The initial storm brought down 12 inches of snow. It was the first weather-test for newly inaugurated Mayor Mamdani, who passed it if not with impossible flying colors, with aplomb. The challenging part has been afterwards, as sanitation workers have had to balance clearing frozen snow-heaps by roadsides - at times using massive melters - with picking up garbage (all while navigating said snow-heaps).
The snow-heaps have also changed the rhythm of the sidewalks. Instead of the usual arbitrary hurried movement of New Yorkers buried in their phones, we’ve had to filter ourselves through narrow paths cut into the snow at crosswalks, single file. Going at the pace of the slowest. Stepping up onto a pile to let a parent or carer navigate a stroller carrying an agog child, or children, through a gap not wide enough for its wheels. This new dance has made us more aware of each other. You can feel the shift. I really hope, though I doubt, it will last.
The cold didn’t stop thousands turning out for a march from Foley Square to Chinatown against the tactics of Immigration and Customs Enforcement across the country, a sea of woolly hats, steam from warm breath, and placards saying “ICE out”, “NYC heart immigrants” and “Chinga la Migra". The killings in Minnesota of two American citizen protestors by federal agents are just the tip of the iceberg of a system of cruelty and intentional chaos playing out in the country’s homes, streets, prisons and detention centers.
As America approaches its 250th anniversary two opposing visions of this wild, big country are playing out. They will be on display at this Sunday’s Super Bowl, where Bad Bunny’s half-time show will be countered by a parallel “All American Halftime Show” organized by Turning Point USA. A few will experience the Super Bowl live, but the majority will do so digitally, amplified by whatever media bubble they’re in.
In addition to shifting our pedestrian patterns, the snow in NYC has been a reminder that we still live in an ultimately physical world. The snow will melt when the temperature rises, in the meantime we make do. The garbage is cleared when sanitation workers and their truck come down the street, not when a button is clicked or a screen swiped. There’s a simple presence of care in the air. Precious, fragile, but there. Something of it will last because it always has done.
