Went out last night to Kush, a hookah bar on the Lower East Side, to hear some cutting-edge Indian music. At a hookah bar, yes, you can get a hookah, like the one the catepillar smoked in Alice in Wonderland. The menu lists food, drink, and various tobacco mixes for your hookah. We just ate and drank, didn't smoke, and sat on low benches and stools in a space cut into small lounges with open-work screens between -- a creditable replication of a style of Indian building, and reminiscent of home according to the Indian friend I went with. The music mixed elements of classical south asian, electronics, and rock; by late in the evening it was too loud for my ears, but until then it sounded great.

I'm telling you about this because what struck me was the crowd: youngish (but some old persons, like my age I mean), friendly, multi-racial, gay and straight; relaxed, no huge scene, no axes to grind. Can make you think there's hope for the world, to hang out for an evening drinking and talking with people you know and people you don't, twenty different accents, listening to music you never heard before from the other side of the world... Then you come back to reality, read the morning news, and are reminded that an evening like that is the exception: it requires enjoying difference, and all over the planet this seems to be an age of Good Us and Evil Them and weapons to back it up. Still, it was a great night.