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The Metropolitan Opera's team was undefeated. So was the Metropolitan Museum's. On a Central Park ball field, sound guys and lighting technicians faced off against art handlers and registrars.

To some, the fires lit in New York in the late seventies signalled rampant criminality; to others, rebellion. But maybe they were signs of something else entirely.

He asked me if I wanted to ride with him, and I said no. He repeated that back to me. He said, No? Or . . . yes?

Is the President's takeover of D.C. a dry run for other cities?

Mitchell captured New York's oddballs and renegades with an understated lyricism that transformed fact into literature.