Love is in the air...

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Hm... a counter-argument to a previous posting... or is it? I suppose searching for "amore" is quite different than searching for a "relationship." But I'll let you draw your own conclusions... I'm heading to Central Park to look at arms...

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As City Begins Spring Stir, Romance Is in the Air
New York Times
April 22, 2007
By Anthony Ramirez

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single person in New York in possession of a sunlit day must be in want of a companion.

Just ask Eric Jacobov, 24, a commercial building developer, who strolled with two friends in Central Park yesterday.

“I like spring,” he said, lighting a cigarette and peering at sunbathers in the Sheep Meadow.

“I like that the girls come out,” he continued. “Much more skin. Much more to work with.” He put on his sunglasses. “Nice.”

Elsewhere in the park, a bachelorette party of New York, Chicago and Florida friends was convened on a bench near the Plaza Hotel.

“Love is in the air, and the guys wear less clothes!” exclaimed Amy Witherspoon, 23, a pharmaceutical sales representative from Orlando.

Suddenly, a war whoop of “Woo hoo!” erupted from all nine women, as a shirtless man glided by on inline skates.

“That’s what I like about spring!” shouted Lauren Schneider, 23, the bride-to-be.

Yesterday, after a stretch of chilly days following a drenching northeaster, the temperature in Central Park reached a high of 79 degrees at 3:54 p.m. under blue skies. The forecast for today is for a high of 80.

The city began to stir yesterday, as if at some unheard signal, or perhaps at the many signals of ubiquitous birdsong, giggling children and flowering trees.

New Yorkers shed their winter garb — the Ugg boots, the turtlenecks, the long skirts, the overcoats, the parkas, the gloves, the hoodies and the fedoras — and exchanged them for flip-flops and dishabille.

During a random and unscientific survey in several parts of the city yesterday, not everyone immediately volunteered that the preening, peering and mating season was upon them. But it didn’t take much prompting, either, once the gambit was opened.

New Yorkers were savoring the day, said Donna Ratner, 47, a health counselor from Weston, Conn., because “It was such an odd winter.”

Ms. Ratner, sitting in Columbus Circle, said, “We never really got a true winter. It was a tease of winter, with some nice days in the middle. Our bodies got confused. On the East Coast our bodies are ready to hunker down and they never really did.”

And how did Ms. Ratner feel at the moment? She smiled and said, “I’m feeling a little amore.”

Megan McWade, 30, of Bronxville, N.Y., and the director of a child-care center, said, “In the spring, you get to see a little more of the arms on the men.” She described herself as newly single and then laughed. “The arms get me.”

As befits New York, spring is theater. In other places where troupes of the fit and the comely can also be found, like Miami, Los Angeles and Hawaii, the curtain rarely rises because it hardly ever falls. There, it is always butterfly weather. But in New York, the curtain has drama because the cocoon is never far away.

In a cafe in the West Village, Scott Pelkey, 44, of Astoria, Queens, said that spring in New York was “about checking people out,” and that it arrived just in time because he happened to be looking for a new boyfriend.

“We’re out of hibernation!” said Mr. Pelkey, a Long Island University pharmacy student. “You can see that everyone’s out in their new outfits, it’s a fashion show.”

In Washington Square Park, Greg Rodriguez, 24, a concierge from Bushwick, Brooklyn, said he had just bought a pair of mirrored aviator sunglasses. “It definitely makes it easier to check people out with sunglasses on,” he said. Sunglasses “mean you don’t have to look like a creep.”

On the beach and the boardwalk in Coney Island, however, the way of all flesh may be so commonplace that ogling may have died out or perhaps evolved into something less detectable.

“It’s been very tame today,” said Kate Queram, 25, from Kensington, Brooklyn. “We really haven’t been ogled at all.”

Michael Schorr, 55, who was shirtless, explained the local tendency toward restraint. “Russian people, they know each other around here,” he said. “If I met someone, in five minutes my wife would know.”

Kate Hammer and Daryl Khan contributed reporting.
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