Mayor Bloomberg had been pushing the grungy, truck-filled area south of the Javits Center hard on the private sector; the city’s biggest developers started planning new hotels and apartment towers; commercial and residential rents seemed on an endless march upward; and the No. 7 subway line was being extended to 34th Street and 11th Avenue, making the area, for the first time, convenient to millions.

Finally, the transformation’s linchpin—the 26-acre West Side rail yards, which represent Manhattan’s largest remaining undeveloped parcel—had attracted bids from New York’s largest developers, partnered with major employers, to build a giant new complex of office towers and apartments. (The site was ultimately awarded to the Related Companies, led by billionaire Miami Dolphins owner and Time Warner Center co-developer Stephen Ross.)

The economic crisis, of course, has obliterated any sense of imminence and removed the far West Side’s aura of inevitability as Manhattan’s next great neighborhood, certainly for the next few years.

Yet, amid the rubble, Related is still plodding away on its $15 billion plans for the rail yards, a tremendously complicated project that would be larger than the World Trade Center and that has been dubbed a 21st-century Rockefeller Center. Related is in the midst of the city’s onerous public-review process, and executives now say they expect to sign a development contract in January with the M.T.A., the site’s owner.

This puts Related, one of the city’s largest developers, in an uphill battle to transform an unproven area that the economic crisis has pushed far back to the fringes. Numerous competitors expressed deep skepticism that Related’s commitments are realistic, and the first step would be a platform atop half the rail yards costing around $1 billion, a number that demands tremendous confidence in the project’s future.

Leading the project for Mr. Ross is Jay Cross, a wiry, relatively demure native of Canada who joined Related in June 2008. The public face of the Jets’ failed effort to build a stadium on half of the rail yards during New York City’s 2005 bid for the 2012 Olympic Games, Mr. Cross now is left to try to sell the idea of the small city-within-a-city at the rail yards to the local community, elected officials and potential tenants and investors.

“We’ve always believed that it’s a long-term, great project,” he said, adding what has become a standard line these days with large projects: “They’re going to go through ups and downs.”

Related’s vision for the site, which runs between 30th and 33rd streets and between 10th and 12th avenues, includes 13 towers resting on two massive platforms atop a Long Island Railroad storage yard. The tallest buildings, and probably the first to rise, would be on the eastern-most part of the site, where there would be both a hotel tower and office buildings, with a giant retail complex in the vein of the Time Warner Center (though almost twice the size).

In all, if it is ever built out to plan, the project could produce well over 5,000 apartments and about 6 million square feet of commercial and retail space, amounting to a development 50 percent larger than Rockefeller Center.

To get started and to build the first of the two platforms, Mr. Cross said that Related would need a set of major tenants signed on to take office, hotel and retail. “If we have an anchor store and an anchor office tenant and a hotel commitment, then I think we’ve got enough commitment to go with phase one,” he said.

FROM THE TIME WORK on the first $1 billion platform starts, Mr. Cross estimates it will take four years to be ready with a first building, putting 2015 as the earliest delivery.

“We’re talking to people—we’ve made presentations to all the major brokerage houses and we’ve talked to some tenants in particular,” he said, declining to name names. “No one’s making major growth decisions.”

In headier times, Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp., Si Newhouse’s Condé Nast and the pre-recession Morgan Stanley each agreed to move their headquarters to the rail yards before separately pulling out. Now, just who would eventually trek out there is anyone’s guess, as no one is talking about 2015 right now (though Condé was still pondering the move as of earlier this year). But, if the economy stabilized, it seems reasonable to think that a diversified media concern like News Corp. could again be interested in anchoring a re-imagined West Side.

Also, a number of large law firms have lease expirations six or seven years out—Simpson Thacher & Bartlett, for one—and perhaps financial firms, if they ever grow again, would want the prestige of a large headquarters.
On the department store side, Nordstrom’s, currently with no New York presence, has for years been on the lips of landlords with big chunks of retail space (Related, of all landlords, just landed a Nordstrom’s Rack in its building on Union Square).

More than anything else, the battle Related faces is to convince any of these businesses to take the first dive in the cold water of an untested district that is in many ways still the wild west of Manhattan (it’s deserted at night and prone to Dust Bowl–strength winds). All this at a time when the local economy and workforce continue to shrink.

Such a task spawns pessimism.

“If they do build the 7 line, it’ll provide some transportation and eventually the area will get developed,” said a major New York landlord. “I wouldn’t want to bet any money that Related will do it.”

“No one believes this will happen,” said Joe Restuccia, a member of the local community board, which this week issued its official recommendations on the plan (more infrastructure investment, more affordable housing and less density, among other concerns). Large-scale development in New York is far more gradual than the current project calls for, he added. “Long-term, is this going to work? In some version, yes,” he said.

LESSONS FOR RELATED CAN be divined from the history of another large chunk of prime Manhattan real estate once owned by the M.T.A.

In 1985, the agency first designated Mort Zuckerman’s Boston Properties to develop an office tower on the site of the Coliseum exhibition center by Columbus Circle. It quickly hit hurdles: litigation, an economic downturn, the loss of a financial partner, another downturn. Boston hung on for nine years in on-and-off renegotiations before the deal ultimately collapsed, in 1994. (A decade later, a building finally did rise: Time Warner Center, co-developed by Related, and anchored commercially by its namesake.)

On the West Side, the most relevant question is whether Related will indeed sign on the dotted line with the M.T.A. Such an act—due to happen by Jan. 31, per Related’s agreement with the agency—would subject the company to rent worth $1 billion over a 99-year lease, an amount reached near the real estate market’s peak and one that adds substantial pressure to start building.

Mr. Cross, for his part, insists Related expects to commit at that price by January, even in the recession, as the opportunity to control the land is tremendously valuable and the rental payments aren’t all that painful.

“We think that we can complete the transaction without having to go and immediately start building buildings, so it still proves to be a long-term good hold,” he said. “It’s not a small price to pay in the sense that it’s tens of millions of dollars a year. But it is a relatively affordable price in the context of a 12 million–square–foot development.”

“It’s not a question of delay, delay, delay,” Mr. Cross added. “We believe fundamentally that the market will come to us sooner rather than later.”

ebrown@observer.com

From 1987 to 1996, Richard Bey hosted a syndicated talk show originating on New York’s WWOR. In Mr. Beck’s theatrical presentation, with its populist pretenses and Mr. Beck’s very Bey-like outfit of sports jacket and blue jeans, Mr. Bey said, he spotted a fellow technician of the talk show’s art and science, of which he considers himself a founding father. He didn’t like all of what he saw in the contemporary practice of the form.

