Uh-Oh-They're Heeeere!

The first Republican convention in New York arrives at a time when most New Yorkers with country houses and suburban in-laws have left town. Late August has appeared with its dirty heat and catastrophic rains, a city-wide sanction for very un–New York seclusion and introspection; also, the strange sense among New Yorkers-as we are repelled by the Green Zone of Madison Square Garden and the roping-off of public parks-of being strangers in our own city.

It's odd to think that the eyes of America will be on a virtual model of us that isn't really us. Our celebrities, debutantes, moguls, supermodels, bankers, litigators, psychoanalysts, not to mention writers and artists, will have decamped, muttering and desultory, skipping out-as perhaps their predecessors in Chicago of 1968 or Miami of 1972 never would have done-on history in the making. Even those residents without Hamptonian or Locust Valley options have found places to escape to, getting ready to warm up the TiVo even as their fellow New Yorkers face the fearsome invaders. Despite summer-long expressions of anger and resentment that those darn- fucking is the resident idiom, thank you-Republicans are coming to town, with the whiff of grapeshot in the air it seems that few of us have managed to hang on to see what happens next.

For New Yorkers, the first New York Republican National Convention in American history-and all the political and cultural and security angst it represents- is climax itself, an upsetting bookend to the national trauma that began here and in Washington, D.C., on Sept. 11, 2001. While the delegates will surely witness enough moist sin and to entertain their friends at home, what may surprise them most is New York's general equilibrium and confident wariness, a different kind of world-weariness from even the one that New Yorkers have for so long cherished in themselves. New Yorkers have been shell-shocked for three years now; any major disturbance seems piddling in comparison. Many were angry that the Republicans chose New York; it seemed ground-shakingly cynical. Then the party wisely chose to stay away from Ground Zero. Some were apprehensive of terrorists attracted by the spectacle of a visiting President of the United States; then came recent warnings-complete with specific targets in our neighborhoods-to show us that the city is already blazing orange pretty much year-round, with or without the Republicans. And so, as it so often does in New York, life kicked in; we got used to it. New Yorkers began to say: "Where else?" The Democratic convention had barely jostled Boston. And that was Boston. Most of us will take subways, avoid midtown, eat at home and watch the whole thing on Time Warner cable.

So what remains? Jokes, white wine, whining, looking at the gravelly Times , the growling Post , the Daily Show , the sunset over Hoboken.

What's interesting is that the delegates come from the same places we do, the places we left to move here, and so we are-more than we care to admit-like them.

And our guests are more like us than they care to admit. They've been steeped in New York culture for some time now, thanks to David Letterman, Spider-Man II , TV news, the once-exotic Manhattan Manolos that have become Payless mall knock-offs.

We know these Republican delegates intimately. Pro-war or anti-war, pro-choice or pro-life, $300-tax-cut richer or unemployed-the Republican delegates are blood relatives. It's funny for New Yorkers to act as if the Martians have landed; the whole ordeal is more like having your aunt and uncle from Columbus, Ohio, sleep in your bed while you crash on the couch.

And despite New Yorkers' complaints about conservative visitors who hate our city-reviling us for some titillating combination of sin, greed and recklessness, we love to tell ourselves with prideful glee-these Republican delegates know us well. Really well. They are more at home in 2004 than they have ever been. They may hate us more, but they love us more as well. Here are their gay sons and daughters, their rich cousins, their apostate siblings. Even the current President and his visiting daughters-as with the previous President and his family-experience that very phenomenon. The supercharged heroes and villains of New York are America's relatives and intimates, often I.M.'d or at six cents a minute. But they loom so large in part because they are New Yorkers-like their city, bigger than life.

And when the Republicans leave, whether they like it or not, they'll be carrying more of us than they knew, carrying the essence of the city and not just the Waldorf-Astoria lobby, and remembering that a choice made for grizzled showmanship can provide redemption: that the one place in this nation where even the most cynical and predetermined drop-ins came for self-celebration is the place where they can best find re-examination, reinvigoration and rebirth, in the city that continues to infuse the "last, best hope of mankind."