More things seemed to happen to us in New York in three days than
happened to us in a week in any other place. If that is the sort of
reputation New York has it lives up to it well, and the fans help it
along no end.
             In that city we seemed to see more, do more, and talk to
more people than anywhere else and it was exhausting. But I wouldn't
have missed a minute of it.
                           Barry Smotroff put us up while we were there
in a roomy apartment he shared wirh Steve Stiles. Steve was still
away after DISCON and so we had the pleasure of sleeping in his bed and
pretending to ride his exercise bicycle. Barry spent as much time as he
had at his disposal looking after us (twenty-four hours a day) and
seemed willing to fit in with whatever we wanted.  If we wanted to go to
the bank he knew where it was and the Baskin - Robbins was just a
block or so away so there was always ice cream in the refrigerator.
What more can a person want in this life?
                                        The base of our operations
was the Proxima Puddle shared by David Emerson and Asenath Hammond in
what is called The Village on Manhattan Island. Susan Glood was staylng
there and after having met alI three of them at DISCON the continued
association was welcome. The WorldGon was breathing it's last gasp
in New York when we were there and we could rely on seeing Jim Young,
Loren MacGregor or somebody else almost every elay which livened up
the proceedings.

New York is not a city that I would want to live in, crime or no crime.
To visit it is a mecca but after a couple of months I think that most
people would settle into a rut which would make all the extras which
are available there rather uninteresting. Living there would be
exhausting just trying to stay sane, there must be a limit to population
over which a city cannot function properly for human beings and I think
Necw York is ovar that limit. If the predictors of doom are correct and
the big cities are going to collapse NTew York will be the first, but
it will be a pity because in so many ways the place is a sort of
monument to both the good and the bad sides of human nature. While
the architectural wonders of Manhattar Island are a different sort of
monument it is in places like the streets of the Village where the
real events are happening, there is the feeling of activity which I've
felt nowhere else and beside that the skyscrapers are just something to
look at.

When we returned to New York from East Providence we met Steve Stiles
for the first time and spent the evening with him. He bought out his
old issues of fanzines like Void and we spent the time looking through
them. Asenath dropped in and stayed, together she and Steve told Bob
Toumey jokes.
            The following morning Barry took us to the airport by
taxi. The other time we'd ridden in a New York taxi it seemed like a
normal car, the one we rode in then seemed like something of a mixture
between an armoured car and an ambulance. Anyway there was enough room
inside for ten armed soldiers. We passed the sites for the two World
Fairs to be held in New York, there wasn't much left of either of them,
some sort of brick structure from the '30's one and the big hollow
metal globe from the one in the sixties. It also passed the Shea
Stadium which meant something to the Beatles fan's hidden away inside.
At the airport we got mixed up and confused by a bunch of people going
up to see the America Cup races.