We spent the holiday and the weekend that followed in the city – we talked about going to Hilton Head to see Thomas’ family, to gather on a manufactured beach in a gated community, and we talked, later, about buying last minute tickets to Paris or London, running away and not even acknowledging Thanksgiving. But in the end we did my actual favorite thing, which is staying in the city over a major holiday weekend. Staying here over Thanksgiving or Christmas is the closest you will ever get to seeing a private New York, a New York as a small town, the bare, dead, and wonderful skeleton that remains when scrubbed of both transplants and tourists, when divested of anyone with anywhere else to go. New York on a holiday weekend reminds me of how disaster movies make it seem like the apocalypse will be a gigantic snow day – on Thanksgiving weekend all of us who have stayed in New York are Will Smith and his German Shepherd wandering around the empty, abandoned city, wide-eyed scavengers with the place to themselves. We are the people who have lived beyond the plague or the nuclear winter, eating at the best restaurants with no wait for a reservation, walking slowly down emptied out streets, taking the time to gaze up at whatever buildings we want.
Sunday
Sunday
Sunday
We spent the holiday and the weekend that followed in the city – we talked about going to Hilton Head to see Thomas’ family, to gather on a manufactured beach in a gated community, and we talked, later, about buying last minute tickets to Paris or London, running away and not even acknowledging Thanksgiving. But in the end we did my actual favorite thing, which is staying in the city over a major holiday weekend. Staying here over Thanksgiving or Christmas is the closest you will ever get to seeing a private New York, a New York as a small town, the bare, dead, and wonderful skeleton that remains when scrubbed of both transplants and tourists, when divested of anyone with anywhere else to go. New York on a holiday weekend reminds me of how disaster movies make it seem like the apocalypse will be a gigantic snow day – on Thanksgiving weekend all of us who have stayed in New York are Will Smith and his German Shepherd wandering around the empty, abandoned city, wide-eyed scavengers with the place to themselves. We are the people who have lived beyond the plague or the nuclear winter, eating at the best restaurants with no wait for a reservation, walking slowly down emptied out streets, taking the time to gaze up at whatever buildings we want.