The beating heart of the city however is Manhattan with its taller than tall skyscrapers and its traffic both car and foot that never stops. It’s a hybrid of gauche and gaudy. The street canyons look to go forever but a few blocks and you are walking through a medium rise neighbourhood with its local shops and pizza slices!
Horns blast constantly in response to the traffic congestion as pedestrians ply their way through street vendors and rough sleepers. The billboards beat out their vibrant and competing messaging.
The subways are piping hot and the trains are frigid cold. Extremes are nothing to this city. But the Big Apple is big enough to accomodate it all. Big buildings, big billboards, big diners, big traffic, big. . . It’s so big that only doing it ‘my way’ gets any attention or personal satisfaction. It’s diverse, unequal, unliveable, intoxicating, enthralling, inspirational and dystopian.
NYC reflects the crisis in capitalism and in democracy. For the Democratic Party it’s a crisis for its future.
New York City for now is a bulwark to the MAGA tribe and what that stands for. The disaffected and angry are at the border determined to turn a Blue city Red.
The nostalgia for NYC is ephemeral and is nurtured on and off Broadway and in the music played in the bars and clubs that litter the city.
As a young clarinetist played out the soulful and enigmatic Rhapsody in Blue in Washington Square others are absorbed in a cacophony of activities being played out across the square unhindered by the other.
A metaphor for the City of New York.
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