It’s just a guess, but I’m sure I’m right: New York produced more postcards than any city in the world. It has the planet’s best collection of jaw-dropping monuments; every street has a building ten times as tall as the highest steeple back home. To send a card from New York was to tell the folks you were at the center of the universe. You were in the canyons of the giants. And the weather’s fine!

Every house probably had a card in a drawer somewhere, a tiny bright picture of this frightening and thrilling place. The cards were like dandelion seeds blown the length of the land - you can only imagine how many people saw them and dreamed of going there some day, how many kids grew up wanting to crack their necks looking up at those towers. Or how many kids shuddered and vowed to stay home, right here, where it was safe. (They probably got drafted anyway, and glimpsed New York through the porthole of a troopship as they moved out by night.)

This collection originally went up in 2000; it's been resized and reshuffled, so old links may not work. Sorry about that! But resize we must for a better tomorrow.

Lileks

2014

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