New York, New York. How the rain came down as President Robinson came for her last presidential visit. Hurricane Danny a few hundred miles away had been downgraded to a tropical storm but it was still able to dump tons of rain on the Big Apple.
Fitzpatrick's Hotel on Lexington and 57th Street rolled out the red carpet for the last time for the President. Patriarch Jimmy Fitzpatrick was on hand to be introduced to Mrs Robinson by his son John who manages the New York end of the family hotel business which insiders say is soon to expand somewhere in Manhattan.
A small army of secret service agents hung around the hotel while top UN officials paraded up and down to the President's penthouse to talk about her new job as High Commissioner of Human Rights. Vanity Fair even got in for a photo session for the November issue which will feature the then former President.
RTE's Charlie Bird was hard on the President's heels as he put the finishing touches to his 90-minute epic on her life and times. At the UN, he skilfully deployed two camera crews, one for his epic and the other for news coverage of the President's resignation date announcement.
The UN Secretary General, Mr Kofi Annan, who aides said was ill, bolted quickly from the brief press conference after he had to remind the President that she was resigning in September and not December.
The President kindly stayed back to answer a question from this correspondent. "He's Irish," she explained to her new boss who said, "Ha, ha ha. He's going to get upset." Then it was back out to the awful rain and the irate taxi drivers if you could stop one. The rain was making the traffic even worse than usual and their lives more unbearable.
The Broadway shows had a dated look about them: a revival of A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, The King and I, Cats, and Annie.
The best shows in town were free: The trial of mob boss Vincent "Chin" Gigante for multiple murders and of Autumn Jackson, accused of trying to extort $40 million from America's favourite dad, comedian Bill Cosby. Autumn says that Cosby is her real Dad as he had a brief affair with her mother 22 years ago and she is angry that he will not recognise her as his daughter.
Autumn's defence lawyer read chunks from Cosby's 1986 bestseller, Fatherhood, in which he wrote that a father's "role is to be there". Cosby admitted to a one-night stand with the mother but denies he is the father.
The judge says it is irrelevant whether he is the father or not as the charge is one of extortion. There has been huge sympathy for Cosby over the murder of his son in Los Angeles at the very time that Autumn Jackson was demanding money for her silence but if the jury believes he really is her father, it may let her off.
The Gigante trial has also gone to the jury after four weeks of near burlesque as the prosecution tried to prove he ordered seven mob killings and plotted to kill three other gangsters who broke mob rules, including the notorious John Gotti.
Gigante, who is now 69, has been playing the drooling old man role while wandering around Greenwich Village in pyjamas and an old bathrobe. It is not exactly what you'd expect from a Godfather.
The prosecution produced a stream of six former mobsters turned informers as witnesses to nail Vinnie the Chin. They included Fat Pete, Crazy Phil and Little Al.
But Gigante's lawyer pointed out that they were responsible for 63 murders and constituted "the most infamous array of murdering psychopaths ever assembled since Nuremberg".
Telephone taps on Gigante produced evidence of him telling his mistress "I love you" and "don't smoke". Attempts by the FBI to plant a bug in Gigante's apartment ended when they drilled right through his dining room wall. "It made a mess," admitted an FBI man who told the court the operation had to be aborted because of "technical difficulties".
The election campaign for Mayor of New York is also running off Broadway but Republican incumbent Rudy Giuliani is so far ahead of his Democratic rival, Ruth Messinger, that her once loyal supporters are quietly deserting her. Giuliani has a flawless eye for the public relations coup. This time last year he was denouncing TWA for its treatment of the relatives of the victims of the TWA 800 crash off Long Island and making highly publicised visits to their hotel.
This week he is denouncing the treatment of the deaf-mute Mexican immigrants in Queens by a smuggling ring. But it was services under his administration which inspected and passed the awful buildings in which the 57 victims were held in conditions described as "virtually slavery". Giuliani had actually cut the budget for the buildings department which provides the inspectors.
Cuts, what cuts? Giuliani says the problem is inspectors taking bribes and "if they're taking bribes, they're not doing their jobs".
At least he's doing his job and the rain has stopped at last.