I've returned from New York, which was its standard New York self. You need linebacker gear to fight your way to a seat in a diner; you need to decipher tiny clues before cracking the code of the seating regulations at a dingy midtown Pain Quotidien, and you need to brave the wrath of an under-employed wannabe actor when you dare to ask to see a menu (twenty to thirty minutes after having been seated)..... If you enter a cab, you tacitly take on responsibility for the cab-driver's untreated mental illness. This can take a few forms, but maybe the most common is: Hey, tourist! Listen to my comedy routine! As you inch your way along Sixth Avenue, you must feign interest in the driver-anecdotes: Thirty-six degrees today, and a guy gets in my backseat, and he is just wearing shorts! Shorts in this weather! I'm like.....OK...... But now I'm back in suburbia, and I wonder about the tradeoff. In suburbia, the loudest voice I hear belongs to my neighbor, Biff Komanski, who must...