Thursday, March 10, 2022

I'm Here to Remind You

I hear many people are returning to work in office buildings across the city after a full two years of working at home. Welcome back!  I hear the Pandemic is almost over, and some of you are forced back into your offices.  Soon, there will be no good excuse not to hang with all your friends and it's almost spring.  You might head out to your favorite watering hole.  Welp, guess what?  It might be closed.  

I'm here to remind you of the mess you made when you went away.  Okay, it is with deep sadness that I feel Alanis Morrisette lyrics need quoted.  But while you were comfortably working from home for two years, in your fuzzy pants, we lost quite a few thousand local mom and pop restaurants, carts, small businesses, bars, bike stores, record stores, hair salons. Yeah surprise, surprise, they couldn't survive without you and now they're gone, replaced by banks or Starbucks, or simply boarded up like this is small town Main Street USA instead of the mighty New York City!  

Another thing that's changed?  People are murdering folks right and left in the subways and shooting guns on the streets.  Gangs of teens are beating up old people.   It's been a regular wild west out here while you were gone.  Street lights are more of a suggestion now that the cops had their balls cut off.  A regular sound now at the retail store that I work is the door alarm being tricked as people casually leave with full bags of merchandise knowing full well they will not be convicted, or even stopped.   

The homeless people aren't safe from attacks but they are also the attackers themselves.  In short, you don't know who is going to pop off these days, so it's best to keep the disposition of the fleeing victim in a zombie movie.  You might want to refrain from any Karen outbursts, lest you be the next Eyewitness Breaking News Alert.  Machetes have been used against harmless folks minding their own business. Good people are running on short fuses too and everyone seems to have lost the manners their momma's taught them.  

In short, it's a little weird out here, prepare yourself.  The city has a slight post-apocalyptic feel.  Oh yeah, and the on-line reality you've lead yourself to believe was the real world for all these months?  Most of that shite couldn't be farther from the truth.  What you will find though, unfortunately is even more ominous.  Voids, lots of emptiness where cool vibes, energy, people and things used to exist.  You can't pinpoint it, but whatever it was, is gone.  

This isn't to say we can't gain it back or make something new and better.  I'm all for that.  The city is not completely lifeless. I'm just alerting you to truths that those of us who have been in it, already acknowledge as the new world. 

Nice to have you back, you look good.  Now get out there and spend some money! 

Doing my part, eating slices from the local pizzeria. 

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