Just got back from the quintessential New York experience. As part of the celebration of Central Park’s 150th birthday, a Chinese fireworks artist named Cai Guo-Qiang created an event scheduled for 7:45 tonight. On the subway as I was choosing which stop to get off at (the plan was for “columns of light” in half a dozen places from one end of the park to the other, and a “ring of fire” above the reservoir) I saw lots of people checking their watches. We all got off at 81st St., and yes, they were going where I was. By the time we streamed into the park there were hundreds of us; by the time we got to the ballfields – my chosen location, though there were many choices – we were thousands. I’d been there about 3 minutes when first, it started to rain, and second, the fireworks began. Now, Central Park is a very big place. From where I was, you could see one of the columns of light, and part of another; the others were only loud percussion. Then through the rain, a long series of white starbursts over the reservoir, also loud because of the way they echoed off the buildings. (This may have been the only time in my life I will ever overhear the sentence, “Dude, I’m telling you, man, that was cool, but that was no ring of fire!”) Then it was over. Four minutes, tops, which was about how long the paper had said it would be. And I and the people around me saw maybe a fifth of it. No one saw any more than that, except maybe people in penthouses in buildings that border the park; this was an event that can really only be seen in photographs after it’s over. Then everyone opened their umbrellas (you can’t watch fireworks through an umbrella) and we all turned around and went home. And everyone had a wonderful time.