The Fifth Floor.
Joe Mannix
If you’ve spent time in one of America’s decaying and formerly-great cities recently, you may have noticed how bifurcated they are. The great cities are in fact two cities within the same space. There is the nice city, and the awful city. They are the same city in fact, but not in spirit. They occupy the same acreage, but at different elevations.
On the surface, the cities are hellholes. Walking down the streets, you will be treated to the stench of urine and learn to dodge aggressive vagrants and various drifts of refuse both human and artificial. You will see plenty of graffiti-covered plywood and the deep filth ground layer by grimy layer into the sidewalks while wondering if your car will still be there when you get back.
Then you go inside, enter an elevator and increase your elevation.
Once you go above the fifth floor, the city changes. The elevator was a portal into a parallel universe. Gone are the filth, piss, aggressive bums, drug detritus and the various flotsam and jetsam of the surface. When you look out the window – so long as you hold your eyes level or cast them skyward – the outer world reflects your interior surroundings. These are third-world cities, devoid of a middle class. They are glittering islands of wealth and power erupting from a sea of crime, filth and poverty.
John: This rings true. Other than some enclaves surrounded by walls and security guards, it’s the high-rise towers with concierges and key carded elevators.
They leave directly from the underground garage by chauffeured limo. Or escorted by the Doorman and sheltered from the elements and the gaze of the commoners by the Doorman’s huge umbrella.
None of the hells they have brought to the cities effect them. I’m sure that someday soon the 18th Century fashion of a perfumed handkerchief will make a comeback, to make more bearable the brief traverse of the public toilet sidewalk.
On the North River 