NEW YORK — “PLAY NICE!” commanded the front page of the Daily News Sunday.

Most of the 8 million people in this Democratic bastion are playing very nice indeed. In fact, a lot of folks are going to extraordinary lengths to make their guests feel, if not at home, at least comfortable.

Even the press. Take the party at the Time Warner complex at Columbus Square on Saturday night, as Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Gov. George Pataki welcomed the 15,000 media types here to cover the convention. Picture thousands of newspeople milling about in an extremely upscale mall with free drinks. Yes, it was noisy. Some, of course, were working. Larry King and Wolf Blitzer were working by milling about being celebrities who work for Time Warner. Others were working by taking notes, and interviewing others they saw doing the same. A big, buzzing house of mirrors.

I was interviewed twice. A media writer for Newsday interviewed me at length for the next day’s paper — which I never got to see. Hope I didn’t say anything too stupid. He said I was very quotable. That’s not always a good sign.

I did some interviewing myself — boxing promoter Don King, for instance. How could I resist? There he was with his trademark tongue-in-a-light-socket hair, two American flags and a star-spangled, jazzed-up denim jacket with GOP buttons all over it. In the same voice he would have used to tout a match between Ali and Frazier, he was announcing why he likes George W. Bush. “You’ve never had a president of the United States putting black people in positions of real power,” he said in an apparent reference to Colin Powell and Condi Rice. Thanks to President Bush, he said, young African-Americans no longer have to pin their hopes on sports (which you would think would pose him a problem).

I asked him why he was turning from promoting fights to promoting politics. After coughing in my face — sustained bombast can put a hurt on your throat — he said, “I’m not promoting politics; I’m promoting America.” And himself, of course. He abruptly interrupted an exchange with another scribe to go chat up Mayor Bloomberg.

I never got to speak with Hizzoner myself, but I felt welcomed anyway.

The New York Times — a publication that few conventioneers would list as their favorite — also rolled out the red carpet. On Sunday, it treated all GOP delegates to a Broadway show — eight different shows, with several delegations at each. South Carolina went to see Alfred Molina play Tevye in “Fiddler on the Roof.” I tagged along. It was the best thing I’ve ever seen on a stage that didn’t have one of my kids in it.

It was after the show that the “playing nice” ended. A sizable number of the host of demonstrators who had marched earlier in the day (as many as half a million, according to The Times; “tens of thousands,” according to the Post) was waiting out in Times Square as the delegates made their way back to the hotel off Central Park.

“We don’t want you here!” shouted one.

“You’re costing us money!” observed a guy who didn’t content himself with shouting from the crowd, but joined the stream of exiting delegates — easily identified by their red Times gift bags — to harangue them more intimately: “You are not welcome! You are costing us money!”

“We don’t care,” shot back a delegate.

“There you have it, ladies and gentlemen! From the mouths of the delegates themselves! They do not care for the people of New York!”

Other voices, from all around:

“We don’t want you here! Get out of town!”

“Republicans go home!”

“Please don’t party on our tragedy! Please don’t party on our tragedy!”

“RNC not welcome. 9/11 should not be your backdrop!”

“Do like Dick Cheney and blank yourself!” Actually, she didn’t say “blank,” but quoted the vice president with meticulous care.

A group done up in “Wizard of Oz” costumes went by chanting, “Torture and Something (couldn’t make it out) and Lies, oh my!” The guy next to “Dorothy” had fake blood running from his mouth.

That was the last straw for a woman named Frances from Queens, who thought her kids shouldn’t have to see such things. “You’re going to hell!” she said. “You blanking nut cases!” (The words of the vice president are repeated with great enthusiasm in this town. Or one of them, anyway.)

There was no real trouble, possibly because there were as many cops present as demonstrators. (I never knew there were as many policemen in the whole world as I have seen in the last couple of days — on every street corner, at least six each in front of every hotel.) And the demonstrators I talked with wanted no Chicago-style conflict with New York’s Finest. “They’re nice cops. They’re doing their jobs,” said Emily Dische-Becker.

Most of the nice cops I talked to were footsore and tired of collecting overtime by the time night fell. They were also, in classic Gotham style, determined not to be impressed by any of it. Several were carrying multiple sets of plastic handcuffs. I asked one officer if there had been many arrests. “Sure, lots of them — all over Manhattan.” (About 200 according to The Times; 511 according to the Post.) I asked for his name, and he pointed to the plate under his badge: “Solomon.” First name? He wasn’t giving that. As the shouts continued in the jostling crowd around us, I asked if he’d seen any real trouble.

“Trouble?” he asked, playing to his buddies standing around him. “There’s trouble, I run the other way.”

The wisdom of Solomon.

Welcome to New York. It’s going to be an interesting week.

Write Mr. Warthen at bwarthen@thestate.com.