The Din Of Disparity
Plus, an embarrassingly addictive track, ecological dystopian novel and full-circle career moment.
With each place I’ve lived, I have an associated sound. In my childhood townhouse, it’s the passing streetcars that would rattle the burners on the stove. In the suburbs of Calgary, it was the muted stillness of the dry winter air. In my last apartment in Brooklyn, it’s the sound of birds in the trees against the near-constant din of sirens. Since moving back, I’ve noticed a new sound has entered the New York airspace: helicopters.
Whenever I hear a plane, I fantasize about my next trip and think of all those lucky people heading somewhere new. The sound of an airplane, to me, represents freedom. The sound of a helicopter has the opposite effect, it makes me feel claustrophobic. While I’ve never lived in a war-torn country, helicopters remind me of conflict. They signal surveillance, being under watch. They make me think on the aggregate; as I imagine they are looking for activity on a mass scale. In short, they make me anxious.
And I’m not the only one. Helicopter noise complaints in New York City have skyrocketed from 3,332 in 2019 to 25,916 last year, reports Bloomberg. “In Manhattan and Queens, complaints about helicopter noise this year have outnumbered even those about rats— a quality-of-life issue that New York City Mayor Eric Adams has identified as a top priority,” writes Gregory Korte.
Given that the increased presence of helicopters appears to be a post-pandemic development, I wondered if crime has really gotten that bad that we need such a heightened level of surveillance. Turns out these helicopters aren’t just monitoring traffic and crime—many of them are actually rich people taking private flights to the Hamptons or the airport.
It feels fitting, that the very thing that, to me, symbolizes oppressive surveillance also symbolizes extreme wealth. A couple years ago, I had my first helicopter flight-seeing tour over, of all places, Redding California. Last year, I flew a helicopter to have breakfast at the top of Mount Kenya and then on to our next safari stay: a private residence owned by the billionaire Wildenstein family. Last summer, I flew a helicopter over Niagara Falls to what is arguably one of the classiest wineries in Ontario.
In all of these experiences, I’ve felt a dissonance, between the person I know myself to be and the person I am flying in a helicopter for no other reason than to be impressed. For a few minutes, I get a taste of what it’s like to be ultra-rich; to be, quite literally, above all the people sharing space with others on a crowded street or subway.
With extreme wealth comes extreme poverty; and with extreme poverty comes crime; and with crime, comes surveillance. It’s a feedback loop I’ve seen again and again on my travels: in Colombia, in India, in South Africa. I’ve always gauged the extent of inequality in a country by the height of the security cameras atop gated communities and mansions. While Canada is far from perfect, I don’t see as many physical markers of the economic disparities (even though they do exist). In the United States, especially since the pandemic, the haves and have-nots are becoming increasingly noticeable.
When, standing at the Brooklyn piers, my eyes trace the distant buzz to count six helicopters, like bees, hovering over the financial district, I’m fortunate enough to be on the right side of the surveillance. I feel the same way when I see all the cops (and now the coast guard) at my subway stop. The security is not watching me, they’re watching for me. But what about the people who are on the other side? I wonder how the constant sound of helicopters makes them feel.
Best,
Anna
Published 📝
Forbes - Air Travel Gets A Glow-Up: How Cathay Pacific Is Reimagining Wellness
Forbes - Under The Tuscan Cloud: Why You Should Go To Tuscany In The Off-Season
Reading 📖
I brought Yŏng-suk Kang’s At Night He Lifts Weights to a reading party I went to in Greenpoint this week because I’d struggled to get into the book at home. With no distractions except the presence of fellow book worms and dreamy live music, I ended up reading half the book in one sitting.
Each chapter reads like a short story, providing a window into a different character’s life. The settings change but the thorough line is that all the characters are experiencing the same mysterious ecological disaster, and seem to be connected to South Korea in some way. Some chapters are very dark—one follows a woman on a suicide mission—and I don’t usually like dystopian stories, but the obvious analogy that what these characters are experiencing is late stage climate change has me eager to see how it ends.
Articles:
💕 What if we gave friendships the same significance as romantic relationships?
🖥 Why the godfather of A.I. fears what he’s built.
🎗 As someone who used to work in development, I loved this interview with Amy Schiller on the problems with modern philanthropy.
“Libraries are sanctuaries against the ambitions of capitalism that would commodify every place and every experience for profit.” - Amy Schiller.
👩💻 How would you define millennials? This 2011 NYT opinion piece was onto something.
🦠 The obsession with gut health has gone too far.
🤳 Should we take food influencers seriously?
🍽 Cabbage is in its golden era.
📧 O.O.O. messages for everyday life.
🗽My typical New York day.
Watching 📺
Last weekend I went to an Oscar’s party, hoping my predictions would be wrong because I won our Golden Globes pool a few month’s back (nobody likes the newcomer swooping in for the win right?).
I ended up winning again, but one of the predictions I got wrong was that Lily Gladstone would take ‘Best Actress’ for Killers of the Flower Moon. When Emma Stone won, I said she deserved it because I felt her performance was stronger than Gladstone’s. But as I’ve been watching Killers of the Flower Moon ( like a T.V. show, in 45-minute instalments) over the past week, I think I’ve changed my mind. Gladstone’s performance gets more raw and visceral over the film’s long 3.5 hour runtime, and all I can think about is how difficult it must have been to face the traumas that her own people have gone through (similar to An-My Lê partaking in a war reenactment).
Listening 🎧
Spotify’s algorithm keeps serving me this song I can’t stop dancing to lately. The first time I went to check who it was, I was shocked (and embarrassed) to see it’s by Ariana Grande. With the addictiveness of this track and all the critical acclaim her new album has been getting, I was certain I’d love the full album. Sadly I don’t. This one song though? Oof.
Snacking 🍌
I ate out a lot this week but the highlight meal was with Thistle hosted in a penthouse loft in Williamsburg. I had some great conversations with fellow journalists and content creators, and with the EIC of Huffpost, who informed me (much to my surprise) that my former employer Buzzfeed now owns them.
The most memorable conversation, however, was with chef Tom Colicchio. A year and a half ago, I remember being super nervous to interview the Top Chef judge at Kohler Food and Wine (I used to be an avid watcher of the show), and feeling like it was a full-circle moment when I was seated at the same table as him for dinner on the last night.
Turns out the real full-circle moment was actually this week, when I chatted with him again at at this Thistle dinner (he’s their celebrity partner). I didn’t have the courage to approach him during the event But as I was leaving by myself, I encountered him in the lobby, also alone, waiting for his ride, so we started chatting. I asked him some off-the-cuff questions that got him talking about the intersection of food and tech; and what he’s seen works and doesn’t work for food start-ups. The full-circle-ness of it all is that I wasn’t nervous at all. A year ago I was rehearsing my questions the night before our interview and now I could come up with questions on the fly. Confidence cohen!