In homage

To catch a recent 6 am flight, I caught a cab at 3:30 in the morning. This is obviously a ghastly hour to me, one which I see approximately three times a year, and usually there is a wedding, the Burp Castle, or, as in this case, an airplane involved. Everyone knows that New York is the city that never sleeps, but I was still amazed at the number and variety of people that were out at that time, the deadest time, the time when the world should be silent and sleeping.

This is a tribute to those people who are on the streets of New York, creating an eerily peaceful sense of motion in a city that thrives on just such a pulse.

To the doormen and security guards, finally reaching the last hours of the graveyard shift, standing in clusters on street corners and under awnings, silently sharing their final cigarettes of the night.

To the brave and stupid woman who stumbles off the subway in her white pants and 5 inch heels, teetering drunkenly home from another glittering night on the town, escaping once again the evils lurking in the shadows.

To the ConEdison workers, slowing traffic even when there shouldn’t be any, to make the repairs that will keep the lights on for the unknowing New Yorkers when they wake up in the morning.

To the hardest partiers, hanging on to the last moments of another Friday night, laughing with and leaning on friends and lovers in the doorways of the bars still sticky from the hours of Jager-bombs, Bud Lights, and dirty martinis.

To the crazy or the drug-addicted, waiting manically outside of diners and delis, screaming at no one and everyone, surviving the loneliest hour of the day.

To the middle-aged man in an SUV, windows rolled down, and music cranked up, unabashedly blasting Shakira at a time where no one would think to laugh.

To the lines of cars at McDonalds, filled with people just getting off work or just leaving the bars, never quite ready to go home and always ready for a Filet-o-Fish or Supersized fries, because everyone knows that the calories consumed at that hour don’t count.

It was all these people that painted the landscape as I rode silently through sleek, champagne-drunk Manhattan, across the bridge, and through a rawer, whiskey-soaked Queens. During the day, when everyone is in a hurry and people, except for those rare gems who cannot help but call attention to their eccentricity, are more in the way than part of the city’s beauty, it’s impossible to appreciate people- normal people, just doing what they do week after week, day after day. But at 3 am, when the mind and heart are too tired to judge, the city becomes a work of living art.