new york city is a festering mess when august shows its cards. but the sewage overflows that i walked in this morning, past the throngs of frustrated commuters, gave me wonderful associative memory flashes of the beaches of rio. I smiled as I hopped over the streams, like the ones that feed into the ocean, especially between ipanema and leblon. The stench of feces brought a glimmer to my eye as i recalled the last nights of carnival in Rio, a time of inversion and more often than not, rain.
My friend Jon Tojek would often call Rio a “Third World Toilet”, and we would laugh. I have felt, and now smelled that New York’s plasticine sheen provided by its sheer wealth is a very hollow mask for its status as a third-world city. Today’s sounds and feel reminded me of Recife, of Olinda in the heat, of my favorite places, and I smiled at the failures of the money-machines…
nice post! while i can’t say it made me ‘homesick’ i am glad for your writing on inversion of the so-called 1st and 2nd/3rd world. because it is really true.
this is the post of someone who lives in an air-conditioned apartment! the public 3rd-worldness of NYC in August takes on a different meaning according to the ability of one’s private world & private means to escape it; a hollow mask is still a mask, right?
but, yes, US isn’t “1st world” by many international standards, health care for starters…