For the fifth summer, I’ll be spotlighting little aspects of life here that I love. To see the previous Valentines, click the Valentine tag at the end of the post.

I’m not going to try to justify the cost of the World Trade Center Transportation Hub, a.k.a. the Oculus, because it’s unjustifiable. (But then again so is the cost of real estate these days, and the amount I spend at restaurants, and so on….) The politicians are as responsible as anyone, even if architect Santiago Calatrava ends up with the blame. So let’s just stand back and admire the thing—a huge, white Venus flytrap that I find especially endearing when I happen to catch a glimpse of it from way up Church Street and Greenwich Street. (You can spot it from as far north as Canal, but it won’t show up in photos.) Whether this will always be so remains to be seen—as the map of the World Trade Center above indicates, 2 World Trade Center promises to block most of the Transportation Hub, although there’s hope we’ll still get a view of it from up Greenwich. (About that map: South is at the top.)