When the street right outside the New York Magazine office split open like a pair of cheap trousers yesterday and brown nasty water started gushing out, our first thought was: end times. Better get the inflatable dinghy out of storage and head for the meet-up site. Shit, where did we leave our gold? Later, when we saw hundreds of municipal employees pull up in a fleet of trucks and assorted vehicles, our thoughts changed to: bureaucratic clusterfuck. More precious tax dollars down the tubes. But this morning, when we saw the work crews applying the final layers of asphalt, the wound all but healed, we marveled: Downturnaround, baby! New York City is not heading back to the seventies without a fight!
