City Desk: All’s Fair

LEAVES begin to fail before the cold touches them; they just wear out. The leaves of plane trees stiffen, and curl at the edges like newspapers that have been left outside. The fronds of locust trees mimic bottlebrushes, changing from supple to spiky. Time for the last street fairs of summer.

My stretch of Third Avenue is distinguished by its mediocrity. White-brick early-Beatles high rises mark the high end; stubby workers’ housing a century older marks the low. There are fast-food places and slightly slower food places; bars that have risen from seediness without arriving at chic; a few magazine and cigar stores (look quick before they are shut down, as incitements to second-hand smoke). Any apartment in this neighborhood would cost a fortune. The day of the fair was a will-breaker: warm and sultry, like breathing into a hot wet towel. A witty man, a street musician, played ‘Summertime’ on a saxophone. This, then, was the setting in which the vendors sought our custom.

About the Author

Richard Brookhiser

Historian Richard Brookhiser is a senior editor of National Review and a senior fellow at the National Review Institute.

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LEAVES begin to fail before the cold touches them; they just wear out. The leaves of plane trees stiffen, and curl at the edges like newspapers that have been left outside. The fronds of locust trees mimic bottlebrushes, changing from supple to spiky. Time for the last street fairs of summer.

My stretch of Third Avenue is distinguished by its mediocrity. White-brick early-Beatles high rises mark the high end; stubby workers’ housing a century older marks the low. There are fast-food places and slightly slower food places; bars that have risen from seediness without arriving at chic; a few magazine and cigar stores (look quick before they are shut down, as incitements to second-hand smoke). Any apartment in this neighborhood would cost a fortune. The day of the fair was a will-breaker: warm and sultry, like breathing into a hot wet towel. A witty man, a street musician, played ‘Summertime’ on a saxophone. This, then, was the setting in which the vendors sought our custom.