New York City in Autumn
I kind of avoid NYC during the summer months. I mean, Long Island, especially central Suffolk where I live, sucks because the people are the kind who guzzle Ivermectin-flavored Slurpees, but honestly Long Island summers are pretty freaking awesome. There's really great live music just about everywhere, there's the Hamptons, Montauk, Fire Island, Freeport, the beaches...you could do a lot worse.
I consider walking around on steaming-hot concrete with buildings blocking any breeze to be doing worse.
But autumn in NYC? That too is hard to beat.
So this weekend I made my way into the big ci-u-dad as my own Dad used to call it, and went to the The Feast of San Gennaro in Little Italy. Or, as we call it, just "Gennaro".
There's really nothing like it. Not that I've ever been to anyway. I love that it began in the early 20th century as basically a block party. That's so Italian. I am half Italian, I have an Italian mom and Irish dad. So walking down Mulberry street during the feast, I do feel like I can sense my people from over the past century. I know I had Italian relatives who were basically communists, or accused communists anyway. And my very Italian grandmother always said "vote Republican if you want to starve."
Yet somehow this wonderful tribe had kids and grandkids who moved to fucking Long Island and are all Trumpsters. Go figure, right?
But walking down Mulberry street I can almost hear them reverberating through time. Snippets I've heard about them. My grandma doing piece work during the Great Depression. My grandfather owning a small real estate company. The commie uncles having clandestine meetings. They all must have visited Mulberry Street, and some probably lived there, back in the day.
My people, and my grandmother is the only one I knew well. But on Mulberry Street, during the feast, I can feel them all.
Anyway, I absolutely love the carnival of it all, but I don't eat street food. Well, except for cannoli. Of course! Cannoli is the exception to all rules.
So I dipped into this restaurant
Which had such a pretty garden in the back and enjoyed some of the best risotto I've ever had.
I'll spend a lot of time in the city over the next few months, and then once Christmas ends, I basically go into hibernation. Waiting and waiting for spring.
Except maybe I'm tired of sitting out my winter months, letting precious months of time I'll never get back slip away. If I was an idiot like most white Long Islanders, I'd be looking into Florida. Snowbirds they call them. But I wouldn't be caught dead in Florida. Well, maybe dead. I mean, my plane would have to crash there while I was flying over it to someplace else. But other than that, no.
So I think it's time to look into some alternate plans for January/February. The worse months of the year. The darkest, drabbest, most dead months of the year. It's in January and February that I can most clearly see my grave.
Of course, I'm not wealthy so I can't take off for both of those miserable months, but I can find something to do during one or both of them to break it up a bit. But in the meantime New York City it is!
Now, if any FOX morons are reading this, I know you've been told NYC is like Taliban-controlled Afghanistan, or, I don't know, the O.K. Corral. That fucking fraud, J.D. Vance goes around tweeting that NYC is like the Walking Dead television series. So you may be surprised that thousands of people attended the feast, and that's in one day. And that you can walk around NYC and not be involved in a shootout, and not get eaten by a zombie.
The reason you are surprised is that you are an idiot. And a lot of normal shit comes as a big surprise to idiots. Idiots walk around in a perpetual state of surprise. Does this sound like you? Then you're an idiot. Please don't come to NYC, no one here wants you. And yes, we have a vaccination mandate and you can't get your stinky ass into a restaurant or bar here without proof of vaccination.
THAT'S WHY OUR HOSPITALS AREN'T OVERFLOWING.
We like it this way. Stay out.
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