Somerset Maugham said that if you sat in the Cafe de la Paix in Paris long enough, everyone would pass by. The force of his observation depends on grasping the full meaning of passing by. Everyone will appear, and, just as suddenly, disappear. At the Cafe de la Paix, or in New York, you are constantly, briefly, meeting people and things and losing them forever.
Leave French bikinis on Hawaiian island girls to the Beach Boys; sunny beaches have time and space for baking and staring. The ideally urban woman’s fashion is the long slit skirt under a long coat. Worn over a jaunty stride, they show a little leg—a very little leg. Calves and knees appear like dots in Morse code. It is voyeurism by strobe light, display in homeopathic doses. Who needs the expense and mutual degradation of peep shows? These are public, free, and voluntary.
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