This year's Mets have talent, character, team spirit, personality -- everything but a winning record in September. With losing come questions. Mike Piazza wonders who will play Greg Luzinski to his Mike Schmidt. Bobby Valentine wonders whether the "clowns" from the media will cut his team a break. And loyalists wonder if it's possible to keep on loving a team that disappoints. (Ask a Red Sox fan.) A portrait of a team on the brink.

Art and Commerce
BY CHRISTOPHER MASON

Recent prices brought by Jeff Koons and Damien Hirst prove that an eighties-style art market is upon us. But along with pickled carcasses and porcelain nudes, a new controversy has arisen: Auction houses have begun pumping the reputations (and prices) of contemporary artists -- often before the paint on the work is even dry -- leaving the galleries that represent them out of the picture altogether.

A Time to Heel
BY VANESSA GRIGORIADIS

On a rare visit to New York, pump maestro Manolo Blahnik greeted his grateful public. But why, he wondered, did these women keep handing him their shoes? "It's on your foot, eh? I don't want to touch it."

Houston, We Have a Musical
BY AARON LATHAM

Twenty years ago, the country flipped for mechanical bulls and rhinestone cowboys, John Travolta and Debra Winger. Now, as Urban Cowboy lopes toward Broadway, Latham recounts his own journey with a modern hero.

GOTHAM
Oliver Platt's school of journalism; the wild, wild Wests
GOTHAM REAL ESTATE
Bill Beutel scales back
GOTHAM STYLE
Is corduroy the new denim?

Media
BY MICHAEL WOLFF

Maybe Bush could have saved some of that good press for a rainy day

MARKETPLACE
Best Bets
BY CORKY POLLAN

Chelsea's modernist mecca; a fresh take on the Fair Isle sweater

Smart City
BY SARAH BERNARD

The procrastinator's guide to good eating on Rosh Hashanah

Sales & Bargains
BY SHYAMA PATEL

Fall-foliage tours upstate shouldn't rake up your budget

THE CRITICS
Movies
BY PETER RAINER

In Best in Show, Christopher Guest goofs on puppy love

Theater
BY JOHN SIMON

Gore Vidal's The Best Man acidly sketches presidential politics

Don't judge the Guggenheim's Amazons of the Avant-Garde by its silly title

Classical Music
BY PETER G. DAVIS

Can diva du jour Lauren Flanigan fill the shoes of Beverly Sills?

Pop Music
BY ROBERT LEVINE

Country star Emmylou Harris gets a smooth new sound

Restaurants
BY ADAM PLATT

All of Brasserie 8 1/2 is a stage, and the diners in it players

Television
BY JOHN LEONARD

Deadline is the Law & Order of hard-boiled pressroom dramas

CUE
A Bonnie Cashin retrospective at FIT; Jason Priestley's directorial debut; a Philip Glass premiere at bam; The Full Monty revealed

Classifieds
Strictly Personals