thelesterlee
I don’t know if this is strictly a New York thing or if it’s all of America but I think we’ve gotten pretty good at ignoring warnings from the local news. This week, NYC recorded the worst air quality in the city’s history thanks to roaring Canadian wildfires in the north turning the entire sky into a bonfire.
This time-lapse of the #NYCsmoke is easily the wildest captured yet pic.twitter.com/OQuRQxEZDl
— SagacityCM (@SagacityCm) June 8, 2023
I live nowhere near Canada and a week forecasted to be sunny has been smokey, hazy and borderline post-apocalyptic. We should probably all be sheltering inside while New York looks like Ryan Gosling should be hunting replicants in the streets but instead, everything is moving as usual. I’m figuring out which outdoor bar I should blackout at even though I developed a new cough walking to the mailbox.
We have become so desensitized to our own destruction these days we don’t even care about the sky being on fire. On Wednesday night, the Yankees elected to postpone their game due to potentially toxic smog in the air and although it was for sure the correct move, I’d be lying if I didn’t have to fight back the urge to be the old man yelling at clouds about athletes being soft or whatever. Again, we are in the midst of the worst air quality in New York’s history.
We all went through a global pandemic where thousands of people were dropping dead on a daily basis and most of the country couldn’t last 24 hours of lockdown before they hit the streets demanding Olive Garden warm up those breadsticks.
Ash is raining from the clouds and we’re all wading through the poison as if nothing is happening. Everything is orange outside. If this was a Marvel movie, the Avengers would’ve dropped into Manhattan guns blazing already. Hawkeye would be aiming his little bow and arrow while New Yorkers rip cigarettes inside a dome of noxious gas.
NEW YORK CITY: Prepare for air qualities WORSE than yesterday.
Likely in the code red to code purple category.
A wall of dense wildfire smoke will arrive by noon.
— Visibilities below 3 miles
— You’ll taste the smoke
— Your eyes will stingEVERYONE should avoid the outdoors. pic.twitter.com/JrEce3vLFV
— Matthew Cappucci (@MatthewCappucci) June 7, 2023
Yawn. We survived 9/11.
If you live in New York then you should expect at least one atmospheric calamity to occur every few years. My lungs are currently full of Twin Tower debris, Covid-19, Canadian wildfire smoke and this vape I haven’t put down in days—mainly because I know I’ll lose it the second it’s out of my hands.
On one hand, there should be a level of outrage no one seems to care enough to shut down the city. Like, we should probably care more about Canada being on fire for a week straight and all of the unintended consequences of this event.
But at the same time, maybe it’s for the best no one is making this a bigger deal because in 2023, this discourse would immediately become about Pride Month and people being woke and the most annoying people on Earth would turn this into a culture war where losers blame the fire on the trans community leading Florida to pass legislation making it illegal for LGBT people to be near an open flame.
New York looks like Michael Jordan’s eyes and no one gives a shit. People are arguing over The Little Mermaid and Bud Light while a country literally burns. Humans have like, 20 years left on this planet, man. We are cooked. Again, literally cooking but also yea, we’re all going to die and there’s nothing we can do about it. Let’s fight about Target selling gay pride shirts instead.
Are you concerned about New York becoming Blade Runner 2049? Reach out and share your thoughts. Leave a comment below. Respond on Twitter, Facebook or Instagram. Or shoot me an email at Deadseriousmailbag@gmail.com. Let’s chat, bay-beeeee. Let’s all march hand in hand into the apocalypse together.
