Everyone sat outside during hot summer, air conditioning still only used for special times and fans not as strong as the occasional breeze.
Lining Broome on benches, beat-up lawn chairs facing Grand, covering stoops all over, everthing got watched, everyone got noticed, nothing got missed.
Coming back from someplace not often ventured to from the Lower East Side, maybe a concert or a walk to Chinatown or even 'uptown', we'd walked the normal gamut of sidewalks lined with neighbors and strangers alike.
Now, bars line nearby streets and nobody looks out. They're looking at TVs or each other or their cell phone, seeing nothing, noticing no one, missing everything.
