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Where have all the people gone?

Chelsea Grasslands

Chelsea Grasslands

Is this the same High Line that Jeremiah Moss recently decried as “Disney World on the Hudson?”

Where is everyone???

Hey, listen up: it’s drop-dead gorgeous up there this time of year, and right now– or on any drizzly day, for that matter — you can have the whole place to yourself.

I’ve never understood why so few people go out for a walk on a rainy afternoon. By 4:00 pm today it was just spitting, not nearly raining, and the newly trimmed plants — cut back by a small army of volunteers over the past few weeks — are bursting with the promise of spring.

Without the long, dying grasses drooping and cascading over them, the railroad tracks are suddenly in full view; if you stand at 30th Street and look south you can see enough of them to actually get a sense of perspective projection distortion, the visual phenomenon that makes it seem as though the rails are converging. There’s not a tourist in sight to block your view. In the Chelsea Grassland, where the Cutback Army hasn’t yet massed, you can crinkle-shut your eyes and pretend you’re in a field in Nebraska.

I don’t want to hear any more complaints about how crowded the High Line is.

Perspective-projection-distortion

Wildflower Field

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