My neighborhood, the far west Village, had gone through many transformations in its 200+ years. It started as a low-rent (even unto slum) semi-transient area down by the docks, and when I moved here 25 years ago some remnants of that -- the marine supply store across the street, for example -- still remained, although New York's working waterfront had started to fade in the '70's. The wholesale meat market was down here until the last few years, huge beef carcasses swinging off trucks and into butcher shops, men in bloody white coats smoking outside. That market has moved up to the Bronx along with the other wholesale markets (vegetables, fish) and now, another big change: the wide, low spaces built for these markets turn out to be perfect for clothiing designers, who can have their workshops and boutiques in the same space. And voila, we're now the Fashion District.

On the whole, it's not a change I like. I must admit fashion people do fascinate me. The area they work in resonates on our deepest, most fundamental level: tribal identification. The need for that identification is, at bottom, the cause of every war and act of terror ever perpetrated on this planet. Fashionistas, though, are determinedly not involved in any philosophical interrogation of this need or their response to it. Quite the opposite: dressed in uniforms whose requirements are every bit as detailed and proscribed as in the military, they run around madly hailing taxis, cell phones pressed to their ears, as though the the vastly trivial pursuit they're involved in were the part of their world with meaning. As though, in other words, the form mattered (which it doesn't, though it can be read for culturally valuable information) and the deeper issues didn't exist.

But it's not all bad. Someone in the neighborhood -- and what his or her affiliation is, I'm not sure; this is one of those culturally ambiguous things I love -- has lately been dressing the stoplights.

NYC has gone from Walk/Don't Walk to a little hurrying person and a big red hand, the better to keep non-English speakers from getting mashed in traffic. In my neighborhood, the little hurrying people have lately been sporting little paper clothes: a shirt on this one, shoes on that, here a pair of pants, there a pair of gloves. Every time I see one, it makes my day. For one thing, it's funny. For another, it proves that change may be inevitable, but it's not predictable.