THIS IS US
Walking the Way It Was Meant to Be Done
When I first returned to New York City after moving away during the pandemic, I was reminded of the joys of city walking
It was my first time back in New York City in nine months and I was walking from Times Square to my mom’s place in the East Village. I was going fast, knocking down the blocks like dominos, while also taking in all the greatness New York City had to offer me: a lowbrow art gallery advertising truly hideous emoji-centric paintings in their front window, the life-size images of Fox News hosts pasted outside the network’s headquarters, which astonishingly had not been vandalized at all (c’mon, New York City!), pageant girls wearing sashes and posing as a crowd of people took their pictures on Broadway, and an abandoned storefront, graffitied, with a sign promising “COMING FALL 2019… Poki Bowl.”
In September 2020, I moved away from the city where I was born and raised, to Reno, Nevada. You don’t see many people walking on the street here. It’s not that the people of Reno don’t exercise; there are tons of places to hike and mountain bike in the area and multiple bodies of water on which to do sports. There are gyms, public basketball courts, and baseball diamonds. But if you want to get from point A to point B…
