Is Love Making a Comeback?

New York City has always had a romantic charm despite its esthetic defects, rude citizenry, and incompetent and ever so corruptible politicians. West Side Story opened on Broadway in 1957. It was based on a book written by Arthur Laurents. The lyrics were written by Stephen Sondheim and the music by the legendary Leonard Bernstein. From Broadway it went to film and won 10 of 11 Oscar nominations including best picture with Richard Beymer and Natalie Wood in the leading roles. To this day I can still remember some of the lyrics. Enchanting! Truly enchanting!

All that seems so long ago to the many of us who have become jaded, to the many of us who have lost our way, and to the many of us who no longer believe that love exists outside our private worlds. But there is passion in New York and it gives one a sense of steadfastness and continuity to know that there are still those who will dare all for love.
Perhaps there is a new West Side Story being written right now. There is only a slight geographical adjustment to the script, shifting the scene from roughly Hell's Kitchen to SoHo and the characters may be a bit shopworn and the Sharks and the Jets are no more but when love beckons fear and fidelity don't have a chance. It doesn't make mayor elect Bill De Blasio look very good either. The upshot of the plot is client number 9 is shacking up with His Honor's spokeswoman, Lis Smith. That's hooker loving Eliot Spitzer in the hoodie, outside of Smith's walk-up and doing a damn good job of blending in with the homeless.

Without Smith's being able to attend the press conference because of scandal, De Blasio demonstrated how badly he needs a spokesperson;
“I respect Lis as a professional but I also respect her right to privacy. So I’m not going to get any further into it,” De Blasio said.
See we still have chivalry.
“This, to me, is like any other personal question. This is not something I want to go into detail on. We’re here to talk about very serious matters facing our city. I’m just not going to get into individual personal matters,” he said. We’re in a transition – we have a way of doing things. When we’re ready to make an announcement, we’ll make an announcement and so with all the folks being looked at and being considered, when the times comes we’ll have an announcement about everybody. But I don’t get into the process. I don’t get into how the process is done. When it’s announcement day you’ll know.”
Part of the way process is done, your Honor, is people unwind their marriages before starting another romance but it's hardly news that Spitzer in not into marital fidelity. Smith seems to like her par amours a little on the trashy side. She dated ex-Missouri state Sen. Jeff Smith from 2005 to 2009, before he was locked up in a federal pen for obstruction after a probe of the state’s 2004 election.
On second thought, maybe West Side Story was just an adult fairy tale.