Only in NY

Write Club Prompt #49

My first thought was of a few Sundays ago when I was riding the subway for the first time in a few months. The train pulls in and I notice the first two cars only have sleeping bums in them. I jokingly thought of them as the sleeper cars.

I’m no stranger to seeing the homeless on the subway or in New York in general. They’ve always been here. What was new was the sheer concentration. Four or five in each of those first subway cars. At least one additional bum on ever train I rode that day. The scale of it all was new. A reminder that something in the world has gone deeply wrong and no one knows how to fix it.

Plenty of people will say, Get out of cities. I don’t think that’s the solution. At least not for the general population. I tell myself the city has recovered from worse. History bears this out. But what does recovery look like at this point? I’m not really sure. Politicians and pundits seem to be more intersted in placing blame. So few people feel connected anymore.

What makes this story so New York is everyone on the train kept calm and just went about their business. No one, myself included, was too disturbed by the sleeping homeless. You just keep your distance, keep an eye out, and keep it moving. That’s the New York way.