performative is an art form

Golden hour in the city. On the right, the Chrysler Building stands as the ultimate 1930s icon of Art Deco ambition and briefly (11 months) the tallest building in the world. On the left, One Vanderbilt absolutely dwarfs it, despite only being the city's fourth tallest skyscraper.

In a city built on a finite sliver of rock, urban development is cutthroat. To leave your mark on the skyline, you almost always have to erase someone else’s. Every new architectural marvel represents a cold calculation: a choice to repurpose space, optimizing it for modern density and hyper-efficiency. In the process, we trade the intricate, weathered textures of the past for the sleek, predictable uniformity of high-yield glass. And much smaller apartments.

Every generation believes its towers are permanent, but New York has a funny way of checking that ego. The moment you build the newest monument to human ambition, someone else is already drafting a blueprint to block it from sight. Your panoramic sunset is always temporary, destined to be obscured by something slightly taller, slightly newer, and slightly more efficient.

New York is not a museum; it is a living, breathing ecosystem of collective spatial consumption. We don’t own the skyline; we are just its temporary custodians borrowing the view. Our job right now is simply to hold this space and pass the lease down to the next generation. They will inevitably build over our legacy, alter the view again, and find themselves staring out at a completely different sunset.

More than just tracks, trains, and the occasional administrative existential dread, the NYC subway is a singular marvel of civic infrastructure in the United States. While it is easy to focus on the systemic delays and the brutally sticky subterranean microclimate of an August platform, these grievances overshadow a deeper sociological reality: the subway is New York’s ultimate democratic space.

In a metropolis defined by stark socioeconomic stratification, the MTA enforces a radical kind of egalitarianism. Within a single train car, traditional social barriers dissolve by design. A hedge fund manager, a Broadway performer, a high school student, and a line cook are all afforded the exact same, ergonomically unforgiving plastic seating.

On the surface, gridlock democratizes frustration: stalling luxury vehicles and beat-up sedans with beautiful and well-deserved impartiality. Below ground, however, the subway democratizes velocity. For a single flat fare, it grants everyone equal access to the vast geography of the city. Just don't try to get from Brooklyn to Queens in a hurry. Expansion lines when, Mr Mayor?

Unlike the atomized, isolated experience of suburban car culture (boooo) which insulates people within private, hyper-individualized, gas guzzling bubbles, the subway demands a collective consciousness. It functions as a dense microcosm of humanity that forces close physical proximity and mutual civic acknowledgment. Unapologetic, raw, and entirely unique, the subway remains the literal and metaphorical arteries of New York, carrying its highly oxygenated, highly caffeinated blood exactly where it needs to go.

BING BING. GO KNICKS

New York is always changing, and it always will for better or for worse. That's part of the deal. Even if you own the building, you're really just holding it for the next person, the next family, or the next generation. Nothing here stays exactly the same for long.

But every now and then, you come across a holdout. A small park, an old building, a corner shop, a row of trees that somehow escaped the cycles of demolition and reinvention. And they are magnificent. Stubborn? Maybe. But that's part of what makes them special. They remind you that not everything in New York has to give way. At least not yet.

Places like Stuyvesant Park feel that way. Surrounded by a city that is constantly rewriting itself, the park remains a quiet constant. Generations of New Yorkers have passed through it, each leaving little hints of their presence that aren't powerful enough to overtake it. It stands not in opposition to change, but alongside it. A reminder that a city needs continuity just as much as it needs growth.

photo credit to some guy working for the tax department in the 40's

And me.

Cities change constantly, and towns will eventually grow beyond recognition, but rolling hills tend to endure. Their fertile soil has sustained civilizations through both their rise and their fall, binding generations inextricably to it. Greeks, Carthaginians, Romans, Byzantines, Arabs, Normans, Spaniards, and Italians all saw and tilled the same hills.

It is remarkable to consider how many peoples have depended upon these hills and how steadfastly they have stood through the centuries. Empires have come and gone, new architecture was introduced, borders have shifted, and cultures have transformed, but the hills remain as a quiet constant in the story of Sicily