“He’s such a bad actor! He actually wiped a tear away with one finger like [François] Delsarte. It’s like 19th-century acting,” he told The Observer during a recent visit to his apartment.

His and Mr. Beck’s politics couldn’t be more diametrically opposed, but politics and acting aside, game recognized game.

“As much as I detest him, Glenn Beck has that quality. He’s the only one who has that quality.”

“That” quality is hard to describe, but whatever it is, it launched a million daytime talk shows in the 1990s, and Mr. Beck seems to be its last gasp.

At 57 years old, Mr. Bey has never been married. He lives alone in a two-bedroom 46th-floor apartment in a neighborhood with no name. His doorman building is a few seconds’ scramble north from Hell’s Kitchen and a dozen or so blocks’ stumble south from Lincoln Center.

Mr. Bey’s decor is Late 20th-Century Bachelor Utilitarian: The place is tidy, but sparsely furnished. A dining room set dominates the living room filled with an upright piano and a vibrating recliner facing an old TV the size and shape of a Mack truck grille. A wine glass lined with purple swill was left beside the chair. Mr. Bey would have a breathtaking view of Central Park if it weren’t for the Trump International Tower and the Time Warner Center blocking the way.

From this Xanadu, the man who changed the face of his medium looks out occasionally on the real world, and, sometimes, plots his return to it.

He greeted The Observer wearing a green shirt open to the third button; a thin gold rope chain nested in his chest. His hair still suspiciously jet black, he had the energy and forthrightness one might remember from his TV show, even though he’s been off the air full-time since 1996. He believes that his show was canceled after he interviewed then-President Clinton’s alleged ex-lover Gennifer Flowers. A second career in radio ended in 2003. Mr. Bey claimed that his opposition to the war in Iraq did him in.

From time to time, his name reenters the public consciousness: Most recently, this happened when Universal released the trailer for Sacha Baron Cohen’s latest ambush movie, Brüno. In the clip, the talk show host is seen playing the role of his lifetime: a talk show host named Richard Bey.

Mr. Bey could not say whether he was duped into appearing with Mr. Cohen, but the reasons for his silence spoke volumes: There was a nondisclosure agreement. And use was made of his union membership.

“It’s fairly obvious they re-created The Richard Bey Show,” he said.

Brüno aside, Mr. Bey spoke freely even as he was recovering from a recent oral surgery procedure. He told stories about working with Christopher Durang at the Yale School of Drama; how he made almost a million dollars a year at the height of his show; and how he managed to “extended my teenage years through my 40s.”

Now, in his late 50s, Mr. Bey has become a self-professed “monk.” He said he’s helping to raise the 10-year-old son of an ex-girlfriend.

“I never dreamed of being on television,” he said. “It’s been pretty good to me. All of it. I don’t have regrets about any of that.”

Mr. Bey said he doesn’t even regret watching people like Matt Lauer, someone he traded jobs with for years in Philadelphia and New York, become more successful than him. “‘You could’ve been Matt Lauer,’” Mr. Bey recalled his brother telling him once. “‘Instead, you’re Soupy Sales.’”

“You know what?” Mr. Bey responded. “I’d rather be Soupy Sales.”

Molly Sims called her elaborate gold Dolce & Gabbana minidress “fashion-forward, taking a chance, shorter than short, short, short.” She was also wearing a necklace by jeweler-of-the-moment Tom Binns. “I kinda push fashion tonight!”

“We’ve gotten our due for a long time,” she demurred when asked whether it was nice to be the center of attention for once. “But it’s nice.”

Short was the order of the evening: One of the last standing supermodels, Kate Moss, had arrived 35 minutes in advance of the start time on the arm of honorary gala chair Marc Jacobs, clad in a miniscule gold toga and matching turban.

Mr. Jacobs was uncharacteristically buttoned-up in tuxedo and slicked-back hair; he placed his hand stiffly on Ms. Moss’ back and the duo posed for a few photos before exchanging whispers and rushing past crushed television crews to the entrance atop the stairs. (Mr. Jacobs’ fiancé, advertising executive Lorenzo Martone, would later arrive on the arm of Posh Spice.)

Vogue editor at large André Leon Talley, resplendent in an Isabel Toledo cape, was more voluble: “I gave a lot of advice to a lot of people, but they shall remain nameless because they don’t want me to say who I’m giving advice to,” he was telling a reporter nearby. (Last year, he’d dressed Venus Williams).

Russell Simmons looked on admiringly. “I once sat with André Leon Talley,” he said. “He’s the host of the event”—actually, it’s his boss, Anna Wintour—“he’s the inspiration for the whole thing, he’s got such good taste and everyone looks to him; he’s like fashion royalty, isn’t he?”

Mr. Talley was now telling a photographer who asked him to back up for a photo to “just take Obama!”, slapping an Obama button he’d pinned to his massive gold heart chain Roger Vivier necklace. “I had a good time,” he told The Observer of last year’s gala. “We went to the after-party, Venus and I, and Kimora [Lee Simmons] and Karl [Lagerfeld]; we had a fabulous time, it was at some restaurant, Phillipe …”

He declined to comment on how he planned to potentially get Mr. Obama to the ball in the future: “Ask Anna Wintour! I don’t answer those kind of questions, I have a mortgage to pay!”

Co-host Justin Timberlake appeared on the carpet in nerdy glasses with a Versace-clad Jessica Biel on his arm, and the photographers’ chorus of shouts reached a high pitch (rivaled only by the one greeting Posh Spice soon after, and, much later, Madonna).

Then came the moguls: Harvey, Donald, Rupert.

“How are you, my little beauty, are you still married?” Mr. Trump was asking a petite blond Fox News reporter as wife Melania posed for pictures down the carpet.

“I’ve been here many times, yes,” he told The Observer. “You just meet a lot of great people.” Who did he want to meet tonight? “I hadn’t thought about it, ask me after dinner!” Would that we were invited to dinner, sir!

The carpet was filling up with ethereal, slow-moving Russian and Eastern European mannequins, most wearing smoky eyeliner and messy hair and clutching the nerdy-looking young fashion designers who’d designed their outfits.

