NEW YORKERS IN A WINTER STORM : THE SECOND ACT

The Snow Banks have won...

There’s a special circle of hell reserved for whoever’s in charge of New York City snow removal, and I’m pretty sure it’s the one where you’re forced to walk the same three blocks over and over while carrying groceries, navigating ice rinks disguised as sidewalks, and scaling snow banks that make Everest look like a speed bump.

Because here’s the thing about New York after a snowstorm: the city doesn’t so much “clear” the snow as it does “relocate” it into strategic fortresses at every corner, creating an urban obstacle course that would make American Ninja Warrior contestants weep.

You know that moment when you’re standing at the intersection, contemplating whether to attempt the Mount Kilimanjaro of frozen slush blocking the crosswalk, or just hurl yourself into traffic and hope for the best? That’s not a bug in the system. That’s the feature. It’s how the city separates the weak from the strong, the tourists from the locals, the sensibly-shod from the delusionally optimistic.

I’m convinced there’s a department somewhere where bored city workers, deep in the throes of Seasonal Affective Disorder, sit around asking themselves: “How can we make walking from point A to point B feel like an episode of Survivor?”

The answer, apparently, is to create a terrain so hostile that every trip outside requires the kind of strategic planning usually reserved for military operations. Do I take the route with the snow drift that comes up to my waist, or the one where the sidewalk has turned into a bobsled track? Tough call.

And let’s talk about those crosswalks. You approach what used to be a curb cut—back when the city had accessibility standards and dreams—and you’re now facing what can only be described as a frozen tsunami. The plow came through at some point, sure, but its main achievement was creating a wall of blackened ice and street garbage that would make the Berlin Wall look welcoming.

Your options are:

1. Find a running start and attempt to vault over it like you’re still 22 and haven’t had two kids who destroyed your pelvic floor.

2. Try to kick your way through, maybe lose an overstretched boot in the process.

3. Walk three blocks out of your way to find a better crossing, at which point you might as well have just stayed home.

I usually go with option 4: stand there staring at it resentfully, while other New Yorkers push past me with the dead-eyed determination of people who’ve accepted that this is just how we live now.

The snow banks themselves have achieved a kind of artistic quality at this point—layers of blackened, compacted ice decorated with bright yellow patches where every dog in a six-block radius has left their mark. It’s like a Jackson Pollock painting, if Jackson Pollock worked exclusively in filth and dog urine. The neon yellow against the grimy gray-black snow is actually striking in its own disgusting way. Very urban. Very authentic.

Meanwhile, the actual roads? Pristine. Beautiful. You could eat off them. The plows did their job with the kind of thoroughness that makes you think, for one brief, shining moment, that the city actually cares.

But here’s the twist: they cleared those gorgeous roads by shoving all the snow directly into every parking spot in the five boroughs. So now you’ve got these immaculate streets with absolutely nowhere to park, which means everyone is triple-parked, which means that four-lane avenue has been reduced to approximately 0.8 lanes of actual through traffic.

Congratulations! You saved your shoes by taking a car. Now budget four hours to go 20 blocks.

At this point, I’m pretty sure the snow banks are permanent. Come July, we’ll just be stepping over them on our way to get iced coffee, like “Oh yeah, those? Those have been there since winter. We’re thinking of planting flowers in them.”

So if you need me, I’ll be standing at the corner, psyching myself up to attempt the crossing while silently composing my strongly worded letter to the city that I’ll never actually send. Or I’ll be sitting in traffic, watching my phone estimate creep from 8 minutes to 45 while we move approximately six feet.

I know, laugh at yourself before anyone else does—but also, seriously, can someone please fix this?