Within earshot of BAM

"I just got out of a serious relationship with someone I'm still in love with," said a girl on Lafayette and Fulton. "I'm not about to go out with a security guard from the Museum of Natural History." She did not know her voice carried to the couple standing still, breathing, among the fir trees lined up for sale at the intersection.

"I don't want people to think that I'm not an Aries," said another girl. She did not know that the couple wolfing down pulled pork sandwiches at the next table in The Smoke Joint had fine ears and a keen appetite for strangers' statements.