Continuing my series of articles I ripped from the pages of The New Yorker and saved in a semi-organized notebook:
“Letter from Mott Street”
By Calvin Trillin
February 24, 1986 (yes, I was four years old, reading The New Yorker!)
http://www.newyorker.com/archive/1986/02/24/1986_02_24_072_TNY_CARDS_000342878
(just an abstract, alas!)
Excerpt:
I don’t know what the other citizens in the jurors’ assembly room were thinking about, but I was thinking about Chinatown….
I was calculating how many minutes it would take me to get to an elevator, descend to the first floor, and cover the two or three blocks between the courthouse and Chinatown. I was wondering whether I should try to make it to a dim-sum joint on East Broadway I had been meaning to check out or should go only as far as a promising-looking seafood restaurant on Elizabeth. I was trying to figure out if it could really be true that my route back to the courthouse would take me right past the place where I buy the tiny Chinese cakes whose taste I can describe only as what madeleines would taste like if the French truly understood these matters. It’s amazing how quickly time passes when you have a lot on your mind.