Suit of the Day

It rained really hard yesterday in Midtown Manhattan and probably some other places too but I wasn't at those other places. A little before 5PM there was almost no time lapse between the flash of lightening and the thunder. I am sure if I were to walk around the block to 5th Ave. I could've gotten shots of lightning striking the Empire State Building. 

But I didn't. In a rainstorm that intense, you either stay indoors or put your umbrella up, your head down, and walk quickly to wherever you are heading.

It was still warm enough that had I been dressed in jeans and a tee-shirt, and not carrying gear, I might've closed my umbrella and danced all the way up Madison Avenue, singing something about 

"laughing at clouds

so dark up above . . . "

But I wasn't in jeans and a tee, and I was carrying gear, so I didn't. 

I was bemused by people, already completely soaked, huddling under an awning or in a doorway, looking all forlorn at the rain pouring down. I mean, they couldn't get any wetter than they were, and it was warm enough to shower in the storm, so why get all mopey and miserable? I even told a couple of them. They looked like tourists and the blank stare they gave me told me they were either totally stunned into unconsciousness by combined barrage of noise, light and water or they didn't speak any English. Or they thought I was the heavy rainstorm equivalent of mad dogs and Englishmen in the noontime sun.

And speaking of the noontime sun, it was damn hot in NYC before the cold front that caused the rain blew into nYc. I was outside of Grand Central Terminal, on E. 43rd Street and Vanderbilt Avenue - which I hope becomes another pedestrian mall in the near future, what with the absurd sidewalk congestion in the area - when I saw this overheated fellow. Do I assume he was wiping the sweat from his brow?