It’s 3:30 pm, April 7, 2026, less than five hours before an entire civilization may be eliminated, according to the peeling Orange in Charge. It’s also Taco Tuesday, so we shall see.
Last night, Monday night, I had dinner with my brother Paul at Via Carota. 9:30 pm. The place was eerily empty. I think Monday night is the one night when the entirety of the West Village hits the gym and then GrubHubs chicken salads, watches Reality tv, pops Xanax and gets to bed by 10:30 pm. Lucky us.
Paul and I started the night in his apartment on Charles Street with a bottle of over-achieving red, lamenting the end of America as we knew it, fascinated by the rapidity at which The Experiment is blowing up, in real time, in less than fifteen months.
We’re 80’s kids, drunk on Reagan Rah-Rah, St. Elmo’s Fire and Breakfast Club, the Psychedelic Furs and Oingo Boingo, John Hughes, kegs in backyards, Esprit and United Colors of Benetton, Drakkar Noir and Polo Ralph Lauren. No cell phones.
Unlike our oldest brother who had the fear of the Vietnam draft tainting his senior year, we had “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down that wall!”
We had total faith in a linear, upward trajectory that we’d pick up where our “greatest generation” parents left off — building wealth and spreading decency and democracy.
Certainly not traversing Europe in search for the ideal place to live out our days, pretending to be Canadians and God Forbid not Americans.
Despite this, as we walked the few blocks to Via Carota, Paul said, “I still love New York City.”
Paul has traversed the world so his perspective is worth something. He’s also a genius who went to Georgetown and Harvard graduate school, runs a national non-profit and reads five books at once at all times, typically while listening to opera.
Besides the West Village, he has homes in the Hudson Valley, Provincetown and in a tiny village in the Lake Region north of Milan. This makes him sound like he’s pilfering funds from his non-profit, until you visit his homes and realize they are all held together by shoe strings, bubble gum and paper clips. The more decrepit the better is his unstated but clearly illustrated motto. His West Village apartment is about 285 square feet, ground floor, with a fraternity-style lofted bed and his quite brilliant Howard Finsteresque art forays adorning the walls.
Hearing him say he still loves New York City was akin to getting Lasik surgery in the blink of a cataracted eye. Suddenly, I could see clearly again, for a few minutes, at least, how special this place is. It’s one of the last bastions of hope in an America that is otherwise turning into one big prison complex-meets-The Villages-meets-Roosevelt Field Shopping Mall.
New York City is the strongest ballast we have left against the forces of the whitening and Invisaligning of America, still the melting pot versus the pot calling blacks criminals, still the Carbone versus The Cheesecake Factory, the hot messes strutting drunk down Prince Street versus the ghoulish Mar-a-Lago faces lining the driveways and fairways of Palm Beach, unsanitary subways filled with kids living lives out loud versus insane policies of censorship, spiritual awakening in the form of a conversation with a Haitian Uber driver versus indoctrination into a neo-Christian Evangelicalism that is beyond evil in its Pete Hegseth and Karoline Leavitt cloak and swagger.
We need New York City more than ever, with all its nervous-system taxing smells, messiness, noise, creativity, and boisterous blasphemy.
There was no other city that could birth The Ramones.
There was no other city that could birth The Strokes.
There was no other city that could birth Geese, whose lead singer and songwriter, 24-year-old Cameron Winter, is a Brooklyn born and bred Jew whose voice and words sound haunted, displaced, weary, wise, wounded, medicated, taped up and ready to face yet another battle, aka like a true New Yorker.
We need Bushwick, where there is always a battle raging about who can dress the ugliest. We need the West Village to let every country club parent in the rest of America spread the word that despite what Fox News may project, their influencer daughters are “living their best lives” and are very safe, if not taxing daddy’s credit cards.
We need the Beauty Bar on 14th Street to get our nails done while we pound whiskey sours and spy hairy nipples peeking out of fishnet tank tops gyrating to Social Distortion.
We need every Albanian doorman to sprinkle us with their tough love, clipped and angry accents when we try to bring our bicycles into the buildings they safeguard like virgin daughters.
We are New York, the counterweight on one end of the see-saw, opposing the force of everything that is grotesque and fat-assed and hellbent on destroying America.
Paul and I split meatballs, fava beans, mushrooms and a sublime, lemony, parmesan salad that had us weeping inner tears of joy.
We parted ways. He likely dropped into Marie’s Crisis, while I hopped on one of those pedal-assist, Mary Poppins Citi Bikes and flew back to Gramercy.
For a brief reprieve, I nearly forgot civilization is going to end, but it’s going to end, alright. I’m not sure in Iran, but certainly here in ‘Merika. But to borrow Churchill, ‘Keep Hysterical New York, Keep Fucking Being the Amazing City You Are, and Carry On, Loud and Messy.’
