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Cities Built Upon Cities

I live in Long Island City, where the land is in transformation. They’re throwing up high rises as fast as building permits can be distributed from City Hall. From a city of industry and warehouses and taxi depots, to a city of luxury towers and scaffolding, the infastructure and facilities groaning under the weight of ten thousand new arrivals and then ten thousand more, and all this flat up against the undulating greenery of Gantry State Park weaving along the banks of the East River under the famous Pepsi Cola sign.

I lived here in 2011 when it was a totally different city, flat and industrial and grey. One time I was walking along and I heard the rhythmic thump of a distant dance party, and then the sound was gone, and then it was back again, and I couldn’t tell where it was coming from, and so I hunted all over the neighborhood trying to find it. Finally I realized it was on the roof of practically the only tall building for half a mile in any direction, and the reason it kept drifting in and out of earshot depended on where I was standing and whether or not I could hear it echoing off the brick walls and corrugated siding of the smaller buildings all around it.

Nearly all of those buildings are gone now.

So are most of my friends from that time.

I’m back now. The city is changing. The people in it are changing. The environment around it is changing. The architecture is changing. Yesterday’s city has been buried under today’s which will soon be lost to tomorrow's… cities built upon cities.