New York has survived the apocalypse. Talking heads announced the world would end in 2012. But here we are. January 2013, in the dead of winter. Alive. In spite of the Mayan Calendar and conspiracy theorists.

The world continued but New York hasn’t. Something’s changed. The shops of our youth perished but the franchises remain. People come in and out of cafés in a loop of iced lattes and caramel macchiatos, a simulacrum of the New York they saw on Seinfeld or Sex in the City.

On this corner I sense the past. In a city of disinformation, newspapers are free in vending boxes. AM, Downtown Express, the Village Voice. You name it. Yes, OpEds, Mayor Bloomberg, nightlife, Michael Musto, the 9/11 attacks. It’s all here, all disappearing.

But I remain, a man on a trench coat, a symbol of New York past, a caricature, a postcard, a cartoon on The New Yorker commanding readers with a simple phrase:

Caption this.