Midtown magic

Spent the day at Midtown with Corinna, my first time there since the beginning of the pandemic. I had read that Wednesdays were the days of highest occupancy in the new culture of return to the office from work from home/hybrid work, and was pleasantly surprised to see that this was somewhat accurate in Manhattan, though the 7 train back to Queens that I hopped on around 5:20 was surprisingly uncrowded, if not outright empty. Still, the sidewalks were pretty crowded, and Bryant Park at the end of the work day was operating near capacity on a beautiful spring day. Though frankly, I was reminded of sitting there at 8:40 in the morning on 9/11, right before it all got started.

Just before Corinna and I walked south from Rockefeller Center, who should I see ambling across the street but David Buza, my old colleague from Princeton, a Duke grad who met his wife Caroline in Kryszewskiville (sp? Who cares?) back in the 90s. We will have coffee tomorrow morning.

That took me back to sitting with him in the food court below Rock Center in 2002 just after I joined a project at AXA when I explained to him and Cyrus that I would be running into people I knew at Rockefeller Center through the simple expedient of looking at people as they walked past. Shortly thereafter, maybe that same day, an old colleague from Soros named Greg walked by. Haven't seen him since.

In general, this will happen less often as I age and people leave the workforce through retirement and death. But I was happy to see David yesterday, and moreover, this is the magic of cities and even their economic value. People come together and share ideas. Some of them end up being good ideas. Companies form or iniatives take flight. Value is created.