Des's garden (for fly bitches only)

Nyc has definitely always been busy because, well, it's New York City, but there's been a massive inflation in the general capacity of nearly everything since lockdowns lockdowns. A lot of people moved here either during or after the lockdowns, and once lockdowns were lifted a lot of people came here for their dream vacation in the same way a lot of popular vacation destinations were flooded with tourists.

I would say that social media and the rise of tiktok (which is folded into the whole lockdown thing) has honestly been a huge factor as well, because there has been such a groundswell of influencers who are usually the people moving here + who vlog about their lives and make people want to come here either to live or vacation, on top of creating intense amounts of demand at a lot of the more popular locations here. It also feels like the tourism industry here has become very influencer-focused, lots of pop-ups, over the top trendy food items, and super hyped locations that end up not being nearly as fancy as tiktok will lead you to believe because they know people will shell out for vibes and a good vloggable moment.

Besides koreatown, my other personal barometer is the annual Bryant Park holiday market, which I used to attend every year. Since lockdown, it's gone from a decently popular tourist attraction to an essentially undoable task on a weekend (and sometimes even on weekdays) because the tourism crush makes it virtually impossible to move. In the same way that there is no longer a slow season at Disney World, there is also no longer a tourist free season in New York City outside of maybe January through the start of March. I tried to cut through times square the other weekend and it was essentially pedestrian gridlock due to the world cup and peak tourist season. Just masses of virtually motionless people sometimes.

here's mickey, goofy, donald, and chip & dale. yeah they turned mickey & friends into anime boys. they're an idol unit or something. they're technically not anime boy versions of the source characters, they have different names. mickey's guy is "Neo Michel". not michael, michel, like he's french. chip & dale are "Ruska Moncrief" and "Ranka Monk", they have different last names, they're not brothers anymore so that they can be yaoibait instead, anyways this post isn't actually about these guys I'm just setting the stage for the actual humanizations I wanted to show you

They also did monsters inc. And. Well it's obvious from the designs who mike and sully are. but you will also notice. the blonde one on the left. with glasses. monsters inc is kind of famously about just the two guys so they didn't really have a lot of other non-villain characters to take anime boys inspiration from, I guess, so, well,