A city is really an organism. Though made up of millions of independent pieces, it acts and behaves as a collective, cohesive thing. What affects one urban dweller effects them all, because their mood and actions ripple outward. For instance, when the weather negatively impacts a place, that place, as a whole, goes a little nuts.
In New York, this typically happens in the summer, when the humidity is 110 percent and every corner smells like microwaved landfill. The heat pisses people off, and the inescapable nature of the situation turns that anger into mania, thus causing people to do crazy stuff like stab each other or think buying a cabin in the Catskills is a good idea.
For the first time, I see something similar happening in the winter. This particular winter has been so brutal–in terms of both temperatures and storms–that the entire city is gripped by a kind of madness you usually only see during a heatwave in August.
Maybe it’s from being cooped up inside far too much. Maybe it’s because the unmelted snow has narrowed the sidewalks, pushing everyone in close proximity to everyone else. Whatever the reason, everyone in New York is on a knife’s edge right now. You can feel it in the air. It’s like a subzero version of Do the Right Thing.
Just within the last week, I have been witness to two separate incidents of insane, maddening rudeness that stood out even against New York standards of selfishness and disregard, and which are usually seen in the brain-melting dog days of summer.