May 14, 2023:
Pronto app for the trolley. Blocks on Broadway, lunch in Old Town.
Difference within sameness. Roads where they were, but canyons stuffed with three or four story condos. During my exile they put three million immigrants into the canyons. Downtown is largely but incompletely gentrified, where the sleazy aura of Times Square Lite is no longer.
There are numerous homeless camps alongside the River, at the backs of malls and warehouses and light industry invisible from the streets. There was commotion on the trolley by the mentally disturbed. The weather is lovely, the light beautiful. It's home, but it's an alternate universe version of home. It looks like home — but it's not home.