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THE CHAOS DETECTIVE is a teevee series for the internet. “City of Dreams” is a five-part episode set in Europe. Future episodes will be located in New York City.

City of Dreams (Part 1)

City of Dreams (Part 2)

City of Dreams (Part 3)

City of Dreams (Part 4)

It would be a fallacy to argue that my location here in the shadows of the riverbank

in the company of another man about whom I knew next to nothing

was anything less than conscious.

I couldn’t say if the vision I saw was of the past or the future but I no longer cared

I took a step forward and then another, ignoring the chorus of screams in my head.

I approached the Russian, who stood up as if he had been expecting me. “Do I know you?” he asked.

I shook my head ambiguously. “I’m not sure,” I replied.

“Follow me,” he said and together we walked up the stairs into the infinite fog of the Parisian night.

Our friend Paul just sent us this from his phone:

“So what if I voted for McCain?” OMGLMFAO!

We’re not sure exactly where this was taken, but Paul lives in Harlem, so we’ll give our downtown neighbors credit for this piece of brilliance. (But Paul would also like you to click here, too.)

[Correction: Paul took the shot at the downtown Bleeker Street station, but whatevs, we still love Harlem!]

Yesterday we took some footage of the snowstorm — or actually the aftermath — and made two vidoes with commentary. We had some technical diffs, though, so wanted to post them again in case anyway tried to click through and was harshly rebuffed!

1) Our walk to Jumel Terrace, where we saw the geese flying south.

2) Our tour through the garden, to admire the snow and ice dripping from the trees.

Friends! Aren’t you tired of getting on the subway and listening to two teenage assholes engage in a loud debate about whether it’s “gay” or not to touch shoulders in the kind of “bro-hug” you see on the teevee when a team scores a goal/point/tee-dee? Wtf? And aren’t you sick of watching all the other asshole passengers — even a few who “looked” pretty fucking gay if you ask us — laugh and smile at these two cut-ups, as if they were really fucking hilarious? And aren’t you sick of having to stand there quietly, pretending to be above this constant barrage of unchecked bullshit, knowing that in 2008 you can still be mocked and stereotyped as if you were a _____ fifty years ago or a _____ before that? Aren’t you sick of living in the dark ages?

Yeah, well we’re pretty fucking sick of it too, which is why today we leaned over to these assholes and said: “Why don’t you STFU because from now on, to be ‘gay’ means one thing: having your cock in another guy’s mouth or ass or vice versa, which is basically the most awesome thing ever, and if you have a problem with it, keep your mouth shut or you’re gonna find it on the floor, got it?” Lol. We wish.

Friends, not every cat is lolcat.

More than any other candidate in recent history, Barack Obama can be considered a product of the city.

And not just because he’s black, obvs, but because he lives in a city and seems to genuinely appreciate its fundamental character, not only in a positive sense — i.e., the cultural and economic engine it represents, the environmental efficiencies, etc. — but also negative, i.e., the recognition that on some level, cities are ungovernable. To live in one requires a degree of faith completely lacking in the fundamentalists who ironically enough like to criticize city dwellers as godless.

This is why, in the wake of 9/11, the Wall Street Journal ran op-eds wistfully suggesting that perhaps it would be better to dismantle the cities, that the United States would be better off — safer — as a giant suburb. (Or see all of the horrendous articles that NYT columnist/blowhard David Brooks wrote a few years ago romanticizing “the exurbs”: funny how he doesn’t seem to mention these much anymore!) Whatevs, the bottom line is that McCain/Bush Republicans fear things they can’t control, whereas Obama seems to accept — and even embrace — uncertainty as a necessary consequence of what cities offer. This is one of the reasons his brand of “hope” carries a somewhat more (if not totally) believable quality; it’s rooted in a pragmatism familiar to anyone who has say, ridden the subway more than once or twice or stood in line for an hour at the post office just to mail a package.

Remember to look at a voting map next week: the true red-versus-blue will have nothing to do with state lines, but everthing to do with the cities.

This should be some consolation, even if Obama loses.

There are many things beyond the grasp of conservative politicians, and the beautiful, angry chaos of the city is at the top of the list.

This morning we reluctantly got out of bed at 7:15 am — instead of our usual 7:30 — so that we would have enough time to do everything we needed to do and catch the 8:20 train instead of the 8:30, because we had an important 9:00 am meeting and the commute is closer to 40 minutes.

Thus logic would dictate that we should have had plenty of time, assuming we didn’t fritter it away.

And we started off pretty well, too!

We didn’t linger in the shower, or stand paralyzed by indecision in front of our shirts in the closet, trying to remember the fragments of a fading dream from the previous night.

