Weight Bearing Elements

The city stands on its trees. In early spring when the stick straight bareness begins to pubesce and bulb the buildings lose their winter prominence.  The bricks still stack all the way up to the sky, but their middles are missing, replaced by freshly minted leaves.  Brown grey branches end in elegant pink and white tips. Old bikes cannibalized down to their naughty bits lay chained to iron skirted guards, like the last reminders of winter's inhuman appetite.  The skeletons of conquistadors lay wrapped in strangling vines, speared by tall grass a mere mile shy of the fountain of youth. 

How many people can pass the same tree and have different thoughts? Shel Silverstein aside, what are the trees of New York?  The New Jersey wetlands do more to scrub the air in New York City than all of Bloomberg's million trees ever will.  The trees are under control.  Frederick Law Olmsted planted Central Park with the idea of a romantic garden in mind.  The trees were planted purposefully askance.  The grid gone spaghetti soft.

 

The trees break the sidewalk. The trees count your steps. Your stride fits between trees. The trees seldom show ill-use, outside of the occasional restaurant permanently celebrating Christmas with a wending choke of white lights plugged in year-round or sycamore trunk bearing a purple graffitied initial. 

The trees give your dog directions.  The trees hold scarves, hats and pilates balls. They get shaggy with blossoms, perfume bloated to over-ripeness.  They mark the seasons and track the sun.  They bend around corners and flick you the bird.  They hold onto rain showers and continue to drip for hours after.   

Treehuggers and treefuckers (and bear fuckers) beware: New York City's trees bear the weight of the whole hag-ridden Western world.  

Panting Lines

There is a dog on every corner of the city.  Go out the front door and look.  One dog at least.  Rottweilers, Pitbulls, and Dobermen, alternating with Golden Retrievers, Yellow and Black Labs, Russian Wolfhounds, Greyhounds, Weimerauners, Burmese Mountain Dogs, Alsatians, Whippets, Scotties, St. Bernards, and Great Danes.  Bulldogs in rugby sweaters wearing derbies surrounded by defective pugs, long-haired schnauzers humping Pomeranians humping miniature pinschers.  A thousand poodles, spaniels, maltese, and terriers vanishing into chihuahua.       

They are there by dint of populist aggregate, by misplaced urges (parental or partner), by snowballing conformist compulsions.  They are there by desire-- people have chosen to bring dogs to the city at double or triple the human population  (or to match a quarter the purported rat population).  There is a brief period in the morning where central park belongs to dogs.  They are allowed off-leash between 6 and 9 on weekdays and humanity is proven secondary to caninity.  But now by dint of populist aggregate you can walk to your corner and grapple with a stranger's dog.  You can walk up to your corner dog, wrestle it to the ground and rub its belly until the legs kick with instinct.  Slake that brief flash of affection that would otherwise be spent hugging the pin oaks that grow from every sidewalk. You will notice that once you are satisfied and walk away feeling somewhat refreshed the dog will walk back to its designated spot: a perfectly painted outline of the dog where he or she will stand, sit or lay for the length of its shift waiting for the next person to walk by.