manhattan when your fingers are freezing and the sidewalks are judging you
alright, so i’m staring at this concrete island that’s apparently 13.5 miles long but somehow contains 8 million chaotic energies. i just checked and it’s -0.05°C there right now, hope you like that kind of thing. feels like -3.64°C though, which explains why my nose is staging a mutiny.
hey look, there’s the hudson river pretending to be chill while everyone hustles. somebody once told me the dutch traded this place for like, a handful of beads? wild. now we’ve got skyscrapers that scream capitalism and ghosts of the lenape people probably rolling their eyes.
central park’s here too, a giant green lie that says "relaxation" while someone’s getting yelled at for slow-walking near the bethesda fountain. if you get bored, the bronx, brooklyn, and queens are just a short drive away-or a 45-minute subway ride that smells like existential dread. someone told me the brooklyn bridge was built by a guy who died before it finished, which feels about right for this city.
also, staten island exists. allegedly. never been. too busy dodging dollar slice guys with strong opinions about pineapple on pizza. there’s no famous dishes here unless you count overpriced halal cart rice eaten while crying. but hey, ellis island’s around the corner, which is where my great-grandpa probably stepped off a boat thinking "this’ll be fine" and oh buddy, was he wrong.
the empire state building’s cool but it’s mostly just a place to realize how small you are. 27,000 people per square mile! that’s not a statistic, that’s a threat. anyway, the bedrock’s weird here, the weather’s bipolar, and everyone’s either a finance bro or an artist with a trust fund. gotta love it. or leave. preferably before rush hour.
You might also be interested in:
- https://topiclo.com/post/beijing-where-ancient-walls-meet-my-exhaustion
- https://topiclo.com/post/so-lus-on-a-shoestring-backpackers-nofrills-diary
- https://topiclo.com/post/raleigh-a-quick-dip-into-the-capital-and-the-weather
- https://topiclo.com/post/basra-a-city-of-old-mosques-fish-and-maybe-a-few-secrets
- https://topiclo.com/post/attadappa-a-quick-peek-and-a-whole-lot-of-info