Clippity Clop on a Wednesday Night

Here's what I love about the West Village. Tonight Kris and I were watching the Sopranos (on DVD, since sadly the show is no more...) when I could have sworn I heard the sound of a horse's hooves.

I jumped up, nearly spilling my wine, and ran to the window. Sure enough, one of the officers from our local precinct was riding by on his tall bay gelding. In a city where the latest technology can't come out soon enough to fight crime, it turns out there's not much better for patrolling the neighborhood than a good old horse.

Last year, just after we moved here, I discovered a police stable by our ad agency in Tribeca (around the corner from the firehouse where they shot Ghostbusters) as well as another one on the Hudson River just a few blocks from our apartment. As a lifelong horse lover, I found this utterly fascinating. Here I was in a city where people clambered for breathing space like rats, and yet they found space for horses. Granted, one stable was on a river and another in a building that looked like a cool loft space in the making, but they were stables just the same, and the horses themselves seemed fine with it. One day on my lunch break, I even had the opportunity to see one officer training a new police mount on the cobble stoned streets of Tribeca, among the well-heeled nannies wheeling even more well-heeled babies.

New York truly is the place where anything is possible. From the most absurd and extravagant, like ordering a $1000 ice cream Sundae at Serendipity, to the most basic like getting a cheap but delicious cone from Mr. Softee. But for me there's something even more fascinating.

When I heard that horse's hooves clippity clopping down our West Village street, I could feel just for a second, what it was to live here a hundred years ago with that sound permeating the building as normal and as steady as the roar of the cabs down on Seventh. I had transcended time, if only for a moment.

And that's a feeling you can't put a price on.