New York City, for its metamorphic nature is also quite dependable. Like an old friend, there are certain things about this city that are never going to change. For instance, no matter what, when it rains, the city streets will transform into a sea of black umbrellas. Taxi cabs will become impossible to find, and people will scramble about frantically, pushing, shoving and inadvertently stabbing one another with their umbrellas. It is a fact of the city, and something that can be depended on.

Similarly, there are people in this city who are fixtures of certain places so much so that they become representative in one’s mind of their specific hangout and by extension, of the city as a whole. Case in point: there is a woman who whiles away every day in the Starbucks on Astor place. There she sits, soaking up the sunlight, and applying excessive amounts of bright pink blush. I can always expect to see her there, surrounded by suitcases and newspapers, plastering on her color. She is a strange and somewhat sad character, one that fits well with the quirky and creepy aura of the neighborhood surrounding St. Marks Place. She is old, effusive, frightening and harmless, all at once…and she is just like New York.