They don't call The New York Times "The Gray Lady" for nothing, and it isn't like the Gray Lady to shill for a television show. That said, the paper's "Mad Men City" series is a swell look back at the New York City of the early-to-mid '60s, timed to coincide with this weekend's Season 4 premiere of AMC's "Mad Men." (Okay, so technically it's under the umbrella of the paper's "City Room" blog.) Today's installment has it all, nostalgically speaking: A black-and-white print ad from the venerable Benton & Bowles shop for the now-defunct Eastern Airlines, with copy referring to a woman as a "pretty chick." Other entries have focused on the East Side eatery Jimmy's La Grange — a place so fantastically specific that you had to eat what Jimmy ordered for you, and it was usually Chicken Kiev — and the ultra-swanky Time & Life Building. For you kids, Life was a magazine. Time still is. But it's hard not to read the name as a commentary on how swiftly time passes in a place like New York, and how thoroughly it effaces what's gone before.
