An exhilarating and intimate look at what happened when the pandemic emptied the city―and a rebellious energy reclaimed the streets.

Author, social critic, and “New York City’s career elegist” (New York Times), Jeremiah Moss felt alienated in a town that had become suburbanized and sanitized. Then lockdown launched an unprecedented urban experiment: What happens when an entire social class abandons the city?

Out in streets made vibrant by New Yorkers left behind, Moss found a sense of freedom he never thought possible. Participating in a historic explosion of protest, resistance, and spontaneity, from queer BLM marches to exuberant outdoor dance parties, he discovers that, without “hyper-normal” people to constrain it, New York can be more creative, connected, humane, and joyful. In this genre-bending work of “autotheory,” Moss gives an account of his renewed sense of place as a transgender man, braiding the narrative with psychoanalysis, literature, and queer theory, as he offers valuable insight into the way public space―and the spaces inside us―are controlled and can be set free.

An unflinching portrait of gentrification in the twenty-first century, and a love letter to lost New York, by the creator of the popular and incendiary blog Vanishing New York
New York City has long been a destination for rebels and rule breakers, artists, writers, and other hopefuls longing to be part of its rich cultural exchange and unique social fabric. But today, modern gentrification is transforming the city from an exceptional, iconoclastic metropolis into a suburbanized luxury zone with a price tag only the top 1 percent can afford.
Blogger and cultural commentator Jeremiah Moss has emerged as one of the most outspoken and celebrated critics of this dramatic shift. He has spent the past decade observing and painstakingly documenting this sea change, and in Vanishing New York, he reports on the city’s development in the twenty-first century, a period of “hyper-gentrification” that has resulted in the shocking transformation of beloved neighborhoods and the loss of treasured unofficial landmarks. Moss leads us on a colorful guided tour of the most changed parts of town-from the Lower East Side and Chelsea to Harlem and Williamsburg-lovingly eulogizing iconic institutions as they’re replaced with soulless upscale boutiques, luxury condo towers, and suburban chains.