A Walk on 36th Street

Thirty-sixth street in Manhattan is dim and hurried on a warm December evening. It isn’t neon-lit like Kerouac’s Greenwich Village or illuminated by billboards like Times Square a few steps uptown. Cutting across Midtown only two blocks north of the lights and consumer glitz of thirty-fourth street, it is tame in comparison to the shopping  and tourist districts alongside it.

These photos are hastily framed, reflective of their surroundings. Unlike the slow-moving crush of Times Square where photography is expected, the solitary homeward-bound commuters walking briskly around me on the narrow sidewalk and the countdown of the walk timer on the wide avenues rush the point-and-shoot routine.

Certain colors repeat: the green of streetlights, particleboard construction barriers, Christmas trees, and greenery surviving through the mild pre-frost Fall weather; the glint of fluorescence, headlights, and shimmering asphalt.