NY Not So Confidential

Mermaid Parade 2023-  All Photos: © Stan Banos

I'm not claustrophobic, do not experience any fear of flying whatsoever- but any flight lasting over three hours is sheer, absolute fucking torture! I just get the heebie jeebies Big Time from then on- can't sleep, can't concentrate, can't sit still, can in no way be comfortable thereafter, period! And I'm not your average extra large American, nor am I a particularly envious person; keep your conspicuous items of consumption- you can have 'em all. Oh, but those First Class Mother Fucking airline seats- Jesus Fucking Lord!!! Wanna kill and maim everyone of those smug SOB's sprawled about oh so carefree and comfortable as I march back without recourse to my personal chamber of horrors... But I digress.

Mermaid Parade 2023- Coney Island

I must admit to having experienced some measure of culture shock returning to my NYC homeland this year! The Big Apple by all visible means seems to be thriving as ever: streets crowded with tourists and every measure of New Yorker hustling and bustling to make a dollar any which way they can, streets loud and alive with chatter, sirens and noises galore. In short, everything major cities used to look and sound like, so unlike the ghost town I inhabit today- storefronts vacant, downtown streets deserted, the homeless once ignored now the most dominant signs of remaining life. Having invested it's economy and very soul in Big Tech, San Francisco now suffers the consequences of entrusting its future to an entire generation whose allegiance is where they've always found it- right within the immediate vicinity of their laptop, the one true center of their reality. It's said one third (more like two thirds) of office space lies vacant downtown, restaurants and other supportive businesses are also shuttered and you're lucky to see a half dozen pedestrians ambling about on most downtown streets. Downtown San Francsico is nowhere near NYC in terms of acreage, but it once was mobbed nonetheless too...

Brooklyn 2023

East Village, 2023

So... it was good to see a living, thriving city again; although to be honest, it was also sheer madness! NY had become another entity as foreign as it was familiar when I decided to leave twenty some years ago, before I too devolved into some elderly NY street oddity. And although San Francisco is in its utter depths at present, I have no burning desire to permanently return to the land of my birth. I guess that's what's called a conundrum- not knowing where to spend my remaining "Golden Years" when I max out on SS at seventy- assuming I get there in the remaining two plus years... 

Long Island City 2023

Long Island City driveway

Long Island City driveway

Anyway, until that fateful date, we'll just have to keep wondering what will be torn down first and sold for scrap: The Vessel in NY- you can walk into its middle on the ground floor, but every set of stairs leading upward has been securely boarded up; or The Millenium Tower in San Francisco, which is still trying to right itself on the cheap, and getting all the more crooked with every passing day... 

Don't Sit On My Fucking Bike Bitch- Coney Island, 2023

Best graffiti seen in NYC- "Make Art, Get Rich- Ask Me How!"