Pride, Penn Station wedding, Sogno Toscano, mental health on the block
Usual block updates linked below. Fireworks were mostly on the wrong/east side this year, but Happy 4th!
Mental health on our block; let’s talk about it. We’re informed by one of our neighbors who works in the mental healthcare space that based on the volume of antidepressants prescribed to our addresses (among other factors), we’ve got, to put it lightly, a bit of problem around here.
That is not surprising to me. Our block and the surrounding area is overwhelmingly made up of people in their 20s, 30s, and 40s who work in Hudson Yards or Midtown, and the fact is that the same trait that might have got you here in the first place—ambition, obsession with performance, ability to focus and work in solitude—might also destroy you. Spiraling into a dark place can have the feeling of a lobster in a pot. First, a triggering event—like a breakup or an illness or a death or just a bad stretch at work—and you’re in the pot. There you are in the pot, alone, muddling through the day, as the water temperature rises degree by degree. You scroll your phone and talk only really to the same 2-3 people who don’t live anywhere near NYC as the temperature ticks imperceptibly upward, and sooner or later, the water is near boiling and your beat-red mind is playing tricks on you in your apartment.
We are believers around here that you need a network nearby to touch that sequence of events off, which is part of the objective of this block association. We are also believers that you need to be able to immediately get help from a professional if you find yourself in a moment where the water is boiling; that is no time to be scanning through doctor’s profiles and Yelp-style ratings for help. More to come on the resources immediately available to you that are just an email or a text or a phone call away.
Block updates:
Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce get married at Penn Station
Thank you Sogno Toscano, anchor block meeting place
Fireworks on wrong/east side this year, but still beautiful; Happy 4th!!
Summer rooftop series: The Yacht Club on 12th Ave between 26th & 27th
Latin American civil rights exhibit in Hudson Yards
New mockumentary TV series called “Gordie” filming on neighboring Chelsea block