“She was lovely enough and gracious enough to ask me to be her date,” said designer Richard Chai of the Amazonian Karolina Kurkova, standing to his right in a, yes, short blue dress he’d designed. “I’ve known Karolina since she first came to New York, when she was 16, and I was the director at Marc Jacobs, so it’s an ironic sort of full-circle moment for us, that Marc’s hosting it. She came in for a casting and we took her for the show, and she was the same exact person then as she is now.”

In the car, bracing themselves for flashbulb impact before braving the carpet, they’d discussed “absolutely nothing about fashion,” he said. “Just what have we been up to, what are we doing, where are we going afterwards” (to Mr. Jacobs’ party at Monkey Bar and then to knitwear heiress Margherita Missoni’s bash at 1Oak).

Soft-spoken Michelle Obama clothier Jason Wu, meanwhile, making his Met debut after exploding from obscurity into household-name-dom in the past year, described how he went about getting a date with Jessica Alba. “We met each other last year, we were at a photo shoot. It was really great,” he said. “So when it came to the Met, I was like, ‘You know what? I’m going to ask Jessica.’ We’d seen each other a couple more times, and when it came to this event, I thought, ‘Well, Jessica would be the perfect muse.’ She’s really down to earth. These things can be daunting at times.”

Hey! There was Cheryl Tiegs, wearing a blue sequined, actually floor-grazing vintage Norman Norrell. “When I was starting out, nobody really knew who models were or what they were doing or whatever; they certainly didn’t know my name,” she said. “Today, I think girls are much more recognizable, and that puts more pressure on them. They get more money, it’s a bigger production. But there is no right or wrong, good or bad. When I started out, it was simpler.”

Nonetheless: “It was a thrill,” Ms. Tiegs sighed. “I love my Vogue covers. They’re some of my favorites.” 

Dominant fashion trends in evidence to this point included braids on the head—like those stacked on the noggin of Tyra Banks, resembling nothing so much as a shiny bird’s nest—and jumpsuits, like the ones encasing Jimmy Choo founder Tamara Mellon (Halston), model and Andy Roddick better-half Brooklyn Decker (Derek Lam) and Stella McCartney (her own).

British Rag & Bone designer Marcus Wainwright was squiring actress Lake Bell, wearing a tight black Rag & Bone pantsuit and side-leaning top hat, up the carpet. “It was her idea to wear a suit,” he said. “This is traditionally a very dress-oriented thing, and she was like, ‘Yeah, I want to wear a suit!’

“It’s quite an overwhelming evening; there’s a lot of people you read about a lot,” he continued. “I met Karl Lagerfeld last year, which was pretty fun. I said, ‘That’s a nice jacket,’ and he just goes”—Mr. Wainwright lowered his voice to a throaty whisper—“‘Chanel Homme.’ And that’s it. That was the end of our conversation.”

Tonight he would sit with countryman and Topshop chief Sir Philip Green, whom he’d never met, but who had presumably purchased a table at this very New York party to honor his new New York store. “It should be fun!” Mr. Wainwright said, almost giddy.

Suddenly, newlywed Gisele Bundchen appeared, toting Tom Brady and wearing Versace again. And even less of it than last year! A few blue sequins covered her torso, stopping short of her legs.

Donatella Versace appeared soon after to take responsibility for this. “Once you dress Gisele, what is left?” she said in her thick Italian accent.

An Olsen twin had taken the alternative route, appearing in what looked to be a white sheet, the kind children wear on Halloween (it was from the twins' label, the Row).

Actress Emmy Rossum tried to put in perspective what the famous people might be feeling at this chaotic moment: “A, why does it always rain, and B, don’t trip! If you trip, you just roll down, and down, and down …” She gestured at the long distance from whence she’d come from her Town Car.

Then it was actress Diane Kruger (arriving with boyfriend Pacey, er, Joshua Jackson), in a white, wedding-cake-looking Chanel—“It was a one-time wonder, it fit perfectly without having to do anything to it! But I did my own makeup, so it took me a little longer to get ready than usual, maybe an hour and a half,” she said.

Socialite Fabiola Beracasa was also in Chanel Couture, but longer and more ornate; she’d flown to Paris to pick it out. “It’s ridiculous,” she’d told The Observer before the event. “I’m so happy with my dress, and I think it’s beautiful, and it’s so fun just to go. I could be sitting in the bathroom and it’s cool. Actually, the bathroom is where it all happens, to be honest! The bathroom is where everybody goes to smoke, and you run into, like—I have run into everybody from J. Lo to Jessica Simpson in that bathroom. I remember really distinctly Jessica Simpson in that Roberto Cavalli dress that was beaded and down to there, and up close it was a lot to take in. …”

Late-night talk show host Jimmy Fallon, meanwhile, was gamely working the carpet nearby with wife Nancy Juvonen. “This is like a normal night out for us, this is not a big deal!” he shrieked. “This is like, I mean, to us this is not a big deal. We always have a red carpet, we always wear tuxedos and designer dresses …”

“It’s actually really fun,” piped in Nancy, more seriously.

“It’s a really good party inside,” agreed Mr. Fallon. “There’s always a surprise musical thing, a Broadway show or something fun. … Anytime I can legally drink in a museum, I always agree to the invitation!”

Almost two hours after Mr. Jacobs and Ms. Moss had arrived, a shout rose from the paparazzi. It grew to hysteria. Vamping on the almost-deserted steps below were Madonna and Jesus (Luz, her boyfriend). The Material Girl wore Louis Vuitton, short and puffy, with leather boots encasing her thighs and two antennalike blue feathers sprouting from her head. Jesus appeared to be the shy type: She yanked him toward the photographers and wrapped her arms around him seductively, while he offered a tentative wave.

The duo encountered the Seinfelds, still making their way up the carpet. Madge dragged Jessica over to the photographers; Jerry stood in the middle of the carpet in glasses, hands folded awkwardly, looking bewildered, not appearing to exchange words with Jesus.

And then the famous carpet went quiet.

Inside, guests were treated to a surprise performance by Kanye West and Rihanna, who wore a Dolce & Gabbana pantsuit.

(The bathrooms, as predicted, were stuffed throughout dinner by nicotine-addled partygoers: One guest reported seeing Josh Hartnett and John Galliano in the ladies’ room puffing away with a clutch of models—“because nobody eats!”)

Most attendees then retired to Mr. Jacobs’ aforementioned party at the Monkey Bar, and then to late-night fetes hosted by Ms. Missoni (1Oak) or the Rodarte designers (SubMercer), or to Bungalow 8.

