La Dolce Vita

Joe Dolce is one of my favorite NY publishing people.  Smart, aggressive, cultured, accomplished, great looking, great conversationalist.  Don’t see him often enough, but he’s a publishing friend who always charges me up with fresh media ideas, new websites to visit, new cities to travel to, new restaurants, etc.  A friend with 'benefits'----but not the kind you may be thinking of.

We arranged to meet Wed. evening at the steps of the NY Public Library—he a symphony of light and navy blue shirt and jeans, perched reading, all alone, on a green folding chair in the middle of the  plaza, with the magnificent Beaux-Arts NYPL façade as backdrop.  I suspected he set this up for my benefit.  We sat in Bryant Park, ground zero of Fashion Week, and caught up with each other’s business as the muffled boom-boom-thud-thud-boom of the runway event in the adjacent tent set the cadence for all of us inside and outside the show.

Conversations with Joe always start in second gear and, bypassing 3rd, quickly shift into 4th , then 5th.  Before long we were trading stories, launch ideas, industry gossip, and searching for new ways we might one day work together.  Lots of laughs, quick repartee, and all the conversational twists and turns I love about dealing with NY media people in full bloom.

After an hour or so of catching up, we went our separate ways---he to his Spanish tutor and I to meet Jon, my movie date on the UWS.  As I walked west down 42nd Street, looking up at the new glass towers at 42nd & 6th glowing in the twilight, I remembered why I choose to soldier on in the media business and why, all these years later, in spite of the revolution within, the media business still fascinates, and NY still glitters. I walk on along 42nd street thinking that life is pretty darn grand.