Rant

I’m Erica Bain. And as *you* know, I walk the city. I bitch and moan about it. I walk and watch and listen, a witness to all the beauty and ugliness that is disappearing from our beloved city. Last week took me to the gray depths of the East River where Dmitri Panchenko swims his morning laps, like he has every morning since the 1960s. And today I walked by the acres of scaffolding outside what used to be the Plaza Hotel. And I thought about Eloise. Remember Kay Thompson’s Eloise? Eloise who lived in the Plaza Hotel with her dog Weenie, and her parents were always away, and her English nanny who had eight hair pins made out of bones. That Eloise. The adored brat of my childhood.