One spy reported that earlier, leaving the Met, she’d witnessed an “icy” encounter between two of the evening’s more recognizable models: Ms. Bundchen and Bar Refaeli, the Sports Illustrated cover girl and current flame of Ms. Bundchen’s ex, Leonardo DiCaprio. “They both looked away when they walked right next to each other. Then, “literally, I swear, Bar checked her out a thousand times up and down.”

mbryan@observer.com

“I’d always been a fan. … I asked him to do it, and he said, ‘But I can’t act! I can only do what I do, I’m not an actor, you’ll be disappointed,’” said Mr. Allen. “You know, those are the ones who can always do it. The ones that tell you how great they are can never do it. Larry is all, ‘I can’t do it. I can’t do it,’ but when it came time to do it, right out of the box, he did it. And not just the comedy, which I expected, but all the other things he had to do which required acting and emotions and being touching and all that—he did that, too.”

“I didn’t even know I was on his radar, to tell you the truth,” said Larry David, 61, with utmost seriousness, speaking from Los Angeles a couple of days later. “I’m very surprised about that. When you hear that Woody Allen is a fan of yours … ” He paused. “It’s surprising.

“I gave him every opportunity to get someone else. I was kind of uncomfortable. I was out of my comfort zone,” he said. Then he laughed. “Of course, the comfort zone is not very big! I take one step to the right and I’m out of my comfort zone.”

So, a new Woody Allen movie starring Larry David filmed right here in New York City. Could there be a more deep-fried mix of talent, comedy and neuroses? For most of us, Woody Allen is as quintessential New York as the Chrysler Building. Many New Yorkers grew up with a vision of this city spun by Annie Hall and Manhattan and Hannah and Her Sisters, where the skyline always twinkles and romance lurks around every limestoned corner; where brainy, nervous men charm young and naïve beautiful women in grand prewar apartments lined with bookshelves; where there are country weekends with lobsters to chase and always—always—love to find and fail. And then there’s Larry David, another Brooklyn boy made good, co-creator and writer of Seinfeld, which defined New York all over again in the ’90s, with its exquisite, endless examinations and sweating of the small stuff—soup Nazis, being master of the domain, parking garages and puffy shirts. Since his 1999 HBO special Larry David: Curb Your Enthusiasm, and the still-airing series that followed, he’s made performance masterpieces of excruciating situations. The news that he was to star in Mr. Allen’s latest had some rubbing their hands in anticipatory delight, others sharpening their knives, all anxious to see if Mr. David could pull off the ultimate as a Woody misanthropic paradigm.

(This is harder than it might seem … remember the disastrous Jason Biggs turn in 2003’s Anything Else? Kenneth Branagh in Celebrity?)

But we’ll go ahead and say it: Whatever Works is Woody Allen exactly as you want your Woody Allen to be. It’s witty, dark, poignant, zany and hilarious, and showcases a New York filtered through the Allen lens as we’ve never seen it before. Meaning, forget the Upper East Side! This film creeps through the crooked and narrow streets of the Lower East Side and Chinatown, knishes to hanging chickens.

And as for Mr. David … he indeed pulls it off and then some playing Boris Yellnikoff, a half-suicidal almost–Nobel Prize–winning physicist who suffers from night terrors (he wakes up with strangling death screams) and minor OCD (he washes his hands and sings “Happy Birthday”—twice!—in order to kill all the germs), then tosses it all away (literally) and considers the majority of Earth’s population too stupid and meaningless to even deal with.

The Woody angel who enters this time—the beloved innocent woman—is Evan Rachel Wood as Melody, a teenage Southern runaway who manages to entrance Boris in spite of himself. A May-December romance (familiar to all Allen devotees) follows with its inevitable complications, but darker than usual—heartbreak ensues. Don’t ask! Filling in any and all gaps is a terrific supporting cast including  Patricia Clarkson, Michael McKean and Ed Begley Jr.

Whatever Works is as nimble as his smaller comedies but still feels like a big Woody film, in the Hannah dimension. It also seems to carry the well-tempered glow of late Woody Allen with a well-satisfied view of late life and with few illusions. And a great surmounting romantic joke. And somehow Larry David of all people has the ideal astringency for a Woody Allen protagonist, cutting through the plot without giving up the layers of sentimentality and darkness that make the soot of his New York romances.

MR. ALLEN SAID he originally wrote Whatever Works, his 39th feature-length film, with Zero Mostel (another great Brooklyn Jewish comedian and Mel Brooks’ original Max Bialystock from the Producers) in mind for the role of Boris. But Mostel died in 1977 and Mr. Allen put the script in a drawer. He said that when he decided he wanted to film something in New York again after shooting his last four films in Europe, he dusted it off and updated it. 

The title refers to a rather pragmatic philosophy when it comes to our treacherous human hearts, namely that if you should find something or someone in your life that makes you happy, go with it—regardless if it might appear, at first glance, to be all wrong. “I do believe in that strongly myself,” Mr. Allen said. “As long as you’re not hurting anybody … or doing anything that’s causing any mischief or hurting anyone or anything awful, that whatever works to get through your life is fine. All the nonsense about what one should be doing and shouldn’t be doing and what’s quote unquote appropriate according to what I call the appropriate police—it’s nonsense. It’s a tough scuffle through life,” he said. “A tragic situation. Whatever gets you through—as long as it doesn’t hurt anybody else—is fine.”

Whatever Works has its fair share of dark corners, but audiences may be pleasantly surprised at its ultimately sunny rom-com message. It’s strange to think that Mr. Allen wrote this film decades ago, long before we learned far too much about his own private romantic struggles (though its doctrine is an easy leap from his infamous “The heart wants what it wants” remark to Time magazine in 1992 amidst the Mia/Soon-Yi scandal).

“I think my philosophy has been consistent over the years, and it appears either persuasive or idiotic depending on how good the film is,” he said. “If I make a film and the film itself works, then I feel people come away saying, ‘Gee, the philosophy here makes sense.’ And if I make a film where I’ve struck out and I’ve made bad artistic choices and the film is not good, then they think, ‘His ideas are stupid and narcissistic and irrelevant.’ But really the ideas have always been the same … it’s just that I’ve failed artistically.”

The concept of things seeming right versus being right has indeed popped up in Mr. Allen’s films before. But Whatever Works might be the only film that so plainly and deeply examines it. At the start of the film, Boris looks around at his comfy life, his just-right uptown apartment and appropriate spouse, and realizes he feels miserable and trapped enough to die (something he manages to fail at, too). He trades it all in for a ratty bathrobe, teaching chess and holding forth in cramped coffee shops—often while looking straight into the camera and speaking to the audience directly. Yet happiness is lurking for him, even if he doesn’t know it, in the most unusual of places.

