Is it just me or do you also see about thousand maps of Italy every time you look down at the pavement in Lower Manhattan? I’m talking about puddle formations, indentations, sedimentations, wear and tear, even fucking tossed 7-Eleven nacho wrappers. They all look like this:
or this:
No, I don’t smoke weed. Not much anymore. I’m at that age where ingesting marijuana is less likely to make me giggle profusely than to send me spiraling down a roller coaster into the depths of existential hell, so again, no, I don’t smoke weed.
And yes, I need a geography lesson, but I see Italy in the pavement of New York … a lot … and other interesting things: penises, Florida (where there a lot of dicks), the Baja Peninsula, guitars, the St. Louis Arch (which is made by the shadows of bike racks), myriad other random countries that Pete Hegseth couldn’t place on a map, and lots of slogans, including “STAND HERE TO
ACTIVATE YOUR SUPERPOWERS!”
I stood there for a beat or two, but there was a jackhammer going off about ten feet away, so I must have missed the activation to borrow a Gen Y term which makes me want to hurl my Kimchi (a Gen Y favorite) all over … Italy.
People spend a lot of time looking up in Manhattan … at beautiful people, psychos, beautiful psychos making loud noises, buildings, activations, cars, bicycles, shop windows, Sarah Jessica Parker, Clare Danes, Alec Baldwin and Karens, but I encourage folk to look down at the treasure trove of design inspirations to be seen after a dog takes a piss, or a construction worker tosses his Slurpee or a handtruck spills its wares.
Little known fact: The Adidas logo was inspired by a visit to New York in 1948 by Adolf Dassler who, after draining ten pints and four whiskeys at the Ear Inn, proceeded to eat three Pimento Cheese and Pork Sandwiches at the Square Diner, after which he vomited on the sidewalk just as a sloth slothed by and stuck his three-finger paw in said vomit.
Perhaps you dear reader too can find your next inspiration on the worn, gummy, fecally-fecund, urine-infested, trampled upon sidewalks of New York City.
Keep calm and your head down, and carry on.
