The Acela Corridor

You’re getting two emails this week. I missed last week’s because I was traveling.

I work as the Director of Marketing for a conservative nonprofit on the East Coast, which means occasionally, I have to make trips to New York City and Washington DC. Last week I had the pleasure of going to both in the same week.

New York City

I love NYC. I used to live in Brooklyn and work on Madison Avenue. Yes, I’m a Mad Man. People who know me in real life are probably tired of me saying it.

Conservatives love to hate cities, NYC in particular. But I love it. It makes me feel alive, like I’m in a place that matters(I’m from the Midwest, so I can say that). There’s been a lot of criticism of NYC post-covid with people saying it’s dangerous or unsafe. And I wanted to see that for myself.

Manhattan was fine. It seemed normal to me. I was mostly in midtown for this visit, and I saw no noticeable difference since my time there in 2019. Where things got sketchy though—

Was in Brooklyn. I wanted to see my old apartment. So I took the subway over there. In 2019 I lived in one of the nicer parts of Brooklyn called Williamsburg. It was/is a famous hipster gathering area(Remember hipsters? It Seems like that trend died off). It was heavily gentrified and up-and-coming. Although when I was there, it was up and arrived.

Well. . . The gentrification appears to have stopped, and the bad parts of town have started winning the battle again. The trash was worse. Graffiti was everywhere. It did not have thriving vibes. It had dying vibes.

To top the experience off, I went to a coffee shop I used to frequent, and it was full of late-thirties hipsters, who all looked pretty rough. It was sad and depressing.

The booming twenty-teens are over. And the hipster era and my twenties are officially dead.

Washington DC

My DC trip was shorter than my NYC trip. So I’ll keep it tight.

I despise DC. It’s full of evil people. They’re all possessed by demons. The people there have one desire: to devour you and use you to further themselves. They rove the DC neighborhoods like a herd of Burberry-clad zombies looking for their next victim.

So I got tacos and watched.

And my conclusion?! NYC people are better looking than DC people. DC is a town full of mids trying to be more important and hotter than they are. Their souls are decrepit, and it is reflected in their appearance.

Every man in DC is a dandy. Every woman is covered in makeup. It’s a vain city. Everything is soulless.

Request

If you’ve read this far, that means you like me, or you like this post. Can you do me a favor?

Can you send me what kind of content you’d like to see? As much as I want this newsletter to be an irreverent avant-garde journal, I would also like to produce some actual value. What would you like me to talk about? No guarantees. But I’m curious.