“This happens all the time,” said Mr. Allen. “You meet somebody, you have a relationship with that person, and, on paper, it just seems completely logical and right and it is right, and yet for some inexplicable reason, you go and gravitate toward the person who is consummately wrong for you, and makes your life into a hell. And that still attracts you more. And had you settled for the person who was right on paper, you indeed would not have been happy.”

Back in Los Angeles, Larry David considered the “whatever works” philosophy as it might apply to him (in fact, he took a night to think about it before phoning The Observer back with his thoughts).

“Even though something might be right on paper, it doesn’t necessarily mean that it will work,” he said. “Whereas something very odd on paper could be perfect, and something about that person makes you feel good. That’s the most important thing,” he said. “Usually for me, those are the first people I reject. The ones that make me feel good. Why should I feel good when there are women who can’t stand me and whom I can’t be myself around? Those are the ones I want.”

This sort of sentiment is exactly what we’d expect to hear from Mr. David on Curb Your Enthusiasm, where he plays a bizarro version of himself. But consider this: If that persona, the one we think we know (“What I’m playing on TV is not really me,” he said. “Although I’ve said many times that I wish it was”), is now, in Whatever Works, playing yet another cinematic version of Woody Allen, we’re now into Lost-levels of confusion when it comes to the line between performer and reality. Where are we? Is Boris, with his crushing anxieties and disgust with the human race, a representation of the director himself?

“I don’t know Woody that well, but it’s pretty obvious it’s at least a bit of some of who Woody is,” Mr. David said. “He must have seen something in me to make a passable stand-in for him.” Mr. David said he had brought Annie Hall home recently for his 14-year-old daughter to watch. “She couldn’t get through it because [Woody’s character] reminded her too much of me. She can’t watch me, either. As far as I know, we’re the only two people she’s said that about.”

ONE COULD SPEND hours listing the similarities between Mr. Allen and Mr. David (both New York–born, outer-borough Jewish comedians with wicked dark streaks, a certain amount of performative self-hatred plus self-regard, sharp pens, significant intellectual chops and even sharper tongues), but the differences are more interesting. For example, though both men may be called pessimists, the ways in which they are pessimistic are quite contrary.

“I think [Woody’s] probably more of a pessimist about the big picture,” Mr. David said. “The hopelessness, meaninglessness of it all—the blackness of eternity—those questions. Whereas I suspect I’m probably more pessimistic about the smaller things: The relationship won’t work out, Obama will lose, the Yankees will lose, the movie will bomb—things like that. People won’t watch ball games with me because I’m so pessimistic. I’m no fun to be around.” (But what happens when Obama does win? “I know! My whole world goes topsy-turvy. I still can’t believe it,” he said.)

Case in point, perhaps, was Mr. Allen’s response to what The Observer had felt was a pretty straightforward happy resolution in the film. “I’m always so didactic in everything I do, and so heavy-handed, I wanted it to be clear that even though it was a happy ending, we all still remain in this dreadfully tragic predicament, and a tragic life, and that the story did end with a certain amount of temporary happiness,” he said. Um, really? “I did want to portray Larry’s take on life as closer to reality than other people. He might seem like a complainer, a malcontent, like a misanthrope, a cynic, a nihilist—whatever words you want to impute to him, but there’s a great deal of sad truth to his perceptions. And I wanted to make that very clear at the end of the movie.” 

Larry David laughed when later told of his director’s assessment. “I think generally it feels that there are moments of joy, but at the bottom it’s doom and gloom. O.K., so there’s a big pool of doom and gloom and every now and then you can swim up to the surface like a dolphin and get some joy and then you go back under.”

“I have what I call, what I would perceive to be, a very realistic view of life, whereas other people criticize me all the time as being, you know, cynical and misanthropic and nihilistic,” Mr. Allen said. “You know, I don’t think I am! It’s possible that I am and I have a blind spot. But I don’t think so. I think my perception of it is correct—that it’s a tragic event and it takes real improvising and real luck and real work to get through it.”

By all accounts, the shoot for Whatever Works was a pleasant one. Mr. Allen directs long, difficult takes, but keeps civilized hours, and for the New York natives like Patricia Clarkson, it was a chance to walk home from work. Michael McKean, who plays one of Boris’ few friends, had worked with Mr. Allen in the 2004 Atlantic theater production of Secondhand Memory. He said Mr. Allen seemed particularly energized and happy. “He seemed to be in good spirits,” Mr. McKean said. “He had a great relationship with his DP and the rest of the crew. The thing with him is that he knows what he wants, that’s key. And he had a really good group.” Mr. McKean said he would take Mr. David and Ms. Wood (recommended for the role by Mr. Allen’s wife) to Katz’s deli for late-night corned beef.

“He writes these really beautiful notes,” said Ms. Clarkson, of receiving her second Woody Allen script. “Like with Whatever Works—it’s always something funny like, ‘If you have something better to do, I’ll understand.’ And then I open the script and it’s this divine part.”

And when she says notes, she means notes! No emails for Woody Allen. “It’s gone past me,” he said, of the Internet age. “I don’t have a computer, I don’t have a word processor or any of that stuff. I’ve never been able to work on instruments. I don’t get gadgets at all. I have a typewriter and still, after all these years, have great trouble changing the ribbon on it.” He paused. “I know I’m missing something. I know when friends Google instant information or things”—he keeps a Webster’s dictionary close by—“it just seems so futuristic to me! I’m still plodding and doing it the other way. I don’t say that proudly, or like it’s a good thing. I don’t think it’s a good thing. I’ve just never been able to make the transition.” 

Mr. Allen said he always tells his actors to paraphrase him. “If you’re going to ask for a divorce, ask for a divorce,” he said. “Do it in your own words.” Mr. David, an excellent improviser by nature, wound up wanting to stick to the script, though he said he had the urge in the beginning of shooting to try to change things around. “I’ve been speaking my own words my entire life,” Mr. David said. “It started to get a bit refreshing to get someone else’s words in my mouth.” (Did he ever, The Observer wondered, start to feel comfortable in his leading role? “Maybe the next-to-last day,” he laughed. “Yeah, on the last day I was like, you know what? I thought this is pretty easy!”)

MR. ALLEN SAID that now that he’s finished his film—he’s done the foreign prints, he’s completed the DVD color corrections—he’ll never see it again.

