New Yorker contributors have always been an incorrigible group of eavesdroppers. Consider, for instance, the snippets of collected dialogue that were once published in the Talk of the Town section. From December, 1949, at the Metropolitan Opera House: “I’m definitely giving up finger bowls for the duration.” Or, from April, 1963, at an “outlying” Bloomingdale’s: “I must say that after three years of analysis he’s not so fussy about having his yolks right in the middle of his fried eggs any more.” After too many months cooped up with the looping soundtracks of our own thoughts, we felt that it was time to once again dispatch a handful of our gumshoe journalists—this time, cartoonists—to listen in on their fellow city dwellers. They skulked around Grand Central Station, jogged through Prospect Park, sidled up to patrons of a vegan café, prowled the Central Park Zoo, and surreptitiously sipped with barflies. Here’s what they heard.
