Metropolitan Diary: Venus Rising From the Sidewalk Dear Diary, At about 5:30 on a Wednesday afternoon a young woman, naked from the waist up, walked north on Third Avenue as I was walking south. She was quite composed and appeared unconcerned. The reaction seemed minimal as I walked in her wake; no one followed her, no one stopped dead in his or her tracks. As I walked, a young man in front of the running store near 72nd Street beckoned to his friend to come out. Near Gracious Home another guy said, "That's indecent exposure!" Otherwise all was calm until I got to the corner of 70th Street and waited for the light to change next to a group of 30ish young women. They were in fits of laughter and shock. One said to me, "We just saw - -" "I saw her, too," I said, very happy to share this and laugh with them. One of the women, a visiting Californian and the most outraged, said, "In California they walk around in little string bikini tops, but there's nothing like that!" Embarrassed for our city and afraid that she'd go home and report that New Yorkers walk around bare-breasted, I assured her that this was not an everyday thing in New York and that, after a lifetime here, this was my first topless woman on the street. I'm not sure she believed me.