The writers and editors at the country's premiere newspaper would like you to appreciate the "beauty" of blobs of uneven concrete outside run-down convenience stores.
Stare at that headline:
😂
Wilson and I visited bodegas and other small businesses on the Lower East Side one morning and found no owner or employee who claimed to know when or how the ramps arrived, as if they had been there forever, like Manhattan schist.
'Tactical urbanism' is the term of art.
It describes a whole universe of homegrown, under-the-radar architecture contrived to fix everyday problems in a city, like entering a grocery store whose entrance sits a step above the sidewalk. For shopkeepers, installing the ramp is a boon for business. For those hand truck deliveries or customers in wheelchairs, it can be a godsend.
People got paid to write this.
At The New York Times.
Some reactions:
More from the NYT:
They can also remind you of wallflowers at a prom: ungainly but hopeful. Those personalizing flourishes of color and scoring I mentioned earlier are akin to messages in bottles tossed in the sea that wash up on the shores of Bushwick Avenue and Delancey Street.
Journalists: Obsessed with writing flowery prose for clumps of gross-looking concrete blobs.
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