City Desk: As Dreams Are Made On

WE’RE new. We put it in our name. When we stop looking ahead, remove the internal organs and inject formaldehyde; we’ll be dead. And yet a time comes when even a New Yorker realizes that, simply by staying put, in this world and in one spot, he has seen places that have vanished, and known people that no one can ever meet. Everyone is a historian, every life is a city.

Some things are better off gone. In Union Square today, farmers sell rutabagas, dogs run, guys fall off skateboards. They wouldn’t have dreamed of it 30 years ago. The lawn was dirt then, hollow-eyed muttering men offered “smokes,” the only diversions were occasional rallies of the Communist party. The infamy of the park was worldwide; my trainer remembers, from his youth in the islands, rap songs about Union Square and what went down there, all of it exciting, none of it good.

About the Author

Richard Brookhiser

Historian Richard Brookhiser is a senior editor of National Review and a senior fellow at the National Review Institute.

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WE’RE new. We put it in our name. When we stop looking ahead, remove the internal organs and inject formaldehyde; we’ll be dead. And yet a time comes when even a New Yorker realizes that, simply by staying put, in this world and in one spot, he has seen places that have vanished, and known people that no one can ever meet. Everyone is a historian, every life is a city.

Some things are better off gone. In Union Square today, farmers sell rutabagas, dogs run, guys fall off skateboards. They wouldn’t have dreamed of it 30 years ago. The lawn was dirt then, hollow-eyed muttering men offered “smokes,” the only diversions were occasional rallies of the Communist party. The infamy of the park was worldwide; my trainer remembers, from his youth in the islands, rap songs about Union Square and what went down there, all of it exciting, none of it good.