New York is hot and it smells of sweat and garbage. But that's not the funk that seems to be in the air. The city that was defined by frivolous consumption now seems ill at ease with the very idea of ease itself... sitting awkwardly at pavement cafe tables suddenly very self aware. It's as though everyone here caught a glimpse of just how ridiculous their life had become and suddenly become self-aware... unable to relax back into the mode of 'all is good here in the greatest city in the nation'
It's not the hangover I'd been told to expect, it's a clumsy, awkwardness. As though the whole city is looking for a new definition of what constitutes an acceptable good time. If it's not Carrie and the Girls then it's what? who?
Californian cities get to keep their identities as laid back, creative and hippy
Seattle and Portland get to keep crustiness
The midwest gets to wallow in the decline of the rustbelt
While Miami maintains its sass and Latin spirit
And Boston still has its university
But what of New York - that small island off the coast of America that has lived as the amplified spirit of unconscious consumption? What does New York do now?
It's a question that seems to be being asked in the awkwardness I see all around me...
Answers on a postcard please