It is often difficult to decide what constitutes malicious
gossip in a society that handles its lack of cohesive
bonds by exaggerating its notions of individual privacy.
Tables of elderly black matrons
in their Sunday finest buzz with neighborhood
gossip, while just a few feet away union reps pass the inexpensive red wine to their wives, and elsewhere unreserved tables of strangers make nice with college students, entrepreneurs, government workers — white, black, and Hispanic — all
bonding over their common hopes for the city.