The leaves are all fired up in Prospect Park. Get outside this weekend and breathe in the summery, fall air. Photo: @craig_p_connolly It has been a long, lasagna-filled week for me. How about you? What did you stress eat while refreshing your NYT app and then double-checking what CNN and Fox were saying? (And did anyone else notice the Fox meters stopped working once they began tilting in Biden’s favor?) Going into this election, …
We could all use some distractions here
I don’t even know what to say anymore. It’s been two weeks since I last checked in via this column, and in the space of that time the news cycle has been so relentless and turbulent that it would take some superhuman capacity to process it all. In this episode, we find our sentient orange fever dream and his unmerry band of grifter sycophants in a state of disarray because, after months of actively trying to contract and spread Covid-19, the inevitable has happened and he’s taken it as an opportunity to spread lies and hatred with renewed maniacal energy. The question of whether we can collectively make it until November 3—to say nothing of what …
The site of ground zero, twice
A nighttime street yoga session in Astoria this week was a reminder that nothing can break this city. Photo: Kate Hooker Nineteen years ago today I was just a kid entering my second year of grad school at NYU. I’d returned from a summer internship in India that involved fieldwork in Gujarat, which had recently been ravaged by a deadly earthquake, and I remember feeling grateful to be able to come home to a place where things like that didn’t happen, where the concept of…
Soaking in the final days of summer
Photo: @viamaria_nyc Happy almost-Labor-Day-Weekend, amigos, and here’s hoping you really get a chance to really marinate in the sunny, lazy, final days of summer’s glory before we get rudely pitched forward into a fall that is both unmapped and extremely high-stakes. At the same time that the city moves into Phase 4, with museums and gyms opening at reduced capacity, there are other signs that we are light years from resuming life as we knew it before the all-encompassing smackdown of 2020 swooped in for the kill. My office announced that we won’t be returning until July 2021 at the earliest, which has been a tough pill for…
The test of a New Yorker’s true mettle: Mid-August
Brooklyn Bridge Park has begun socially distanced events this month, from sunrise yoga to kayaking. Photo: Brooklyn Bridge Park And with the blink of an eye, we find ourselves in mid-August, the (in my opinion, anyway) most arduous test of a New Yorker’s true mettle. Year after year, I spend a few weeks in a hazy, sweaty, expletive-laden delirium until I ultimately cave and head north to visit family, and the pandemic has not changed a thing in that regard, as I’m currently writing this from a zero-gravity chair (Have you guys tried these things? They…
An almost normal summer weekend
A Carroll Gardens mural reminding us to spread love. Photo: Kate Hooker Hello BB and welcome to July! Sure, why the hell not? Seems totally normal that more than half of this berserk 2020 experiment is behind us already, right? If it’s otherwise difficult to wrap my head around this incomprehensible passage of time, the amount and caliber of the sustained fireworks activity happening in my hood on Saturday at least made it impossible to ignore that we have very much made it to the Fourth of July. The news of the infection spikes happening elsewhere in the country is obviously discouraging and scary, but I’m so relieved that my beloved New Yorkers are (so far, and for the most part) still being cautious and respectful …
The one constant of this wild time
We’re all craving connection now, including us, so drop a line to let us know what beautiful things are catching your eye these days. Photo: Kate Hooker Well, ladies and gents, we are—incredibly—heading into week TEN of lockdown, and although things feel a tad less terrifying than they did at the onset of this thing, COVID’s frenetic emotional roller coaster continues apace. At this point, the lack of definitive answers to absolutely any of the millions of niggling questions that run through my mind on an endless loop every day feels like the ultimate crazymaker. What do these staggering unemployment numbers actually mean (other than just, obviously, “bad news”)? Are we all in denial about …
Finding new Friday night routines during COVID
What oddly comforting habits have you picked up in quarantine? Photo: Kate Hooker It’s Friday, everybody! Around these parts, during this particular time in human history, this means pizza night, which involves my sister and I driving to the next town over for curbside pickup of a couple of pies and a growler at the same spot every week. It’s certainly not the best pizza I’ve ever had in my life, nor what would be considered an exciting…