Behind the chipped facades and rusted iron filigree of many of Havana's humblest-looking homes lie stashes of fabulous electronics equipment: cellphones, new computers, CD players, a VCR or two, perhaps even a DVD player.  This hidden infrastructure supports a thriving black market of information and entertainment. These days, the illicit traffic of carpets, chairs and computer parts that has long swirled through Havana's crumbling streets also contains the latest movies, music and art.

The International Festival of Ballet here, which ends on Saturday, has given some ballet-crazed Cubans their first chance to savor the choreography of George Balanchine.  Lourdes Libertad, a bolero singer, saw the work of the man many say was the 20th century's greatest choreographer for the first time on Monday night. ''It's very beautiful,'' she said at intermission. ''It's different. It's more contemporary.''   All that is true. But is it Balanchine?

LAST February, at the Atlanta Ballet's annual gala, Lynda Courts saw an item up for auction that she just could not refuse. The evening's performance was ''Romeo and Juliet,'' and Romeo himself was on offer.  ''Much to my husband's consternation I kept bidding,'' said Ms. Courts, who has been on the board of the Atlanta Ballet for 20 years.   Five minutes and $3,000 later, Ms. Courts held a photograph of her prize: John Welker, the evening's star, whom she had purchased the right to ''sponsor'' for the next year. 

THE bottles of pinot grigio and cabernet sauvignon stood at attention on the bar, each with a napkin knotted at its neck. A man in a black bow tie played a Steinway in the marble rotunda. It was April 29, and Defenders of the Historic Upper East Side, a new preservation group, was having its inaugural celebration at the Kosciuszko Foundation, an East 65th Street town house that once belonged to Mrs. John Jacob Astor 3rd's socialite son-in-law.  Elizabeth Ashby, a preservationist who founded the group with Teri Slater, gave the first toast. 

In the 30 years he has been driving a cab, William Lindauer has watched himself fall out of the middle class. Born in the Kingsbridge section of the Bronx, Mr. Lindauer, 60, is a wiry, slightly impish man, with a loud voice, a smoker's cough, startling blue eyes and a taste for the theater. He can also do a good impression of a blueblood with lockjaw, even though he is missing most of his upper teeth.  A week from tomorrow, Mr. Lindauer and 40,000 other licensed yellow-cab drivers in the city will get their first raise in eight years. 

SAL SADEK stood in the open-air patio of his 15-year-old flower shop, Nature's Foliage and Gardens, a tall, solid man oblivious to the late-winter chill. ''After spring,'' he said, gesturing to the bags of fertilizer and dwarf Alberta spruce trees around him, ''this is going to be history.'' He is right. Work has already begun on the apartment building that will rise on his lot, at West 28th Street and the Avenue of the Americas.