got the three of us talking, and we enjoyed his company for a couple of hours until leaving for dinner.

The next day, we had tickets to the Morgan Library and took a leisurely walk there. At one point, we saw a doorman up ahead helping a woman into a car. We veered a bit to leave room on the sidewalk.

The car door closed, and the doorman was suddenly standing directly in our path.

We veered slightly again.

Then he veered so that he was in our path once more.

“I like those sandals,” he said.

Neither my husband nor I were wearing sandals. It was then that I looked more carefully at the doorman’s face. It was the man we had talked with at Townhouse.

— Stephen Zagami

Locked Out
Dear Diary:

I was walking down Nostrand Avenue in Brooklyn when I saw a hatchback double-parked in a bus lane, causing traffic to build up behind it. A man was standing beside the car and banging on the window.

“Come on, baby, let me in!” he said. “Come on, let’s go, just push the button.”

He continued to shout into the car as I got closer.

“Just climb up here and press on that button,” he said. “You got it baby.”

I looked over his shoulder and saw what I believe was a papillon sitting in the passenger seat and smiling at him.

— Brendan Thomas Donohue

Best Friends
Dear Diary:

I met one of my oldest friends, Connie, on the subway in 1980. We traveled the same route every day from the Upper West Side, taking the subway to Nevins Street in Brooklyn and continuing from there, changing trains if necessary, to Winthrop Street.

From there, I walked to Kings County Hospital, and she walked to Downstate Medical Center across the street. One day, after several weeks of this parallel and silent commute, I leaned over toward her.

“Who are you?” I asked in that New York way. And with that question, our friendship began.

We found that we had much more in common than our commute. She had grown up in Jackson Heights, Queens, and had gone to Catholic school. I had grown up in Midwood, Brooklyn, and had gone to an all-girls Orthodox Jewish school.

She had left home as a single woman, unheard-of at the time, and had become a physical therapist. I had left my childhood home unmarried and had become an audiologist.

Now, we both lived on the Upper West Side, and after our days at work in Brooklyn, we would spend our evenings hanging out together in the neighborhood.

Connie ended up leaving the city and settling in Buffalo. I too left New York, for California and then Boston, but have since returned. Still, for the past 44 years we have remained connected, celebrating and mourning together: marriages, births and deaths.

As I continue to commute, I wonder: Does anyone still find their best friend on the subway?

— Sara Zacharia

((WHY not? I recently RE-found my best friend on FB!))

Wo Hop
Dear Diary:

It was a late-summer night in the 1980s, and we were catching a bite to eat with another couple at Wo Hop on Mott Street, sharing our food while packed in like sardines.

As we wound down our meal, the woman at the next table asked if I liked my dish.

I said yes, and she proceeded to reach over with her chopsticks and start eating off my plate.

When I finally found my voice, I told her we had been planning on boxing up our leftovers.

Oh, she said, I thought you were done.

— Barb DeLisle

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/05/nyregion/metropolitan-diary.html