A morning eye-opener, a pink chiffon party dress on a balcony and more reader tales of New York City in this week’s Metropolitan Diary.

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I woke up in my 11th floor apartment on the Upper West Side and immediately smelled freshly brewed coffee.

I was puzzled since I live alone. I decided the smell must be coming through my open window.

Indeed, when I rolled up the blinds, I saw two construction workers having breakfast on a scaffolding.

“Coffee?” one of them said. “Bring your cup.”

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Eight winters ago, I flew cross-country overnight to visit my sister during her freshman year of college. When I arrived, I was wearing a Southern Californian’s idea of East Coast winter wear: a black long-sleeve sweater and olive corduroy pants.

The next morning, the sun’s rays beating down on my sister’s dorm room windows woke us, two tired sardines. She dressed me in layers of puffy outerwear as though she were getting a toddler ready for ski school.

My wedding was approaching, and I hadn’t started to look for a dress yet. My sister found a posting for vintage clothes on a message board, and after a short, shivery trek with snowflakes on our shoulders and stuck to our eyelashes, we turned onto West 17th Street.

The second-story address was dark, but there was a pink chiffon party dress hanging from the balcony.

I said we should flee. My sister, with all of a few months in New York under her belt, marched me into the building’s drafty, unlit foyer and up the stairs.

Light glimmered from under a door like a mirage. But the shop was real, and the first dress I tried on felt just right. We trundled out with yards of lacy, yellowing fabric in a large trash bag.

It was a typical Wednesday. I took the Raritan line into the city from Central Jersey for a midmorning audition. Afterward, I was meandering toward TKTS in hopes of getting a ticket for a matinee when my cellphone rang.

A minute later, I was standing in deep contemplation on the sidewalk pondering a newfound dilemma that demanded immediate resolution: fabric store? a hardware store?

I spotted a dry cleaner. I went in, waited my turn and stepped up to the counter when it came.

“Could you measure my head?” I said to the man there.

Without saying a word, he reached under the counter, pulled out a tape measure and wrapped it around my head.

“Twenty-two inches,” he said. “You in the market for a new hat?”

“Sort of,” I said. “I’m graduating next month, and the college needed to know what size mortar board I needed.”

My father asked whether I’d like to go to lunch in my neighborhood. He didn’t leave his apartment much, so I was really excited that he was coming down to West 72nd Street to take me out.

After he arrived, we walked up Broadway.

“Where shall we go?” I asked him.

He led me into Fairway, where he bought some bread and cold cuts.

“I thought we were going out to eat,” I said.

“We are,” he said. I followed him as he crossed the street and plopped down on a bench in the median at Broadway and 75th Street. “We are dining alfresco!”

He made us sandwiches and we ate them there in the middle of the street. I was horrified: This was our outing?

These days, though, whenever I pass the Beacon Theater and cross Broadway, I think to myself, “How I wish I could be dining alfresco with him now.”

My wife and I lived on East 39th Street in Manhattan in the late 1970s. One evening, we decided to go across the street and down the block to a neighborhood bar, Suspenders, for dinner.

After being seated, we perused the menu and ordered a bowl of onion soup to share and two burgers, both to be cooked medium-rare.

When the waitress, a toughie who intimidated us when she took our order, brought out the soup, she glared at us as she dropped it at the table.

But she had only brought one spoon. Because we were sharing, we called her back and asked for another.

She gave us an annoyed look, but nevertheless brought out a second spoon.

A few minutes later, our burgers arrived. My wife tried hers and, finding it to be well done rather than medium-rare, she called the waitress back again and asked for another, properly cooked, burger in its place.

The waitress stood there for a moment, quiet but clearly brimming with hostility.

“I knew you was trouble,” she finally said, “when you ordered the two spoons!”

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