Freeland’s most famous city—Town Island City—with its skyscrapers and its yellow cabs; its teeming streets of harried pedestrians; its hotdog stands; its homeless war vets begging for change; the smell of burning flesh from those same meat stands; the stairways down to the subway on every street corner; the crush of commuters.
Today, a cobalt blue sky burnishes over Town Island.
The magnificent views of that same sky if one looks up between the buildings; the world famous department store opened in 1902; the constant honking of car horns; the Indian shops; the Chinese shops; the hardy folk on the corner at Barge Street trying to entice passersby to buy counterfeit goods; the infinite number of restaurants from the most basic to haute cuisine; the ever present tourists from out of town and abroad; the constant photographing and filming of the skyscrapers and the street scenes and the famous landmarks by those same tourists; the public parks; the squirrels; the cops; the commuter ferry travelling from one borough to the next, commandeered by visitors as a cheap and cheerful means to view the downtown cityscape and the bay; the street performers—“the jugglers and the clowns”—the street poets, street artists, penniless creative types and buskers; the panhandlers on the subway, shuffling through the carriages spinning sob stories; the occasional musician who gets on board and plays a tune for chump change.
©
Brian Ahern 2021
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