It didn't help.

John Street and Sam Katz were amusing, entertaining, informative and - in the dignified way they've conducted themselves during the campaign - even inspiring.

Less than a week to go, and I'm stuck with so many other people in electoral purgatory: undecided. (For me it's academic, because I live outside the city, although my heart remains here.)

In some ways Katz and Street are so similar as to make a choice impossible: smart, conscientious, committed, hard-working, confident to the point of arrogance.

And the ways in which they're different seem to cancel each other out.

PROMISE: An untested public official with Katz's promise is an exciting prospect - new ideas, new energy, new possibilities. Perhaps his vision will be as revolutionary as Mayor Rendell's and bring critical change to the city. The unknown can be very seductive.

PERFORMANCE: But the realities of holding public office are daunting. And John Street has already proven he can navigate the unsettling corridors of power. In some ways, his diligent performance as president of City Council has earned him the right to be mayor.

PARTY: Street's strategy to stress party affiliation in a Democratic town was very, very smart. President Clinton's recent declaration that a Katz victory would boost the Republican party and make it easier for the likes of reactionary Rick Santorum to keep his U.S. Senate seat - whether truth or fear tactics - certainly got my attention.

POLICIES: School vouchers are a critical distinguishing issue between the candidates, and I'm squarely on Street's side in opposing them. If they're approved, the public school system will collapse. Katz's wholehearted endorsement of vouchers reminds me that, as a Republican, he represents ideology I find repugnant. On the other hand, Street's strategy to force a showdown with Harrisburg to force state government to provide more money for public schools sounds potentially catastrophic.

PERSONALITY: Neither Katz nor Street has the perfect Rendellian mayoral temperament, because both are endowed with more egotism and self-importance.

But Street's reclusiveness and churlish temperament seem less suited for the mayoral throne. Katz is more affable and less intense, more outgoing and less likely to become isolated behind a protective shield of loyalists.

While I'm genuinely undecided, it seems clear that some of the so-called undecided white vote is a ruse to hide the incipient racism that will influence this election.

"People don't want to vote for John Street because of what happened with Wilson Goode," a resident of Mayfair told me yesterday.

Part of me would want to vote for Street just to counter outrageous attitudes like that one.

Last week, I thought I found the deciding factor that would prod me into making a choice.

It was "the monster dance."

According to an interview with Street's wife, Naomi Post, their son Akeem used to be afraid of monsters and Street was the only person who could scare them away by doing the monster dance. At Akeem's bedtime, she said, she'd page her husband, he'd come home to do the monster dance, and then go back to work.

What a tender and surprising insight into the private man, I thought.

Then I read that Sam Katz personally coached his children in Hebrew for their bar and bat mitzvahs - a stressful and time-consuming undertaking that he could have left to tutors - and was equally impressed.

This agonizing choice may be made on last-minute impulse by undecided voters like me only when the curtain on the voting booth is closed.

May the best man - whoever he is - win.

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