Alternative Reality

When I started writing this blog, back when New York shut down in March, I and indeed everyone else, were dealing with the great unknown. There’s a virus and it may kill us all. My personal stories like this drove home that theory. People I knew were dying. And in the grimness of that reality, I felt two things. The need to find hope, even in the smallest of things like running. And a compelling need to document what we were experiencing for my kids, future generations and historians.

I hate the fact that the issues that have recently beset the Upper West Side, where I live, have been co-opted onto the national stage and used as a prop to propagate that NYC is under siege and in chaos. Sure, we have our issues, who doesn’t? But this narrative was in danger of disrupting the very things we want and need – small local business, restaurants, bars, shops, the very lifeblood of our communities from coming back or getting business.

So I shot this film last week. I wanted to counteract a false narrative – that everything was closed, that there was chaos in these streets, that everyone had left….an impression many friends who had lived here or lived elsewhere were asking me about. Some people were genuinely afraid to come back after reading all the press stories. I’m not suggesting there are zero issues but it’s hardly armageddon. And remember, NYC is not Disneyland either. Meanwhile, wear a mask.

I hope in watching it, you can believe a picture tells a thousand words.

Subscribe to my YouTube channel for more here