From The Editors:

Some people just don't like New York. Like pain or nails on the blackboard, some people like it, and some people don't. It's a matter of opinion, don't you know.

For gentic reasons, surely, many New Yorkers are unable to deal with this fact. They moan and cry and point to population indicators by whose standards Shanghai is the center of the universe. They bite their grimy nails and refer to the rest of the country as "the provinces."

Nevertheless, they are on the defensive. They have taken to dressing up oddly and praising public masturbation as performance art--in their rush to be avant of the garde, their leading nightspots must find a new look every few weeks (see story, page 4).

As Dewitt points out (see story, page 11), New York is fast becoming the sort of place that makes you want to root for Nature vs. Man.

What a shame. It was part of the original American ideal--or so it will here be claimed, since original American ideals are a dime a dozen these days and worth half of that--that Americans were essentially good. City on a hill and all that. Moreover, our Founding Fathers reasoned--listen up, Ed Meese--that if one Man is good, and one Man can only be in one place at one time, then if you stuck seven or eight million specimens of Man on to that same one space at one time, things would be even jollier.

It is always a heartache to find that one's assumptions are painfully, tragically stupid. But kay-sera-sera, as Patrick the birthday boy is wont to sing.

Thus we dedicate this issue to all those forces of Nature that have tried to rid us of our embarrassment-by-the-sea. On behalf of Boston, here's a hearty razz to New York.

Now that's performance art.