After watching all the New York chickies strutting around with their Louis Vuitton backpacks, etc., for awhile, those sort of ostentatious status symbols begin to feel really overdone.

We had already been discussing investing in some new luggage while we were picking up our luggage at the airport. mr rampy's canvas hanging bag looks like something a doughboy would cart off to Tripoli, and my little flowered suitcase is so wee and cute it could work as an accessory for a Snoopy's Sister Belle doll. In fact, I was making fun of my suitcase, and how small it was, and how pathetic whoever bothered to check it was (probably a three-year old) until it rumbled closer and I realized it was mine.

Of course, our luggage was doomed to look pathetic because the people across from us were roadies or something whose luggage consisted of two people-sized black wooden boxes, with caster wheels on the bottom.

Now that's luggage.

So driving into the city in a taxi, we were discussing what new luggage we should get when we saw these trash guys pushing a huge cardboard box, on wheels.

Perfect, we said. Hobo chic.