My usual mode of transportation is a $104 Metrocard that is sucked out of my weekly paycheck in $26 installments. Toward the end of every month, Bronislava the Expressionless from Accounting, visits me and performs the somber Handing Out the New Metrocards Ceremony. Only recently, did I Google search her name and discover that in her native Russia it means “glorious protector.” Over here, I guess it’s been revised to Glorious Protector of the Metrocards.
Bronislava quietly creeps into my department where I am usually sitting at my desk before my computer heavy lidded, slack jawed, drooling and occasionally, snoring. To gain my attention, she might mumble in fluent monosyllabic a sound that I think doubles as my name if my name were pronounced “Va-heen-na-ha.” Or, depending on where she is in her fertility cycle, she might gesture silently with a sheet and pen that I am supposed to use to sign that sheet indicating that I have received my new card. After I scawl my atrophying signature onto the sheet, she proceeds to hand me my new card. This transaction always takes place with an economy of words where I often do all the talking when I say:
Me: Thanks.
Over the weekend, I was walking from the East Village to the West Village enroute to meeting a friend for a beverage when I nearly suffered whiplash throwing out my neck at the site of this adorable 1970 Fiat Abarth 695 parked on Mercer Street.
Come home with me.
If I had ever seen one of these cars anyplace other than in a Fellini film, I don’t recall it, and my pulse has always quickened for compact European vehicles.
Hey, who's been fondling your rear engine?
It is a nice caboose.
This one was such a beauty! Oh, to ride this to work in lieu of the crowded 2 Express train or, better yet, to ride it to someplace bucolic and far from the daily grind and full of fun. <sigh>
Let's get lost!
I wanna see your instruments!
Of course, bucolic has always triggered my nasal allergies, parking in this city is a major pain, and I need to own a car, even one of the sexiest cars in the world like this one, about as badly as I need a brain tumor. Yet, this one sure was a delight to ogle and photograph and a lot prettier than my Metrocard.
No "zoom zoom" here.
It was so much fun until reality got in the way.
Probably not a cheap date.
Lame Adventures 
You continue the American love affair with cars but I, like you, do not have a sexy car like this in my past – Martini Max learned how to drive on the old man’s 1962 Ford Falcon in 1977 with no power steering, no power brakes, no power windows and a broken radio! The only upgrade that car ever had is when I was 10 I stuck a Speedy Gonzales sticker on the exterior next to the gas tank!
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Wow, you sure had cajones to deface Pappy Max’s car with that sticker! I think it’s safe to say that your latest German convertible in ice blue is not exactly your father’s automobile.
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