Movie trailer for “Starbucking,” about a guy who’s trying to visit every Starbucks in the world.

I’m fascinated by the Lower Manhattan Expressway, which never got built. Initiated by Robert Moses in the early 1960s, it would have cut a huge swath across lower Manhattan from the Holland Tunnel to the Williamsburg Bridge. It would have destroyed parts of the West Village, SoHo and its many wonderful cast-iron buldings, and Chinatown. Here’s a tour of the route it would have taken.

I think of this because of what I saw on TV yesterday. If you love New York City history, you’ve got to watch New York: A Documentary Film, a 17.5-hour documentary by Ric Burns. There were originally seven episodes, but after 9/11, Burns created an eighth episode, covering the rise and fall of the World Trade Center. This weekend I re-watched Episode 6, which happened to be on TV. Episode 7’s on this week, which I’ve also already seen but plan to watch again.

The center of Episodes 6 and 7 is Robert Moses, the man who utterly transformed the city through his massive construction projects. The Power Broker is essential reading on Moses, but Episodes 6 and 7 of the documentary are sort of a Cliff’s Notes to the book and include much commentary by its author, Robert Caro.

Robert Moses is still relevant today — his name has often come up in discussions of the proposed West Side redevelopment and Jets stadium and of the redesign of lower Manhattan.

Here’s a good condensed description of the battle over the Lower Manhattan Expressway.

When Moses looked at Manhattan he saw pavement. There was also the proposed Mid-Manhattan Expressway, which would have gone across 30th Street. Robert Stern derided it: “Can you imagine an elevated expressway at 30th Street just so Long Island guys could get to New Jersey?”

One of the best things about Manhattan is being able to walk along its streets and experience the spontaneity of city life. Had Moses had his way, this would be impossible today.

Andrew Sullivan (and some others) have been criticizing the late Susan Sontag for not being forthcoming about her same-sex relationships. Today, Sullivan posts a couple of letters from readers who disagree with him. I’m excerpting one of them here, because I think it’s terrific.

Perhaps the best explanation actually is the one she provided (and not — imagine that! — the fervid projections of someone with a political agenda) — that she didn’t think it was interesting or relevant to her job as a writer who she happened to be sleeping with at the moment (and, remember, this reticence applied to her male as well as female lovers). That her “identity” might not have been first and foremost “lesbian.” That perhaps she felt she was beyond being labeled as “gay” or “straight” and had no desire to be pigeonholed as such. Perhaps, as a public figure, she wanted to protect the privacy of some part of her life. Who really knows? Honestly — and maybe this is because I’m a straight man who admired her for her mind, as a human being, and not as a member of some sexual-political group, I don’t really care. I don’t really understand why, even though she never denied having relationships with woman and certainly did her part for the gay community, you consider her a coward — presumably because she didn’t discuss her sexual life in confessional detail?

But then, I never understood how you could name a vile “award” after her for saying something (that the terrorists were demonstrably not cowards; that they had motivations beyond being “evil” and that we, as a nation, deserved better than the baby-talk the Bush administration put out after the attacks) that, while tough for many people — including you — to hear at the time, had the virtue of being absolutely, clarifyingly right, and is now conventional wisdom (well, except to the people responsible for our disastrous policies). Which isn’t to say she was right all the time — or never mis-spoke. But then again, who is? Certainly — as I’m sure, as a relatively intellectually honest pundit would be forced to agree, not even you.