it’s interesting to think that i went a good 15 months between subway trips… but that’ll happen with a “worldwide health crisis” and such. lockdowns and such.
and as pleasant as the alone time was, it did keep me from things i love. like clicking crowds.
but as far as the subway, didn’t have a reason, really. i nerd on a computer for a living, and both places i’ve worked for during all this *motions randomly* thing have pretty international workforces. so in short, they sure as hell weren’t demanding that i brave the MTA on a daily basis.
(and like i always say, why would you want to be around me on a daily basis as it is?)
even in the best of times, you’d be hard pressed to find me outside of a five-block radius; i’m one of those new yorkers. my groceries are here, my laundromat’s here, my favorite restaurants are here. i run my fat arse up and down monroe for a few miles every few days, so technically my “gym” is here.
i already only made special trips outside of the bedstuy-crown heights corridor, so i can’t say lockdown changed that much for me. really, just the people were missing.
then from late spring of 2021, cue the slightly-all-too-soon victory the american public has declared over this thing. and the announcement that the vaccinated can be around each other. unmasked.
…holy shit.
a random, lazy july 4th weekend; a random text from a friend that there’s a block party around me. that’s where these pics come from.
and maybe this is a cliche, but you’d be hard pressed to know that we were technically still in the middle of this crisis (for the most part). i don’t know if that was relief or what. it was just a lot of people seemingly happy to be a little less cautious.
so i started to snap. hadn’t had a reason to in such a long time. and i still liked what i got so… here it is. it felt really damn good to do this thing i love and still feel like i wasn’t too terrible at it. i take pics of a lot of things, but crowds… crowding is easily one of my favorite.
oh, the subway? yeah, what few times i even left my neighborhood during the worst of it – the fall and winter of 2020 – were either errands or to visit the sister in lower manhattan. all taxiable.
in another sign of #natureishealing, i took another subway way back in the good ol’ days of june 2021 to visit the office and hang out with a co-worker. that was the two times: leaving one office in march of 2020 because of the “stay at home order”, and visiting another in june of this year.
didn’t feel weird or crazy or anything; even in the face mask. riding the subway to work was like riding a bike, to use even more cliches. i guess i can apply that to a few things.