FIRE & ICE; Hotropolis

[Bapopik at AOL.COM]

I'm sending this from Kinko's. My phone line went out. Everything in my life is difficult, Every single goddamn thing.

The blank lines that I type disappear. I don't know how to put a black and white photo on my own web site. Absolutely everything is difficult.

COMPLETELY OFF TOPIC:
WHERE DID BARRY POPIK EAT?--Topaz Thai, 127 West 56th Street. I was going to get the Greek around the corner on Seventh Avenue, but there was a 20-minute wait. Topaz is affordable, standard Thai. It's next door to the Mysterious Bookstore.

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FIRE & ICE

>From the New York Daily News, 16 December 2004, "On New York" by Richard Schwartz, pg. 43, col. 1:

The future of New York City is FIRE and ICE.
(...)
Start with FIRE. The acronym refers to what has long been the core of the city's economy: FInance, Insurance and Real Estate.
(...)
But over the last decade or so, the traditional FIRE has been eclipsed a bit by a potent new dynamic in the city's ever-transforming economy--ICE, which stands for all things Intellectual, Cultural and Educational.

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HOTROPOLIS

The 20 December 2004 New York Observer cover boldly declares that "New York Is Reborn!" Never mind that political corruption is back in a big way, and we're going bankrupt from a court case that now requires billions of additional spending for schools.

"That Phone, Inflated
"90's Hotropolis Is Over;
"Hear That Yammering?
"It's the New New York!"


There aren't many Google hits for "hotropolis." I went to "www.hotropolis.com" and saw a photo of a nude Salma Hayek.

OK, I'm reborn.