“Notice anything different since your last visit?” asked a friend of mine—himself a former New Yorker now living in the wasteland of discarded values that is the Sunshine State of emergency known as Florida. We were chatting on the phone some time after my arrival in the estival Big Apple, a stew seasoned with the smoke of Canadian wildfires.
I had not been in town for about eight months, so I was bound to spot some change beyond the odd coin left in my wallet. My bank account was taking a sustained beating while I was trying to enjoy a few drinks with friends at my favorite watering holes. But that was to be expected.
Apart from air pollution, price hikes and the relentless bulldozing of neighborhood community, continuity and character wrought by the wrecking of the architecture for a glimpse of which we will soon have to refer to painting by Edward Hopper—nothing new there, either—what struck me most was an outbreak different from but related to the pandemic that, in the form of COVID-19 testing tents on Manhattan street corners, still dominated the sidewalks in the autumn of 2022. At one of them, I had tested positive for the first time.
Continue reading “Flowering Inferno: Weather Extremes, Ersatz Aesthetics, and the Sprouting of Plastic Plants in New York City’s Outdoor Spaces”
Harry Heuser 