On Riverside Drive in Upper Manhattan, an anonymous artist drew hearts on the snow-covered windows of every parked car for four or five blocks. It was a magical moment, that first blush of the Blizzard of ’26, when automobiles and fresh powder provided a medium for exuberant expression, both human and, let’s face it, canine. Children screamed with joy; alternate-side-parking rules became considerations for another time.
Then life happened. Sleds busted, school resumed, crosswalks narrowed to virtual birth canals. That fluffy stuff on cars revealed itself to be concrete, turning Camrys and Kias into frozen sarcophagi. Their upturned windshield wipers, which at first suggested whimsical salutes to winter or deconstructed ice dancers, now signaled defeated shrugs: What can be done? This baby’s going nowhere.
The bicycle Sherpas of DoorDash, superheroes of the modern urban world, ruled what remained navigable of the streets.
For a city that lives for street parking, the freeze-out was humbling. Mountains of blackened ice piled up in bus stops and beyond. After that initial cloudburst, the snow became something else entirely — an ugly substance lying cold and stubborn on the ground. It was scraped and moved and stacked by plows and snowblowers, from surfaces that needed to be passable, like sidewalks and streets, to those that didn’t.
To wit, your car.
Snow like this is a leveler. New Beamers, once their owners’ pride, became sooty eyesores, locked in place by the grimy composite. Wintry mix, harrumph. New Yorkers who had never shoveled a driveway suddenly had to excavate their cars from ad hoc igloos. Which end of the shovel goes down again?
Even the spaces between cars became unnavigable, utterly ruining the streets for jaywalking — which is, along with fighting over parking spaces, the city’s unofficial sport. And given the ludicrously narrow snow paths, using the crosswalk became a near impossibility for people with wheelchairs, strollers or walkers.
If you couldn’t drive your car, though, you could at least sit in it. Run the engine, turn on the heater, maybe listen to the radio. How about the news, perhaps the weather report?
You already had the back injury from shoveling. Now comes insult: According to the latest forecast, it is never going to be warm again. But hey, at least your windshield wipers aren’t caked in.
Todd Heisler is a Times photographer based in New York. He has been a photojournalist for more than 25 years.
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