Proof last night that I wasn’t in Peoria:

A twentysomething, tattoed man, cradling a lacrosse stick, wearing a pair of Knicks-style silk shorts and nothing else, talking to four police officers in their thumbs-in-the-gunbelt stance outside a woman’s clothing store in Penn Station. 

As the athletic-looking youngster shook his head in a continuous “no,” one of the cops kept peppering away: “You don’t have any shoes? No clothes? Any place you can get clothes? Not even a shirt? Know anyone who could lend you some? You don’t have any money to buy some clothes? Not even shoes? You didn’t have shoes when you left your house this morning?” It wasn’t a question of if, but rather how much alcohol was involved.

But I don’t know why such a scene should even register, given the state of the cosmos yesterday. On my morning jaunt on the “E” train, I looked up at door just before it opened at the Lexington Ave. stop. “The ice cream woman is your cousin,” read a neatly printed swath of graffiti. I’m not sure what it meant, but I found myself sagely nodding and muttering, “Aha-a-a.”

And not even coffee was involved.