O Christmas Tree, O Christmas Tree, Wherever Are Your Lower Branches?

Submitted for your approval: More March Madness. For starters, I’d like to give credit where credit is due. While the New York City bureaucratic morass is typically a sluggish, chaotic mess, it’s also tree friendly. Sidewalk trees protected by makeshift wooden fencing are familiar sights at construction sites and such. Tree guards are required by law.

In seeing the forest for the trees, though, there is one area, I feel, where the city gets a less than stellar grade. New York City trees are “trimmed” every several years, often by contracted companies who dub themselves “tree experts.” Now, I’m not a tree expert by any stretch of the imagination, but I know a non-tree expert when I see one. In my view, the trimming brigades willy-nilly lop off tree branches. Long-standing trees that are unlikely to sprout new growths and branches are hacked cycle after cycle, with no regard for their age. A grandfather clause might help. Over time, the trees assume an umbrella shape—with everything on top and nothing on the bottom. And why, pray tell, would “tree experts” hack off the lower branches of a perfectly shaped pine tree in parkland no less—and one that is decorated each year with Christmas lights?

Permit me to make like a tree and leave this subject—and pivot to the ubiquitous electric scooters, bikes, and mopheads on the mean streets of 2024 New York City. Fueled by the pandemic and repast home deliveries, their numbers have skyrocketed over the past few years. Many of the vehicles are unlicensed and many of the drivers are undocumented—in other words, illegal on both counts. Most of the drivers I encounter—all day and every day—do not obey traffic laws. That is, they don’t stop at stop signs or red lights. They travel well above the speed limits. They zig and they zag to pass, dangerously so sometimes. In other words: They don’t care a whit about the common good or polite society.

Right outside my door this morning, I heard a small bang and spied a delivery guy sprawled on the asphalt alongside his scooter. My initial glimpse of him found him lying in the street near a thermal bag carrying a Dunkin’ Donuts order to a party that was going to miss breakfast. This poor fellow was immediately embroiled in an angry quarrel with the individuals he believed were responsible for his fate: lying prostrate on asphalt next to two spilled Mighty Macchiatos, a couple of Sausage, Egg, and Cheese Wake-Up Wraps, and a dozen Munchkins. What I could make it out in their non-English interplay was that the Scooter-Man went through a stop sign, made a wide turn right, and hit a car slowing in the approach of said stop sign. While awaiting an ambulance and the police—and blocking traffic both ways—the yelling back and forth ensued. The drama lasted almost two hours. Any lessons learned here? Hopeful but doubtful.

(Photos from the personal collection of Nicholas Nigro)