Cheaper on the Margins

I walk east on 69th Street toward York Avenue on a gray, wet day on my way to the hospital for a check up. Steam exhales up into the cold from vents high in the walls of the tall buildings. I think about how all the hospitals and all the self-storage facilities in Manhattan are on the edges of the city, people putting their unwanted “stuff” out away from the center, out where they can forget about it.

When I mention this to Katie later that night, she says, “Sure, but I would argue that there’s hospitals, and storage places, closer in, and people just go to the edges initially because it’s cheaper."