Manhattan's City Hall really must be the most "City Hall-like" building in the country. The entrance sits between stone columns at the top of steps that are steep enough to suggest that you are rising into an important place. A cop in plainclothes greets you at the door and sharply asks your business. Under the previous mayor, David Dinkins, you could simply walk inside, but current mayor Rudolph Giuliani is a freak about security. So you tell the cop that you're a journalist. Then you walk through the metal detector, across a floor made of marble and turn to your left, past an ever-present group of whispering politicos, through a small iron gate and more security. Someone else, usually a member of the mayor's press office, asks your business and officiously notes your affiliation on a clipboard. Then you walk down a marble corridor into the Blue Room itself.

On the walls, heavy oil paintings of past mayors stare down; a graveyard of men. They all held court in this room once and, even in their portraits, you can sense the political spin. Ed "How'm I doing" Koch, with his come-hither, neighborhood guy smile, is particularly irritating. Nobody looks at the paintings though, except me. I am a beat reporter for a Long Island daily newspaper. I usually write about traffic problems and obscure court cases. To me, this room and the people in it are strange and fascinating. I come here occasionally, as a habit I guess, and I always feel like I'm in the presence of something important, something that is central to my occupation and to the life of this city. And I always wonder why I feel this way--there is certainly little here to support it.

"Journalists," in their pre-press conference mode, all seem ready to die of boredom. They slouch in creaky steel chairs, or lean against the wall or, if they're television reporters, they check their makeup. The pure ambivalence of the crowd dominates everything.

The mayor's press people duck in and out, eyeing the reporters with mixtures of fatigue, wariness, disgust, and sometimes, outright hatred. Then Colleen Roche, the mayoral press secretary, walks in and announces matter-of-factly, "Okay people, he'll be in in about five minutes, all right? Five minutes." She is barely acknowledged.

Ten or fifteen minutes later, the mayor appears, moving through the crowd with quick little steps. He is wearing simple metal-rimmed glasses, a dark power suit, and his wedding band. As usual, his face is layered with pancake makeup, so that this pale little man always looks tanned and healthy for the cameras (this is not uncommon, most politicians wear a lot of makeup, but it's still weird and it means that they never resemble themselves except on television.) He arrives at the simple wooden podium--the same one used by the mayors who came before him--and begins without introduction.