The pink, surrendered

I deleted this over at the base camp because I realized it really had nothing to do with food, but my standards here are obviously lower. And so it's back by demand, in mildly sanitized form:

This was a bad week for anyone who fancies herself living in a sophisticated city. The streets were overrun with the female equivalent of Fleet Week sailors: strange visitors in look-at-me uniform. (Yes, I know there are girls in the Navy, but the boys are the UPS guys of the military.) I have never seen so many Botero-esque women in skimpier costumes in the sidewalk cafes on Columbus; I can’t even imagine what a Technicolor freak show the Village was. It was as ostentatiously ridiculous as kayaking around Venice. (If I had a driver’s license for any reason but national ID, I would propose a story to La Repubblica on “seeing Manhattan by RV.”) Earth to America: “Sex and the City” was fiction. Teevee. Not even a reality show. The worst thing is this Halloween-in-May parade made me remember a creepy incident on Bleecker Street one night when a guy walked out of Amy’s Bread ahead of me and started harassing two women who did not appear to be from around here: “You think you look sexy? You look like tramps! ‘Buy me drinks and you can [redacted] in my [redacted].’” I don’t think it was Mr. Cindy, either. I guess things could be more unsettling, though. Imagine the streets overrun with Indiana Joneses with enlarged prostates.