TWO WORDS, THOUSANDS CHEER

My wife brushes up on her primatology
skills.

The weather this past Saturday was more appropriate to late September rather than early November, so any complaints about climate change were firmly muted. My wife and I had gone for a bike ride in the morning to examine an  art installation currently on display in the Bella Abzug Park section of Hudson Yards on West 36th Street. 

Roughly 23 feet long, it's the world's largest bronze gorilla, although just how many others there are, I dunno. But even if there's only one, New York's got the biggest!

Even the Upper East Side got into the act,
despite the area being avoided by
rioters since the Civil War days.

We continued our ride down to Aurhaus, a furniture store in the Meatpacking district, in order to check out a new side table for the bedroom. It proved to be a fruitless journey, Aurhaus having been boarded up and shuttered out of fear of the post-election riots that never happened.

As we looked around the area, we noticed, then ignored, then noticed again the increasingly loud sounds of celebration around us. By the third or fourth round, my wife asked, "What are they cheering about?"

Then it hit me. "Maybe it's the election." Before I had a chance to go online, a giddy younger woman walking toward us said, "Biden won!"  This being New York, she just assumed we, too,would be happy.

Biden won. The effects of a grim year were immediately wiped away thanks to those two words. Cheers, each louder than the one before it, went up throughout the area, accompanied by the honking of horns of passing cars, and people literally dancing in the streets. The New Year's celebration in Times Square might be cancelled this year, but it didn't stop New Yorkers from whooping it up seven weeks early, social distancing be damned.

Whether at our al fresco lunch at Chelsea Market or riding north along the West Side Highway toward home, it was the same. Runners, bikers, drivers erupting in the kind of celebration the city had been aching for all year. The cheers that went up for hospital workers over the spring each evening at 7:00 were a collective Thank you! What was happening now was a massive Thank God!

He was just asking for it.

Crossing West 72nd Street, we were brought to a halt at the Broadway intersection. An impromptu party had broken out, not so much blocking traffic but welcoming the drivers to join in on the fun. People climbed light poles, hung out on fire escapes, and, yes, popped open bottles of Champagne (the cheap stuff, no doubt). Truck drivers, cabbies and postal workers honking their horns weren't doing it out of impatience, as they usually do, but joy. 

 

No other city comes together in sorrow or jubilation like New York, and it doesn't necessarily take a terrorist attack or an election to do so. I was reminded of an incident some years ago. I was exiting Central Park at Columbus Square. A Caribbean band was providing the soundtrack to a pleasant summer's day while people danced nearby. 

A woman and her child, clearly tourists, were walking by. The boy asked, with some confusion, "Why are they celebrating?" His wise mother replied, "This is New York. They celebrate everything."

On Saturday, New Yorkers were celebrating something. I didn't want to remind them that while Trump had lost, Trumpism wasn't going anywhere. If the Republicans remained in control of the Senate, they would block every meaningful reform the new president had in mind. And all the while, someone in the background was watching and learning: Trump didn't do it right. Too crass, too ugly. A would-be dictator needs a friendly face, a warm smile. Just wait until 2024. These people won't know what hit them.

No, I kept it to myself. We earned a little sunshine, dancing, and laughter if only for an afternoon. Meanwhile, the big bronze gorilla in the room isn't going anywhere for now.

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