There are rare moments when New York City comes together as a community. It’s a beautiful thing. All too often the inspiration or impetus is a negative one. There was that feeling of community, the majority of the 6 million of us occupying the same head space, after the 2016 election. It’s easy to unite over the currently constant “FUCK TRUMP” and “FUCK THE MTA“. In times of crisis, New Yorker are there for each other in a way an outsider might never guess. I saw this on a intimate scale when I almost fainted on the subway on on a large scale the days following Hurricane Sandy.
Today the New York community showed up over something intrinsically essential, entirely a-political, primal and beautiful. Awesome in its truly awe-inspiring definition. We set aside our BUSY, BUSY, FUCK OFF, I’M BUSY attitudes and gathered in droves to stare up at the sky for
The Solar Eclipse 2017
Locals don’t look up in NYC! Staring up at skyscrapers is usually a sure-fire sign of a tourist! Not today! Today we put our head in the clouds right along with the visitors admiring our cityscape.
We set aside our infamous fashion snobbery and put flimsy paper glasses on our faces. “Beauty is pain” certainly has its place on our faces and bikini lines, but not so our eyes. Business men in thousand dollar suits stared into homemade camera obscuras made out of FedEx packages and cereal boxes.
Midtown Manhattan at 2:44PM on a Monday is the peak of workday productivity. Yet swarms of office workers abandoned their desks and spilled out on to Park Avenue to catch the optimal view of the 71% visible eclipse.
New York City Solar Eclipse
These are jaded New Yorkers! Coming together over a celestial body!
I walked out into the crowd without a pair of viewing glasses. Don’t worry! I had no intension of looking directly into the sun! I just knew a fellow member of my New York community would lend me a pair. It was true, on the streets of New York City during a solar eclipse, people are all too happy to let others borrow their belongings! To move aside to offer a better view or a photo op! Who would ever guess?
Did the moon cast this spell on us rude New Yorkers? Awe of a natural phenomenon eclipsing our typically shitty attitudes?
Today I witnessed my very first solar eclipse! It’s not something I’ll forget. Even though I chose not to photograph it – best left in the moment I decided. I’ll leave to photographs to NASA and the like.
The moon and the sun were beautiful today. So was the concrete jungle they shone down on . Eclipses are rare. Fortunately the magical feeling of New York community is less rare, but no astronomer can predict when or why it will happen again.
I’m kinda bummed I opted to watch from my office instead of experiencing this because this is totally a NYC moment that I’d love. With everything going on in the world and all the BS, seeing people come together to enjoy something pretty cool is an awesome thing. We need more of that, less of the other crap 🙂
I’m often ambivalent about social media, but I was thrilled to check in and see everyone’s posts yesterday! I think Eclipse Mania was just the distraction we all needed 🙂
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