DanielSonenberg.com

The big city greeted us with great love and warmth. It is balmy and breezy and lovely and empty here - there was a parking spot right outside sis's building, so we plunked in our luggage and went out walking. If you head north on a night like this you'll inevitably end up at Sal and Carmine's. And they'll inevitably be the same old reliable second best slice in all of New York. First best, unless things have really changed, is Difara, and it's way in Midwood and a fortune and a total, total scene now that Dom's been discovered and written about in all the local press etc. I've debated the merits of Sal and Carmine's with no less an authority than the great Jim Leff, founder of Chowhound.com. You can see the exchange here - be sure to scroll down and read Jim's amusing and certainly accurate take on the real secret behind the brothers' mastery. I won't go into it here - just saying that the pizza was divine. We weren't even hungry, but it was our civic duty, so we indulged. Then circled around past the old Masters Building on 103rd and Riverside where once I lived. The sweet doorlady who I knew and loved well was working her shift today, but Alex couldn't remember her. But then Alex remembered a maintenance guy that I had forgotten, and so we wandered back southward through the warm and windy streets remembering our lives and thinking how funny it is that things change - like, really change. But our love of this city only grows. Let's see how we feel after tomorrow hits 100 degrees!