I was just in NYC briefly for the weekend. I thought to travel the first weekend in December to get a taste of the city post covid. It’s a city I have loved long before I was really able to know it, like a native. And now I have been traveling back and forth for so long that I know areas of the city and feel comfortable there, not to mention have a need to be there. It feeds a part of me that normally starves here in northern Minnesota.

I go for the Art, theater, museums, food, a level of life most in the center of the United States know nothing about. Even those who in an elevated state think Minneapolis is a mini apple, it is not. There is no other New York, praise God, one per Country should be enough. To expect such higher states from place means the lows must be able to balance it out. Let’s just say the lows in New York have no problem balancing out the ridiculous highs. And now with medicinal weed being legal we can all get a contact high while living the high life.

So I went to do all of those things.

And barely on the ground and all at once, I became an old person screaming what happened to my New York. Who are all of these people and why are they here? I swear it feels like every vacation destination, just a piece of its former self. The crowds are amazing, not a good amazing, prices of airline travel apparently not an issue, price of luxury hotels, not an issue and where to eat…without a reservation-an issue. Use to be a stumble on a place and go in, look for a cool place and go in, walk around a corner and realize that building isn’t even there anymore, that restaurant is closed, that store has moved, the price of everything astronomical, everyone carrying bags. What the actual Hell!

The only thing that makes sense is the scene from the movie Dark City, and we are in the moments of reconfiguring our world, shaking up of what was and the movement of the earth as it moves into what it will be. We are actually watching a profound change in our world, it’s not going to be our old world, but as always, most are so self absorbed to not notice and others so greed driven not to care.

What hurts the most is the demise of so much of what was, the Barnes and Nobles near Lincoln Center, so many floors so much awesome and the movies and DVDS of so much art, the demise of the Lincoln foreign movie theater, my heart breaks for that basement theater and the yummy lemon cake, the demise of the Plaza as a destination for a look see, best be a guest and worse the Central Park skyline with those bull shit finger towers, just a single building rising above all the rest, destroying the skyline so more rich people can be above the rest, for now….

We humans love to dig up the past to see what was….and we humans love to destroy shit so it can be buried so we can dig it up years and years later to see how cool shit was before we tore it up putting something else in its place. Yes, we must move to the future but greed shut more doors than progress. Even as I left Santas Monica at the end of the pandemic it was the same thing happening. At the time of the riots, I watched my Santa Monica die before my eyes, they walked through the city and destroyed it as they walked. It has been resuscitated into a much worse tourist trap because apparently tourist don’t like books, so they closed that great Barnes and Nobles on the promenade, tragedy more and more book store closing in areas which call themselves art spots.

If we can’t buy books, can’t see history because the doors are shut to “us” then it is a new world. And unfortunately new doesn’t mean better.

Now let me say this, I saw a 2 plays on Broadway those artists love art and making art, the Barnes and Nobles on 5th Ave still open and still full of people, The MOMA was a disappointment but because they didn’t have my guy on the wall, passed that Art was everywhere, but boooooooooooo the bookstore is a small version of its great self, the restaurants have all suffered no good food was had..food poisoning twice, paid good money for it too

But I will go back and I will expect New York to rise. I will expect this world to rise, the world of ease and less than and lets not think have made themselves known. But those of us who love Art at its highest manifesting self through all avenues from the bagel sandwich at the bodega, to the show on Broadway, to the food trucks on the avenues and the new artist hung at the galleries, Art will go on and we must take every opportunity to be in the face of art.

So yes the World is changing but Art is our guide and Art is always here, God made light with a word, that’s Art people