“I made Take the Money and Run in 1968 and I’ve never seen it since, or any of the others.” But surely he’ll attend the glitzy Ziegfeld Tribeca Film Festival premiere on the 22nd? Mr. Allen said no, he never actually sits through the films. “I go in and walk on the red carpet … smile … answer the questions, and then I sit down and the second the lights dim, I’m out. I’m at a restaurant with my wife and we have dinner. And then I go to the party afterwards and go back into phony social mode where people are exchanging enormous insincerities. They’ve hated the film but they’re saying, ‘Gee, great film. Great film.’”

You might expect this kind of gloom from Boris, but not from Woody Allen! 

“I can’t ever say I’ve been happy with my films,” he said quietly. “It’s always the same story: I set out to make them and I’m setting out to make, you know, the greatest thing ever made. Citizen Kane or Othello. But by the time I’ve finished, when the compromises set in, and I’ve screwed this up artistically and I couldn’t get that actor and I didn’t have enough money for this, and I guessed wrong on this joke … by the time I put the picture together, I’ve gone from being sure that I was going to make the next great American masterpiece to just praying that it won’t be an embarrassment.” Mr. Allen sighed. “So I find myself in the cutting room, scrambling, taking a moment out of here and sticking it there. Putting a piece of music in here, and patching up something there, and hoping that I’ll just breath and survive. I’ve already abandoned all integrity and all hope of an uncompromising masterpiece.”

By reaching out to Larry David in Whatever Works, Woody Allen has added something to his canon that he might never have gotten on his own. He hired the one working comedian who could put a knife edge on the usual adorableness of the Woody Allen interpreter. Whatever Works may not be an uncompromising masterpiece, but it’s the astonishing collaboration of two uncompromising comic masters of the romantic and tortured New York psyche.

And it works.

svilkomerson@observer.com

“They did it in red and I missed it in my size and I literally cried for days, and I wear that pretty much twice a month, especially when the sun comes out,” Ms. Delevigne said. “And then I have a leather jacket that I live in every day that I bought about two years ago. It looks so old and worn, no one believes that it’s Topshop!”

Ms. Delevigne said she’d probably wear the jacket to private events for the long-awaited opening of the New York store: intimate affairs for celebrities and “friends” of the brand, which include a dinner at Balthazar and a small party at Simon Hammerstein’s downtown club the Box on Thursday, April 2, the day that—barring unforeseen disaster—Topshop will finally fling open its doors stateside.

“We’ve been waiting with bated breath,” said TeenVogue fashion news director Jane Keltner, who conceived an entire feature on British style around the store’s original October opening date. “It’s just what the recession-weary New York City fashion girl wants and needs right now—great clothes at a good price.”

But isn’t the New York City fashion girl utterly glutted with cheap chic imports, from Zara to H&M? Is it possible that, like an elusive love partner, the special appeal of Topshop has resided in its inaccessibility?

The store’s mobbed Oxford Circus flagship hawks acres of neon gummy bracelets, Batman T-shirts and shlocky accessories alongside J Brand for Topshop jeans and Ms. Moss’ exclusive three-year-old line. In New York, the brand has thus far enjoyed a more rarefied clientele: the kind of stylish New Yorker who travels often to London, or has friends who do.

Not that even the jet-setters among us won’t be happy to escape prohibitive exchange rates.

“I am living for the New York opening of Topshop!” emailed American maternity designer Liz Lange the other day from Anguilla, where she was vacationing with her blue paisley cotton racer-back Topshop beach cover-up (about $40 at the Oxford Circus store). “Everyone I know who likes to shop and likes fashion is counting the minutes.”

There have been a lot of minutes. The chain’s quotable head honcho, Sir Philip Green, told Women’s Wear Daily that the process has been “a logistical nightmare,” fingering the construction snafus and permit delays on the landmarked building for the thrice-delayed opening, and denying that the economy was at all a factor .

New York fans have been making do in the meantime with Topshop “capsule” collections at Barneys (2007) and Opening Ceremony (2004 until just recently), where the store’s inexpensive knock-off wares basked in the reflected glow of designer offerings by Proenza Schouler and Alexander Wang. In September, a U.S. Web site finally allowed New Yorkers to begin shopping online, and this week, guerilla street teams will blanket downtown with Topshop gift cards. Then, at 11 a.m. on April 2, Sir Philip himself will appear at the flagship, accompanied, Topshop execs hope but will not confirm, by Ms. Moss herself. “We’re making homemade British biscuits,” said Andrew Leahy, the genial London-based Topshop publicity director.

The Daily News’ Bill Madden has been calling at the top of his voice for weeks for the Yankees to lose Rodriguez: “Cut him loose, no matter the cost,” he wrote in a Feb. 9 story. Apparently, Madden doesn’t care that a part of the cost would be the Yankees’ only real chance to win the AL East (to say nothing of A-Rod’s absence forcing Madden and Mike Lupica to go back to real sportswriting).

The fans hate A-Rod—at least some of them do, though it’s not clear that anything like a majority hates him—because the New York press hates him. And the New York press hated him long before the revelation that he took PEDs. As Joel Sherman wrote in the New York Post nearly three years ago (June 16, 2006), “His standing is lower in New York today than in any of his three Yankee seasons. None of his good deeds on the field have any sustainability.” Mike Mussina was widely quoted as saying that Rodriguez was being subjected to “lethal booing.” Alex Belth of the Bronx Banter Web site called A-Rod’s local press coverage “the most poisonous of any player I’ve ever seen in New York.”

If it was just a question of attitude and work ethic, Rodriguez would be at the top of everyone’s popularity list. As Joe Torre (and/or Tom Verducci) put it in a passage of The Yankee Years that seemed to escape everyone’s notice: “Rodriguez did impress his teammates with a relentless work ethic. They found him to be the baseball equivalent of a gym rat. He knew everything going on around baseball and he never stopped working. … Who the hell ran at sprinting speed on a treadmill right before a game was about to start? The most talented player in baseball did. That was A-Rod, too.”

And this, credited to Torre: “Nobody has ever worked harder in my memory than this guy. … Nobody works harder than Alex.”

What, exactly, has Alexander Emmanuel Rodriguez, a supremely talented but otherwise vapid and shallow young man, done to turn the sports press of our largest city into such a state of near hysteria? Rodriguez has never been known to party with bootleggers or hang his manager by his ankles from the caboose of a train or eat hotdogs in the dugout, as Babe Ruth did. He didn’t hold out for more money during a world war, as Joe DiMaggio did. He doesn’t pout and sulk and smash water coolers with baseball bats when he strikes out, like Mickey Mantle. He does not brag that “I’m the straw that stirs the drink” and nearly punch out his manager on national TV, as Reggie Jackson did.

