Wandering neighborhood by neighborhood in any city—but especially in New York—you start to wonder how these jagged puzzle pieces on a map got their names. Some make sense in a biographical or geographic way. Others feel conjured from a whiteboard, designed more for Instagram geotags than real history. In Lower Manhattan especially, you can feel the difference between a name rooted in memory and one rooted in marketing. Real estate. What a phrase—both grounded and slippery.
This chapter begins with a stumble (or was it fate?) into the orbit of the great street photographer Cheryl Dunn, whose lens has captured the soul of NYC for decades. If you’ve seen Everybody Street, her moving portrait of the city’s street photographers, or Moments Like This Never Last, her film about Dash Snow, you already know: her work hangs in your head long after the credits.
She’s working on a new book, another film, and—no surprise—still out walking around, still paying attention, snapping pictures. Cheryl was (and is) as downtown as downtown gets. Follow her Instagram. That’s your homework.
We meet in what some now call Dimes Square, a name so cartoonishly absurd it feels like satire. It’s just across the street from Seward Park, the first municipally built playground in the U.S.—an actual historical name with roots, grit, and purpose. That contrast between a name that conjures generations of immigrant kids scrambling over concrete and one that sounds like a concept store for curated cigarettes is a kind of NYC poem in itself.
We go for an old-fashioned walk-and-talk. Not quite psychogeography, not quite content. Just a dérive: half-aimless, half-open-hearted. I’m fumbling through questions, as usual. Cheryl, of course, is sharp, generous, grounded. We talk about what it means to keep showing up for your own vision, even as the ground shifts underneath. Walking with Cheryl, you remember: some people don’t just live in the city—they see it.
If This is Now has any message, it’s that movement isn’t always about the destination. Sometimes it’s just about paying attention. Snap a photo. Drift a little. Because the map is not the territory—no matter what the real estate agent tells you.
P.S. Fun sidenote: while all this was happening, Timothée Chalamet was literally in Seward Park filming for Josh Safdie’s new ping-pong flick Marty Supreme. Because—well—it’s NYC. Of course they were.
THIS IS NOW - NYC
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
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