To the contrary, we glided through these basic preparations with an assured ease that — giddy with our success — left us considering the idea of returning to bed for a short nap.

But then we spent a few seconds admiring the golden hue of the sun on the Washington Heights rooftops.

And when the seagulls arrived, how could we resist taking a few photos?

Maddeningly, the birds were not taking our mental direction to circle toward us at an angle that would best highlight their wingspans and the position of the bridge!

And then we remembered that we had to spritz the orchids, which took a few minutes, because the water bottle was empty.

And then — omg, we almost forgot! — Dante needed a pill for his asthma!

Then we had to floss and brush! In the old days, we would have blown this off, but now we’re addicted to flossing, especially with the mint-flavored variety we have.

Needless to say, by this point we had used up all of our surplus time and were officially cutting it close.

We grabbed our backpack, said goodbye to the cats, practically fell down eight flights of stairs (always faster than the shitty elevator, which has not been upgraded since its installation in 1914, because it would cost the landlord $20, and he only nets $40k/month.)

We sprinted across Broadway and over to Amsterdam Avenue, where there was too much traffic to cross. As we waited for the light, we could feel the ground trembling beneath our feet: the train was entering the station.

We sprinted down the steps and through the turnstile, just in time to hear the officious ding-dong and subsequent rattle of the closing subway doors. The conductor was just a few feet away from us and he looked straight through our imploring gaze. In his world, we didn’t exist.

We bitterly watched the train as it accelerated out of the station and resisted the temptation to wave at everyone who was on it, as if we were having the last laugh. But in truth we had lost: it was 8:21 and the next train wouldn’t arrive for ten minutes, meaning we would definitely be late for our meeting. We aimlessly drifted down the endless platform, which had never seemed more desolate.

We watched a pair of rats scurry along the opposite platform and admired a few subterranean masterpieces from which the advertising banners had been stripped off. Resigned to our fate, we pulled out the latest issue of New York Magazine and wished that we, too, had a two-tiered garden in the sky.

Lately we’ve had trouble sleeping, so have begun to rely on naps.

Sometimes the best place to sleep is on a crowded subway train. (If you can get a seat!)

Especially on the A or D between 59th and 125th Streets, a trip that during rush hour can last as long as five or six hours.

Today we were sitting next to these two teenage girls. The whole trip they were happily screaming to each other about something.

Needless to say, it was not Virginia Woolf!

But we didn’t care. The stop-and-start motion of the train lulled us to sleep.

And soon they and everyone else seemed far away.

So we sit down on the subway next to this guy who starts to aggressively hum. (We’re like: why us?)

And then he karate chops at the air in front of him.

We ignore him and think about Chamaecyparis obtusa.

Today on the subway this woman wouldn’t move her leg over two inches to make room for us to sit down.

But we sat down anyway, because we were tired and didn’t see why she should take up two seats.

Then we regretted it, because we really hated the feeling of our leg touching hers.

But this lasted just until 59th Street, when she got off.

We weren’t sorry at all to see her disappear into the crowd.

I too had an obsession with the GWB when I lived in the Heights in the ’80s. Mine was doing as much cruising as possible under that majestic bridge. The “little red lighthouse” was used for a probably unintended use on many an occasion.

–Commenter David

Today on the subway — this, during the evening rush — we sat down next to a woman, perhaps 25 or so, with long, thin arms and straight blond hair.

We noticed because a few seconds later, she leaned over and yelled “Dad!” And it was really him, too, just half a car away! She waved at him and we moved over a few inches to make room on the bench so they could sit together. (It was a B-train.)

He was probably in his sixties, short with glasses, kind of pudgy, dressed in “slacks” and a shirt-sleeve dress shirt. On first glance, he looked like a sit-com dad, but one from the Archie-Bunker era.

After he sat down, we (pretending to read) could hear the daughter chirping away on the other side of us. She sounded so happy to see him, and it did seem like a remarkable coincidence, the way it always does when you run into someone in the city.

But then we looked over and noticed that he had already pulled out a book and opened the page, as if he were about to start reading. He kept running his thumb over the bookmark. It was a really shitty softcover — the kind of thing you can bargain down to a nickel at a garage sale — something even worse than Tom Clancy or John Grisham, though it had that kind of cover, silver with an embossed gun on it or something.

Then he told his daughter to be quiet! We really hated him then.

What kind of man, we wondered, couldn’t talk to his daughter for ten minutes on the train? Didn’t he want to know about her day? Or tell her about his? Suddenly these horrible people reeked of loneliness and dysfunction.

Except when we got off the train at 59th Street, we noticed that she was now reading, too. They both seemed engrossed in their books, and not upset at all.

And we couldn’t help but ask ourselves who we really hated, and why.