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Giant Rats and Great Pumpkins

It's only a block and a half from the subway to the office, but as that block and a half contains entrances to Macy's and Penn Station it tends to be a fairly bustling one. Sometimes walking billboards give out cool free stuff (food, tiny subway maps, newspapers), a couple weeks ago the Hasidim were milling about with their lulavim and esrogim (good thing I swerved at the time, I was hungry enough to eat an esrog), and you can always count on the odd, um, oddity. Now that the scaffold's come down on the west side of 7th Avenue between 34th and 35th, the giant rat is back. No, not the "tale for which the world is not yet prepared," but a union mascot for "rat contractors" who employ nonunion labor, which makes an appearance at lots of union activities both in NYC and elsewhere. It's certainly eye-catching and I would assume a good ice-breaker, but the union doesn't even seem to have any handbills to educate passers-by so I'm not sure how successful this action is. I mean, I'm interested in this stuff and I can't even remember the local's number or the company they're protesting. Then I turn the corner on 35th and see a makeshift pumpkin patch inside the little fence surrounding one of those sickly saplings that struggle among the skyscrapers. I thought it was sweet, all these li'l pumpkins beautifying an otherwise drab side street. Then, cynic that I am, I reasoned the little shop across from the tree, the one that sells all the tacky t-shirts about 9-11 and The Blackout and "Welcome to NYC Now Die M'F'er!" and such, is probably selling the pumpkins as well, and that's why they're there.