So what sins has Alex Rodriguez committed? Well, he slapped a baseball out of Bronson Arroyo’s glove while running to first base during Game Six of the 2004 American League Championship Series. He made a snotty remark about Derek Jeter to a writer from Esquire. He took off his shirt in Central Park. And for three years at Texas he used substances for which there was then no penalty in Major League Baseball before voluntarily submitting to drug tests. That’s pretty much it.

Yet, despite being the best all-around player in the game over the last five seasons, he—not terrible pitching, bad decisions by the front office, or Joe Torre’s uninspired managing—is the primary reason the Yankees haven’t won a World Series in the five years Rodriguez has been there. Why is Alex Rodriguez disliked so intensely by so many?

First, and always, there’s the contract. Ah, yes, the contract—or we should say contracts? A-Rod has never been forgiven for getting a 10-year, $252 million deal from Texas Rangers owner Tom Hicks in 2000. For some reason, it has always been overlooked that just prior to acquiring A-Rod, the Rangers negotiated a 10-year, $250 million cable agreement hooked to the team’s signing a major Latin star (Hispanics being the expanding market for cable). Essentially, Hicks passed on the money from the cable package to Rodriguez while acquiring baseball’s biggest star and reaping the revenues from increased tickets sales, etc. Hicks now says he feels personally “betrayed” by Rodriguez’s admission of steroid use while with Texas, though apparently not enough to offer Rangers fans a rebate.

What also went unmentioned is that the Yankees picked up Rodriguez from the Rangers at a bargain price. George Steinbrenner only had to pay half of his salary, with Hicks picking up the balance. Derek Jeter, who never approached Rodriguez’s production at the plate or in the field, cost the Yankees substantially more.

So in 2007, Rodriguez put a gun to the Steinbrenners’ collective heads and forced them to give him a 10-year, $275 million contract. The local sports press, always quick to tell baseball management how they should spend their money, neglected to tell us how the Yankees could field a team good enough to fill the new Yankee Stadium (at exorbitant ticket prices) without A-Rod.

Then there’s the widespread notion that Rodriguez doesn’t hit well in the clutch, at least “the clutch” defined as postseason. Since the ability to hit in the clutch is taken by most as an indication of character, it’s not likely that A-Rod will shake this bad-clutch rep no matter what he does for the rest of his career.

How legitimate is the rep? The problem with arguing about clutch hitting is that, to paraphrase Wilfrid Sheed’s famous quip about the Mafia, we know everything about clutch hitting except whether it exists. But whatever clutch hitting is, most people are convinced that A-Rod can’t do it.

Years ago, after a long study on the subject, Bill James concluded that most hitters, given enough opportunities, will likely hit in so-called clutch situations just about what they hit over their career. My friend Nate Silver, baseball analyst and political pollster par excellence, told me years ago that he thought “producing wins at the plate is about 70 percent a matter of hitting ability, 28 percent dumb luck, and maybe 2 percent ‘clutch’ hitting skill.” He added, “I’m more sure about the 70 and 28 than about the 2.”

Let’s keep it simple and define clutch hitting as most fans do—postseason hitting. And it’s true that by that standard, Rodriguez isn’t a very good clutch hitter. But here’s the thing: After 39 postseason games, A-Rod—and you’re going to want to pay close attention to this—has performed almost exactly as well as previous Yankee greats Joe DiMaggio, Yogi Berra, Mickey Mantle and Reggie Jackson.

The key phrase here is “at similar points in their careers.” This sampling takes DiMaggio through the 1949 World Series, Berra through the 1955 Series before he hit those home runs off Don Newcombe and Jackson just prior to the 1977 Series, in which he hit five home runs. Before that, Jackson was hitting just .253 in 37 postseason games with only five home runs, and nobody was calling him “Mr. October.” Alex Rodriguez’s postseason batting average after 39 games is eight points higher after 39 games than Joe DiMaggio’s over 51 games; DiMaggio hit only one more home run in 199 postseason at-bats than Rodriguez has hit in 147.

The big difference between Rodriguez as a postseason hitter and DiMaggio, Berra, Mantle and Jackson is that they played on teams with good pitching and their teams won, so their clutch ability was never called into question.

No, the press doesn’t hate Alex Rodriguez because he can’t hit in the clutch or because he makes too much money or even because he once took PEDs. (In fact, many writers seem positively gleeful about the steroids because it gives him a reason to pin the entire steroid era on Number 13.)

Sports Illustrated’s A-Rod–steroids story, lauded by the national sports media as a journalistic masterstroke, is the result of information passed on by unnamed sources—almost certainly federal investigators who seized the 104 anonymous 2003 test samples and may be forced by the courts to return them.

The other 103 players who tested positive after their employer and union told them the results would be anonymous are probably sweating through sleepless nights, wondering if their names will also be leaked. I don’t think they have to worry. Sports Illustrated and the feds don’t really care about them. Their names aren’t needed to give credence to an investigation that has so far produced nothing but headlines; their identities aren’t needed to sell books. Only Alex Rodriguez’s civil liberties needed to be violated. What are civil liberties when you can nail the Devil?

editorial@observer.com

 Alex Rodriguez.

Behind the ruins, I still saw the Van Wyck Expressway in the background, the chop shops that line 126th Street in Queens, the planes flying from LaGuardia overhead. Flushing.

And then the No. 7 slowly led me to the front door of Citi Field, the new $850 million home of the Mets, designed by HOK Sport, which is based in Kansas City.

I didn’t see any Shea blue. In fact, there isn’t much color on the stadium at all. There’s a brownish brick and beige-ish brick on its facade, and exposed trusses and fixtures within arches that surround the whole stadium that are a dark, steel blue—a foreign color. There was, however, some out-of-context Mets orange. And a red Citigroup logo. 

There was a blurb on A1 of The Times last week: “Good News, Baseball Fans: There is a lot to like about Citi Field. The Mets’ new stadium corrects many of the worst faults of Shea Stadium, the team’s old park, which is in ruins a few hundred yards away.”

The story that followed--"Mets' New Home Is the Anti-Shea," by Ken Belson and Richard Sandomir—was effusive.

