Many evenings, when it’s warm, Goblin and I see a large man wearing a fur hat and a knee-length tunic fashioned from a dirty and tattered blanket playing chess on a park bench with a relatively normal-looking man. They are usually surrounded by an equal number of human spectators and shopping bags full of what appears to be old clothing.

We witnessed this yesterday evening, and later in our stroll, there was the added attraction of a shirtless man who resembled an African-American Santa Claus, enthusiastically accompanying a recording of the Beatles’ “Hard Day’s Night” with a pair of banana-yellow maracas.

I’m very glad I don’t have to make this sort of thing up.