On Sunday (May 5, 2002) New York experienced one of those periodic perfect days famously eulogized by Lou Reed. The weather was exactly as it had last been the week of September 11, 2001: impossibly sharp, dry and mild. But instead of triggering unsettling memories, it framed a city that felt fresh and strong, a role model to the world for tolerance and the right to be in your face.

My walk that day took me towards Broadway along 7th street. Between 2nd Avenue and the Bowery, the Ukrainian Orthodox Church was emptying its brood of conservatively dressed Easter worshippers. Or perhaps they were on a smoking break from the infamously long ceremony, and as the men milled in the street cigarette packs collectively emerged from Soyuz-colored jackets adorned with mottled ties.

Soon they’d be off their favorite deli, for the pirogis and the blinis, but I was on my way to Strand Books, on Broadway and 12th, looking for Tom Segev’s One Palestine, Complete. I’d read a few chapters at my parents’ place over a year ago, and really liked it, but left before I could finish it. This book has become even more topical this past year, because the events in the three decades before Israel’s independence are grist for the mutually incompatible histories taught today in Palestinian and Israeli schools. It is unusual for these orthodoxies of victimization and entitlement to be appraised in light of an impartial account of the historical facts.

I eventually found the book in Barnes & Noble on Union Square, but not until after wading through the Asian Pacific American Heritage Festival, which mainly involved a lot of rap music. Off I went with my book to Tompkins Square park, intending to soak up a few hours of reading on a dappled grassy knoll, but that plan was loudly nixed by a massive daylight techno rave that had many of the improbably pierced jerking around colorfully to 180 beats per minute.

The backup plan was the garden on 6th and B. As I exited the park to the Southeast, I noticed a slow procession coming up 7th street from Avenue C. I approached what turned out to be a Cinco de Mayo tribute to San Martin de Pobres, whose idol was being slowly pall-borne by very serious-looking mature Hispanic men. The small brass band did its best, but was increasingly forced to parry the several-thousand watt-strong thump thump thumps rolling over the east village.

I finally did make it to my reading spot, but not without first appreciating that only in New York can a neighborhood stroll serve up so much cultural cacophony. And I didn’t even go see the Cuban Day parade held that day, or the 42-mile bike tour across the 5 boroughs, or the protests pro and contra Israeli and Palestinian policy. I will miss this city.