It was, without a doubt, the worst possible thing that could’ve happened. After pouring a freshly boiled pot of tea into my off-white ceramic cup, after pulling my jacquard blanket up to my shoulders, and after a particularly cold breeze briefly danced on my face from an open window, I got a text. I closed my eyes, wondering if there was a world where I simply let a text exist, one where it didn’t feel like the end of days in case I couldn’t get to it. Of course, I checked it nearly immediately after, proving that the tech companies, venture capital firms, and my personal NSA agent had, once again, won.
The text was from a close friend- strange, particularly because he was on the east coast, and it was already after 11pm here in San Francisco. This must’ve been important, I thought- or at the very least, this must be a particularly spicy meme, one that could tickle our fairly niche funny bones.
It was definitely the first, and regrettably, not much of the second. His text read “dude…just got back from a warehouse party…I think there is a secret furry community here in Brooklyn lol”. I was stunned.
Against the grain of constant optimization, a homogeny of aesthetics, and the clear warning that being “cringe” is a cultural war crime, the furries remain steadfast in our modern society.
I got a few more texts from the friend, all different bits and pieces of an ostensibly shocking night, 3,000 miles away from me. In one picture, he was sandwiched between someone in a powder-blue wolf costume on the left, with a white saber-toothed tiger on his right. Another text showed a video of him dancing to “We Found Love” by Rihanna & Calvin Harris, as hundreds of people, around half of them in animal costumes, fist pumped and did Fortnite dances e. It seemed, genuinely, too good to be true.
Moments like these, that seemingly poke holes into the fabric of daily life, are ones that endlessly fascinate me. I’m so captivated by these moments, I have a turn of phrase that I neatly file them under, one that’s also the title of this column: You Just Don’t See That Anymore.
What actually qualifies as a part of You Just Don’t See That Anymore is varied, and hard to pin down. That’s by design, and at the same time, the beauty of it. When pitching this column to our editor, as well as introducing myself to the rest of our team, I recalled a story of oranges rolling deftly down a MUNI bus after a particularly sharp downhill turn- as the citrus rolled, a scream rang out from the back of the bus, with the granny who got on near Chinatown exclaiming “NO! MY ORANGES!”
Everyone in the back of the bus glanced at each other, at first with a look of confusion, but then, duty. We knew what we had to do. Seconds later, we were going up and down MUNI, retrieving oranges and handing them back to the older woman who was tucked away in the back corner. As we sat back down, without thinking, I blurted out “you just don’t see that anymore!”. The guy directly across from me let out a small chuckle, and for a moment, it felt like everything was in its right place.
The “modern society” mentioned above, one that prizes every inch of profit, exists chronically online, is vehemently hyper-globalized, will play out as it will. But the ethos of this column, and the essence of that original phrase, is an antithesis to that rigidness. It’s taking a tiny lens, zooming in and focusing on the absurd scenes of life- ones that remind you what living is really all about. Examining the magnificent farce, confronting the incredibly frightening but profoundly beautiful fact that there is no rhyme or reason to much of what goes on. I’d like to catalog those moments, particularly the most fascinating ones.
The text I got genuinely made my night, and suddenly, the worst possible thing that could’ve happened turned into one of the best… which is to say, a laugh. To my close friend, who was approaching 2:30am on that side of the world, I replied: “Insanity. Much respect to the furries and their taking back of NYC”. A few minutes later, he sent a selfie. On a brightly lit, crowded N Train back to Manhattan, his face wore a grin so big it genuinely covered the bottom half of the phone screen. Around his neck, throwing a big thumb ups, was a fuzzy, powder-blue arm.
