O-bama! O, Bushwick.

Terror Alert Taupe: Last week’s deluge of Obama-tamism has melted and reconstituted as sludgy gray Reality on the streets of New York. The foreign scent of legit change (and judging from Obama’s first acts in office, his rhetoric packs heat) and The First Black(ish) President are both brilliantly righteous returns for eight years of Canadian flag patch purchases and “God Bless America” interruptions of otherwise-innocuous sporting events. But when New Yorkers leave their apartments every morning, there’s still frozen trash on the ground, the train still leaves 10 seconds too soon, the layoff plague is still claiming friends, and it’s still cold as shit. In other words, it’s back to being January in a massive, under-serviced metropolis. In what I can only hope was light hyperbole, Reuters even ran a piece suggesting that the city might be headed toward another 1970s. Judging from separate interactions I had with two neighbors on my block over the last few days -- captured henceforth in always-classy haiku form -- Bushwick/Los Sures de Williamsburg is already well on its way:

A man’s soul destroyed
as father learns he was touched
by ball coach while small.

Sitting helpless on
Steps. Cane fallen to the ground
She stuck long? Unknown.

A bit of a downer post, you say? Here -- grab a popsicle, watch this, feel better.