The Apocalypse & Me: It's those little New City moments that are ushering in the end times.

"classy lady and man - feb 08" by the fantastic Graeme Mitchell

There are many reasons why I love this city. This is one of them:

Last week, while acting the part of Receptionist #1 at the Hiro Haraguchi Hair Salon, a client approached the desk. She was very well put-together and well-preserved with an impressive, rather bodiful coiffure to match her impressive and rather bodiful fur coat. She wore a pair of sunglasses with cold, silver frames - not the head-swallowing dinner plate variety so popular with sluts nowadays but something more akin to Aviators. After paying with her AmEx (because who doesn't pay with their AmEx in New City?) and returning her wallet to her purse, she faced me and, almost apologetically, she said, "I'm going to ask you an insane question."

"OK," I thought and said out loud.

"I just had my eyes done, and I'm going out to dinner tonight with my daughter and her fiance. I need to know which pair of sunglasses I can wear...

to a restaurant...

for dinner...

at night."

I then closed my eyes, thanking God for this city.

"These? I just picked them up from Prada. Or..."

And she removed the current pair, allowing me to briefly view the bruising which followed the natural lower curve of the eye socket - purple, blue, and red blots, like a toddler playing with markers.

"These? I can't remember where these are from."

She replaced the sunglasses with another pair, a throwback to the 50s. Unlike Prada's hard lines, these were a bit playful, translucent with a pinkish, skin-toned hue.

Now, let's be honest. They were both sunglasses. No one would mistake them for anything else. She knew that. I knew that. What we needed to do was choose the pair that didn't shout the fact so damn loudly. And so I directed her to the latter option, praising their subtle qualities, attempting to instill in her the confidence she would later need that evening as she stepped from her elegant, chauffeured ride into the elegant, impossible-to-book restaurant past the elegant, impossible-to-please fellow patrons in her furs and sunglasses. Which she will not remove for the entire meal.

P.S.

Here are a few more selections from Graeme Mitchell's NYC Journal series. The subject matter is not new. The streets of New City have been covered many times over by numerous photographers, including Walker Evans, Diane Arbus, daughter Amy, and many other masters of the genre, but Mitchell's execution, especially when studying people, is faster-paced and seems to play with the unseen more, allowing for/encouraging confusion and mystery.