My Paris plane touched down last night at JFK at 7:30 pm. Taxied forever on the tarmac. The passport line took a good 35 to 40 minutes because there weren’t enough passport guys at the desks. At 9:15 pm I was waiting for the slow-as-molasses A train at Howard Beach. I finally arrived at Hanover Square, my area of residence for the next couple of weeks, around 10 pm. The neighborhood, south of Wall Street and a block away from the East River, is a bit on the chilly, corporate side. Not exactly saturated with historical aroma. It could be a corporate high-rise region of Cleveland, Detroit, Hong Kong or Boston’s North End. It had a certain charm back in the days of Martin Scorsese‘s Gangs of New York, but then you had to deal with guys sinking meat cleavers into each other’s heads so it all balances out.