People don’t spend enough free time in New York, perhaps especially New Yorkers.

Today I was gifted a rare afternoon in the city with no work obligations and most of my usual comrades out of town on vacation. It was comically easy to spend it well, alone.

A turkey Reuben and chocolate shake at S&P Lunch was quickly followed by book shopping downtown. I had a ticket to see White Nights, the 1957 Luchino Visconti film based on the Dostoevsky short story of the same title, and I was hunting a collection of short stories that might include it. The very excellent Codex on Bleecker not only had the story, but they had the standalone Constance Garnett version used for $8. Hat tip to Tyler Cowen for the rec.

I read the story at McSorley’s over a few beers (famously, beers are served two at a time at McSorley’s, so who’s to say how many I really had) and at Codex’s cafe over a good cup of coffee. Then it was a short walk to the Film Forum to see the movie.

It didn’t occur to me until the walk back through Washington Square that I’d spent the whole day doing roughly what the story describes: a man alone in a city he knows too well, walking, reading, speaking only to strangers.

I have more to say on the story and film (both excellent in their own way), but for now, it’s worth noting how accessible such a day is in New York on a random Wednesday. The day cost me less than $100, and a $3 subway fare will get you to the right part of town (for me, increasingly, Downtown Manhattan) from virtually any part of the city.

I also passed up a Braves-Mets doubleheader, a Shakespeare in the Park preview of The Winter’s Tale at the Delacorte, and of course a million other possible days better suited for the tastes and interests of others.

The right question to ask is how many days like this a good life requires per year–and then, uncomfortably, how many you’ve had this year.

Dostoevsky’s dreamer gets four nights and then spends the rest of his life living off them. “My God, a whole moment of happiness! Is that too little for the whole of a man’s life?” he asks at the end of the story. Perhaps not, and the mark of such a day is precisely that it feels like enough. But the argument of a city like New York is that you can have another Wednesday next Wednesday, and I tend to think you should.