Ahh the rites of spring...

The first spring my present store was open, I remember my fellow Fiction staffer telling me it was his favourite time of the year. Why? Because this is when all the girls come out of their winter clothes and start wearing skirts and small tops again.

Years later one of my manager friends downtown described to me the lunchtime scene one day, when he stepped out of the store to enjoy the spring sun and enjoy the women walking by. And when he looked up and down Ste. Catherine's Street, he saw men up and down the street doing the same thing.

Just now I was reading an essay by a woman who went to school with Leonard Cohen in the 1950s, and she tells this story:

One day I saw him standing with his closest buddy, Morty Rosengarten, on the corner of Sherbrooke Street. "Where are you going?" asked I, who was always on my way somewhere. "We're watching the girls come out for spring," he said, just standing there.