Nom Internets

And woah.

Every single movie you have ever seen that includes footage of this place does it zero justice.

I’m pretty sure I was just subjected to more media programming between 40th and 44th than I’ve encountered during my entire adolescence. Honestly, by 43rd, it was getting a little weird, like this was some strange, cultish reality that certain people really do live within, and everyone else walks beneath these massive LED screens and peeks at the celebrities like cages in a zoo.

I wonder if there’s some fact-sheet somewhere that lists the number of inches of LED/LCD screens in this four-block radius. There’s godda be.

Here’s what the movies don’t capture: HOW SMALL YOU ARE. There are television screens the size of buildings piled on top of each other at every possible angle, stretching so high that you’d have to lay on your back to see the top of them. You eye can’t decide what to focus on: here, an explosion, there, a busty model in red. Dancing M&Ms; dancing polar bears; dancing smurfs. Stock rates rushing by at a speed-read pace on the corner of every other building. The overwhelming aroma of boiling fat and MSG coming from the ubiquitous street vendors (that I almost ran into several times because I was walking with my head tilted back and my mouth open, like I was catching pigeon-shit).

And it goes on, man. I don’t know why that one shot of Time Square is the only one that makes it into 90% of New York scenes; you can wander for blocks and be lost in an Alice in Wonderland daze. You know that new Dr. Seuss movie that’s coming out? How do you advertise that? Oh, I don’t know: build a fucking Dr. Seuss figure the size of my apartment complex and paste it on the side of a building. It’ll be taken down in a couple of weeks, but it doesn’t matter: on this strip, it’s worth it to spend every frickin’ cent being larger than life. Because that’s the baseline.

You know what’s also really frickin’ mindblowing?

Whenever I see a big, shiny building that says—I don’t know—ABC, or CNN, or some other giant corporate name… I’m like, “Woah, this is THE [corp.]” Not a building, not one of their offices, but it.

It’s only 10am, somehow, and my hotel check-in doesn’t stat until 3pm. [Head desk] I’m about a block or two away from THE Park, so I think I’m going to wonder that-a way and look around. I’ve been told that it’s a mile-long wasteland of damp grass and used condoms, but after what I’ve just seen, I’m inclined to think that all reports I’ve heard of New York’s splendor are massively tainted by pessimism.

Off I go!