It made many of the same arguments that Mets owners Jeff and Fred Wilpon had made for a new stadium—nicer food; nicer bathrooms; a nicer, dark-green-hued seating arrangement—all of which is perfectly … nice.

Some questions remained unasked, though. Does old-timey equal classy? Does quirky equal original? Are amenities and character mutually exclusive? Is this a stadium for the New York Mets?

The Mets, after all, are not the Brooklyn Dodgers. The Mets are not the New York baseball Giants. The Mets were born as a charmingly hideous hybrid of New York’s excised National League teams—a blue and orange mess.

Shea Stadium, a giant bowl with Technicolor-outlines of baseball players on the outside of the stadium, was the perfect symbol for it. It was modern (at the time) and brutally loud—the embodiment of a franchise that had racing stripes on its uniforms throughout the ’80s.

People can say what they want about the Mets, and about the losing, and the choking. But no one has ever accused them of being without an identity. The same was true, until now, of their stadium.

Shea had its problems. It was probably time for it to go. The question is whether Citi Field is a worthy successor.

The facade has been designed to recall Fred Wilpon’s beloved Ebbets Field, a stadium that was once an integral (if cramped and smelly) part of a densely built downtown neighborhood that was, and is, completely unlike Flushing by the water.

The seats in the Mets’ new stadium are not garish like the seats in Shea. Or festive.

“Dark green is the color of a classic ballpark,” said Mets executive Dave Howard to The Times when describing the color of the seats at Citi Field. The “candy-colored” seating arrangement of Shea had been disposed of, The Times noted.  

“Classic” is something that Mets executives are obsessed with. In 2003, even before we knew there would be a Citi Field, Jeff Wilpon complained to The Times that Shea had to be knocked down because “it’s no longer state of the art, and it’s certainly not a classic ballpark.”

Classic isn’t really something you can manufacture, though, is it?

SHEA, IN ITS WAY, was a classic ballpark. It had Banner Days. It had life. The foundation literally shook inside that place during the playoffs, as a nervous-sounding Joe Buck acknowledged as the Mets won the pennant in 2000, or when Endy Chavez leapt over the left field wall in 2006. It shook because it had a devoted fan base that didn’t give a fuck that Shea was a dump. It was ours. That’s classic.

Inside the walls of Citi Field there is yet more green. Green seats, green walls, a green scoreboard above the left field upper deck. There are quirky dimensions! The walls are taller, supposedly inspired by any number of the ball fields of yore—the old Crosley Field, Ebbets Field, the Polo Grounds, you name it. The overhang in right field is a nod to Tiger Stadium.

But this sparkling new stadium, if we’re being honest, doesn’t conjure the old Tiger Stadium or Crosley Field. It’s inauthentic—it’s a copy of a copy. And it’s a decade too late.

Camden Yards was a really neat idea, and it works. And now there are faux-antique baseball stadiums in St. Louis, Cleveland, Houston, Detroit, Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Arlington, Denver, Milwaukee, San Diego, Washington and Philadelphia, too. Between 1992 and last season, 18 teams moved into new ballparks, the vast majority of which are replicas.

Citi Field, in other words, could be anywhere. The Times’ writers noted, approvingly, that unlike Shea, the stadium is enclosed, shielding fans from views of the unsightly surrounding neighborhood. (Close your eyes and you’re in Philadelphia!)

“Sitting in their seats, few fans will see the chop shops in Willets Point, the cars roaring past on the Van Wyck Expressway, the subway yards to the south or the U-Haul sign,” they wrote. “They will still get a crystal-clear view of the planes on their final approach to La Guardia Airport. Some things never change.”

Ah, yes. Very thoughtful of those architects from Kansas City to still allow us the planes.

But, see, the stadium is in Queens. In Willets Point.

It’s the Valley of Ashes. It’s chop shops with signs that say CHEPE AUTO REPAIR and SAMBUCCI BROS. INC AUTO SALVAGE. It’s Flushing Meadows park, a grab-bag of World’s Fair relics and more recently installed amenities that now includes an unjustly underhyped New York panorama, a pitch-and-putt that serves beer, a highly enlightened zoo, a science museum where lots of Orthodox Jewish families go, an indoor swimming center where lots of Korean families go, and, still, somehow, the Unisphere.

The old adage goes that the Yankees are a corporate titan. They are winners, and their stadium—the Fucking House That Ruth Built, we get it—is a cathedral. 

Shea, by contrast, was merely the most democratic stadium in baseball. It was monstrously big, and, with rare exceptions, you could always find a seat. It was a bowl where you went to go watch baseball games.

Now, the Mets have given their fans Citi Field, a place where we’re invited to do lots of things that don’t really involve watching baseball. There’s a Budweiser beer pit. There’s a party spot called “Knothole Alley” (more old-timey-ness!) beyond the right field wall. There’s an auditorium for corporate events. There’s a spot to host birthday parties and bar mitzvahs. And there’s a restaurant named Caesar Club where you can get gourmet food and watch the game. On TV.

It’s not surprising the Wilpons went down this road: Indications of their new-franchise class envy have been unmissable for a while now. In 2004, for example, the Mets renamed Thomas J. White Stadium, their longtime spring training home in Port St. Lucie, “Tradition Field.” It was an unsubtle attempt to ape the Yankees’ facility, which is called “Legends Field.” It was sad.

AFTER MY TRIP to Citi Field this weekend, I boarded the No. 7 with the intention of getting off somewhere to get myself burgers and beer. I noticed that there were some other Mets fans who had gone to look at the new stadium. I joined them.

At the Cuckoo’s Nest, a Guinness bar in Woodside, we talked about the stadium, and I realized I might be the one who has to get a grip. These guys, like all the other Mets fans I’ve spoken to about the dawning of the Citi Mets era, were divided between those who loved Shea but are willing to give Citi Field a chance, and those who really do like Citi Field much better. (The ones, presumably, the Times writers were addressing in their cheery lede: “For those fans who hated Shea Stadium, fear not: Citi Field is nothing like its predecessor, the last bits of which lie in ruins a few hundreds yards away.”)

“You know, we took the 7, and we got to 110th street; I couldn’t believe Shea was gone,” said my new friend Tom McLaughlin, a 50-year-old travel agent. “But you know what? I thought the new place was really great. I feel like it has a lot of personality.”

“Shea had to go,” said Rob Pedoty, a 44-year-old born-and-bred Queens resident. “You know those forest-green seats they got in the new place? That was the same color of the seats they used at the Polo Grounds!”

Well, fine. But who cares.

jkoblin@observer.com