“To be pagan: to believe the stranger coming toward you may be a god” – Barbara Cassin . So says the twitter of the French Embassy where the Night of Philosophy was taking place.

But I never made it to the Night of Philosophy because the line that stretched for 2 avenues in the cold outside of the embassy was over 1 hour, according to the same twitter, and apparently moving only for VIPs, according to the people at the front of the line. The general-public line was not moving at all. The Ukrainian one was 3 hours, but did not have a separate VIP line.

We ended up going to an old-school upper east side Hungarian cafe to eat strudels, drink tokaj and talking about organizing for labor rights of design professionals, like proper proletariat that we are.

But we saw Kicks being filmed around the corner. Men in top hats leading horses. also, no streetlights, and people tripping and falling in the dark on the wires the film crew laid out.