The diversity gives endless color to the city, so that walking in it is a constant education in slights and smells. There is a wonderful variety of places to eat or shop, and though the most successful of such places are likely to be touristy hybrid compromises, they too have genuine roots. Other American cities have ethnic turfs jealously defended, but not, I think, such an admixture of groups, thrown together in such jarring juxtapositions. In the same way, avenues of high-rise luxury in New York must be celebrated along with its treasures of art and music. The combination is unstable; it produces friction, or an uneasy forbearance that sometimes becomes a real toleration.