Midtown Manhattan

Midtown Manhattan, they say, is a place for people watching. Some would claim that Times Square is the crossroads of the world. No matter where you might be from, they would argue, you would meet someone you already know there (provided, of course, that you remain there long enough). It’s intriguing to speculate just who that someone might turn out to be. I myself have seen a celebrity or two there occasionally (which I would expect; why, with the theater district in such close proximity). Or, one is also likely to see the Naked Cowboy, posing along the center isle with his guitar and some smiling foreign female tourist. (Does that guy ever sleep?)

In any case, even if you’re a hermit - and live in a cave in Afghanistan, for example - you’d have to admit that Times Square (like Las Vegas) never shuts down; that there are always loads of people milling around, many so star-struck as to forget even to lift their cameras for the appeasement of the folks left back at home.

Suppose, for a moment, that there were no people; only you; say, a thousand years from now. This, of course, would be some time after the Great War in which they were said to have used the latest technology in weaponry - you know, those bombs that destroy only people, not buildings. All carbon based beings would long have evaporated into the now pristine biosphere. The sun would be shining. And you’d be looking up.

No longer having to be concerned with lights turning red, yellow and green; no longer having to adjust your pace to conform to the pack’s; no longer having to worry about protecting your back pocket, you’d be free to look around and imagine how it must have been. The clues would be all around you – and especially above street level.

You’d come to appreciate all the different types of architecture; the roof gardens, now threatening to take over what’s left of the city; the ads and promotions. It’s quite likely, that the solar-powered ticker would still be running, proclaiming the end of the world.

Midtown Manhattan remains a great place for people who love to watch people watching them. Looking up today would likely brand you as a tourist, or as one with his head in the clouds. Street-level action is what counts: all the fancy shops along side the sleazy bars and strip joints; the seditious shows in theaters; humanity aimlessly slouching toward some ambiguous abyss.

Looking up, then, will be for those who might come a thousand years later to try and figure out what may have happened; why this post-modern Machu Picchu no longer has anyone living in it; why the wells all are full and the buckets empty.

Peter Koelliker; pkoelliker8@yahoo.com