People think Times Square empties at night. It doesn't. It molts.
By midnight the tourists are gone. The screens don't stop. The lights don't stop. But the crowd underneath them thins out and in the space that opens up a different population arrives — the cooks and bussers and dishwashers and bouncers and janitors and delivery guys and drunks and the people who for whatever reason can't go home yet.
I'm at the bar from 6 PM to 3 AM five nights a week. I haul ice. I restock bottles. I rinse glasses. I run the bar runner, which is a rubber mat you pull out every few hours to drain the slop into a trash can. I take home bruises on my forearms from crates.
At 2:45 AM I step outside for a cigarette I don't smoke, to just stand there and watch the square.
There is a specific kind of silence that 3 AM Times Square has, under all the light. It's the silence of a thing that was never meant to sleep and is now pretending to rest. I have come to love it the way you love something that has let you in.
The subway home is the 1 to the 2. I put headphones in. I don't listen to music. I just want the headphones.
The Weight
The shift tonight ran long. I got home at 4:20 AM and did not build a single thing the next day. It was the first time since I arrived.
The Math of Rent
$1,850 on the first. I can count the hours from here. This is what the hustle actually looks like — arithmetic under fluorescent light.
The First Four Months
What nobody tells you about starting from zero in New York City.