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While visiting Manhattan over the weekend, it took me a while to put my finger on exactly why the city has taken on a slightly post-apocalyptic flavor. But I figured it out. There are no children left on Manhattan Island. Or at least none we saw while trooping here and there taking in this sight and that.

After a bit of wandering, I came to the conclusion that drunk lunatics on the street corners bellowing about God and Miami Beach (Where did that come from, I wondered at the time) were normal, but having two kids in tow was weird. At least by Manhattan standards.

I don't believe there is some fiendish secret plot to kidnap all of New York City's youngsters and sell them into slavery on Turkish rowing galleys, altbhough that might be true. But it seems Manhattan has finally reached the point were even a square foot of land costs a gazillion dollars. The kids -- or more accurately their parents -- have been pushed off Manhattan into the farther reaches of Queens and Brooklyn. As The Who would say, "The Kids Are Alright," but they are all living in Archie Bunker's old neighborhood.

We did spot a few kids in the American Museum of Natural History but after close observation, I came to the conclusion these children were not, in fact, native fauna of Manhattan. They weren't dressed in black and didn't have mousse spiked hair.

Here are some other observations about Manhattan:

New York City is fun and tiring in the same way that an overactive two-year-old is fun but kind of tiring. The city and the two-year-old are both in constant motion, have no apparent attention span, periodically emit rude noises, and require unstinting supervision. Imagine, an entire society based on the concept of the "terrible twos."   

There are a lot of very, very tense people on the subways. You can spot them quickly because they are the ones carrying on silent conversations with themselves, waving their hands and mouthing the words without sound. Or they are standing there with their heads twitching about. I don't think we rode on a subway car without someone showing a lot of stress. Maybe that's what happens in the city that never sleeps. Maybe they ought to take a nap.

On the other hand, there are some very interesting people also. While waiting for the "A" train, we got a full concert when a Chinese musician played fascinating music on a three string Chinese banjo and then on a single string musical instrument that sounded kind of like a cross between a violin and a cat with it's tail being pulled. Even more bizarre than the sound of the cat-violin was the fact the music was very good. Then the guy decided we had had enough pure culture and shifted over to playing "Old Susanna" on his banjo. Nothing quite like it.

Women on Manhattan have decided that jeans and shoes are really boring. To be hip, you must have knee high boots. These go over the leg warmers. The leg warmers go over the jeans. The boots must be brown. The leg warmers must be black. The jeans must be blue. On top, you must wear a leather coat, brown or black but black is always better than brown. The coat should hang below the waist but no lower than mid-buttocks. If it hangs below mid-buttocks, the coat would block the view of the jeans and then you wouldn't know about the leg warmers. Under the coat comes a blouse and under the blouse comes a silk shirt. A frilly scarf must be tied around the neck and allowed to hang, but now down the front because then that would block the view of the blouse and the silk shirt.

I assume women's clothing in New York comes with assembly instructions because I couldn't keep all that straight first thing in the morning.

For men, you have two choices: You can either wear baggy pants with a North Face jacket and North Face gloves and a baseball cap turned backward. That means you work for a living. Or you can wear jeans and a fancy black dress jacket with a silk lapel, preferably deep crimson. The added advantage is that this outfit ensures you freeze in the New York winter so it gives you a bit of a waif look. I suppose women love this.  This outfit also means that you are an artist, literary type or bum since there's no real difference because none of them work. I assume women aren't so fond of this.

To be really hip, men must mousse their hair and then tease it upright so it looks a bit like a hedge hog's coat. I have thought long and hard about how this is done because the mousse must make the hair fall flat. The only solution I came up with is to dip your head in a bowl of olive oil and hang upside down until the oil dries. That would work.    

Manhattan's subways are noisy but fairly efficient, but for the history buff with a yen for the age of steam, try the PATH trains. These contraptions, which were probably built by the Volga Steel Works in the U.S.S.R., hit a top speed of 25 miles an hour on a steep downward slope and can travel on one rail. At least that's what it felt like.

If history doesn't do it for you and you'd rather have a Mad Max experience, there are the taxis. Traffic lanes, lights and speed limits are only mild suggestions to taxi drivers and more than once we were barreling along at 60 miles an hour . Once, a pedestrian had the temerity to step out into the road to cross against the light, and our taxi driver swerved towards him to chase him back onto the sidewalk. It's a tough town.

But we never saw a taxi have an accident.   

New York's finest have a very tight grip on the Empire State building but seem to have abandoned the rest of the city. While on the observation deck, four cops dressed in full combat gear -- it was black because in New York that is sytlish and everyone but everyone in New York is style conscious, even the cops -- strode about keeping a tight lid on the tourists who were, no doubt, about to launch an insurrection. They were the first and last cops we saw during the weekend and I can only assume they were hiding out on 86th floor to keep out the way of the criminals.