"Chiquito!"

We’ve got the Eastern Bloc cutting hair here in Lower Manhattan. At Karena’s Kuts on South William Street, Olga uses hand-scissors to style an excellent semi-crew cut. But Olga's precision snips and tales of life in Prague—along with the pleasure of resting your feet on the fancy metal footrest of her antique chair—don't exactly come cheap.

If you are like me and don’t have the pockets for regular visits to "K K," Nadia, over at George's Hair Styling on Beaver Street, does a quick-and-neat job of it with the electric shears for ten bucks. She’s just back this week from spending the holidays with her family in Russia, and I have to remember to make an appointment. I’m starting to look a bit like Earl.

As in most places around the five boroughs, the melting pot down in Manhattan’s south end teems with many ethnic seasonings. Young, high-cheekboned and very thin Slavic model types—walking, talking Calvin Klein ads—live in my building. Two doormen are named Safet and Elvir. Indian financiers can be seen walking The Street and talking up other men in black overcoats, undoubtedly planning more outsourced business for the emerging subcontinent. Several Indian families also reside in my building; the women wear traditional saris.

It’s a gas seeing the various cultures interact. For all of our differences it never ceases to impress me how much we’re really all the same. Last winter, before I moved here, an Israeli rental agent showed me around the area and shared a kosher pizza with me for lunch. It tasted almost as good as your standard Italian issue, and less salty.

At the Whitehall Deli last Saturday, the teenaged, baseball-cap- wearing son of the Korean owners whooped it up with the Mexican kitchen help while I was there getting morning coffee. The boy minds the store for mom and pop on weekends, and he was all fired up behind the cash register. The Mexicans couldn’t stop laughing as he repeatedly yelled, “chiquito!” Knowing the minds of young men, having been one once myself, I think I was clued in to the joke, but kept my knowledge concealed inside the visage of the older guy who is oblivious.

Meanwhile, I don’t get any of this Democratic carping about Samuel Alito. The guy’s a nerd, not David Duke. I—and I suspect most Americans—have no problem with a judge who doesn't legislate from the bench. Kennedy, Schumer and company are sounding like tired and whiny old men.

Hey, Dems! Chiquitos! It’s almost sixty degrees as I type these words. New York’s winter has gone AWOL. How about talking about stuff that really matters—and gives you the upper hand over Republicans—for a change?