Chris and I stopped by Cafe Spice for dinner last night. It’s on University Place, so we got there by walking through Union Square - where I lived during my freshman year at NYU and have spent a great deal of time over the past seven years. I hadn’t actually been there at all in the past year or so, though, and it was a little disorienting. That Whole Foods on 14th St? It was a Bradlee’s when I first moved here, and it’s where I bought all my college student dishes that one of my roommates later stole when she moved out. The Vietnamese place on University used to be a Healthy Pleasures, the Rugby shop next to it was some sort of discount futon place, and the generic chain clothing store on 15th and Union Square West (American Eagle? Abercrombie?) used to be the Wiz, where I lined up for tickets to The Cure in 1999. I understand that this happens constantly, all over the city. But there are few neighborhoods I think of as especially mine as much as Union Square, so it’s just strange to see it change so much in what seems like such a short period.

It’s comforting that the Greenmarket is still there a couple days a week, though, and that the park is still packed with college students and crazy people, and there’s still a cruddy diner less than two blocks from my old dorm. As long as these vital bits remain unchanged, I suppose I can’t be too upset.

Anyhow, dinner was delicious and the service surprisingly good. It’s always been kind of hit or miss at that place, but we had a friendly and attentive waitress who neither ignored us nor mocked our atrocious pronunciation of half the dishes we ordered. These are all good things.