![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/IMG_1181-scaled.jpeg\")
Photographs by Yvonne V\u00e1vra.<\/p>\n Photographs by Yvonne V\u00e1vra.<\/p>\n
By Yvonne V\u00e1vra<\/p>\n
Autumn has descended upon the Upper West Side, that most fascinating time of year\u2014leaf blower season, naturally. Not that I like leaf blowers. I very much do not. But they do send my wonder flying, and that I really do love.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s thrilling to witness the epic battle of Man vs. Wind. There he is, dutifully blasting a single leaf across the sidewalk, shuffling autumn\u2019s traces a strategic couple of feet away. The leaves swirl off, readying themselves for their whirlwind comeback while the wind whispers, \u201cNice try.\u201d<\/p>\n
Why is this happening? Why tidy up what can\u2019t be tidied? How mean am I to be so cruelly amused by someone\u2019s commendable commitment to keep the sidewalk clean? What grand logic of leaf management am I missing? And, as my ears chime in, how many decibels does it take to accomplish absolutely nothing?<\/p>\n
As mind-blowing as it is \u2014 vroom vroom \u2014 there\u2019s more to learn from leaf blowers than just gratitude. They can offer philosophical guidance, and I for one am willing to take life lessons from a leaf blower. Watching the spectacle of a problem pushed from one square foot to another, I stare into a humbling mirror: NNNNNNNNNNNnnnnnnnn\u2026 we actually apply a lot of leaf blower logic in our own lives. We make noise, expend effort, feel productive, and yet often leave the underlying issues untouched. We shove our little problems around like autumn leaves instead of facing them head-on.<\/p>\n In our apartments, we move clutter out of sight, where it waits patiently for the next move. We archive emails and shuffle messages into carefully labeled folders we never open. We save or print articles to read on a day that never arrives. We trim screen time on one app, only to drift toward a shinier distraction on another. We schedule meetings to discuss our inefficient ways. We buy new storage containers instead of decluttering. We rage about issues and demand change on social media instead of taking real-life action. And \u2014 if you\u2019re anything like yours truly \u2014 of course we diligently transfer tasks onto next week\u2019s calendar page instead of actually doing the work.<\/p>\n Thank you, leaf blowers, for scattering not just leaves but little reminders that we\u2019ve all mastered the art of appearing productive while merely rearranging our problems.<\/p>\n In a truly unexpected twist, I have no choice but to conclude that leaf blowers are comforting. They remind us that life runs in endless loops, and none of us quite has it all figured out. We huff, we puff, we shift around life\u2019s messes, and the circumstances whisper, \u201cNice try,\u201d like the wind. Even if our efforts are absurd or futile, it\u2019s reassuring to know we\u2019re never alone in our silly attempts to control the uncontrollable. So this Thanksgiving week, I\u2019m grateful for the small absurdities that make me laugh and wonder about life \u2014 WHRRRR included.<\/p>\n Subscribe to West Side Rag\u2019s FREE email newsletter\u00a0here<\/a>. And you can Support the Rag\u00a0here.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Photographs by Yvonne V\u00e1vra. By Yvonne V\u00e1vra Autumn has descended upon the Upper West Side, that most fascinating…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":49749,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[9,11,10,20020],"class_list":["post-49748","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-headlines","tag-new-york-news","tag-yvonne-vavra"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49748","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=49748"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49748\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/49749"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=49748"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=49748"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=49748"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/IMG_1207-scaled.jpeg\")
Too many. Noise is annoying, especially when it mixes with the rage that inevitably bubbles up at something that seems so pointless. Leaf blowers are \u201ca metaphor for what\u2019s wrong with us as a species,\u201d Cate Blanchett once said. Actually, more than once. She has been railing against them in interviews for nearly two decades, most recently on Kareem Rahma\u2019s \u201cSubway Takes\u201d <\/a>show.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/IMG_1253-scaled.jpeg\")
But it\u2019s Thanksgiving week, so let\u2019s find the good and some gratitude in all this vroom vroom. Or is it more like a WHRRRR? A NNNNNNNNNNNnnnnnnnn? However we spell it, it\u2019s a message from our neighborhood trees: We\u2019re here. We\u2019re leafy. You\u2019re welcome. All that uproar is a reminder of how lucky we are to have so many trees on our little stretch of Manhattan. A world-famous park on one side, a lesser-known but by many even more cherished park on the other; Morningside Park perched above; trees spilling down Broadway and the avenues; more trees sweeping in from the cross streets; and still more gathering in the tiny parks scattered between them\u2014Damrosch, Roosevelt, West End Towers, Waterline Square, Verdi, Dante, Richard Tucker, Joan of Arc, Straus\u2014surely I\u2019m forgetting a few. But not this one: Septuagesimo Uno, Manhattan\u2019s smallest park, all 0.04 acres of it wedged between two buildings on West 71st between Amsterdam and West End Avenue. And yes, it does have one tree in it.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/IMG_1263-scaled.jpeg\")
\u00a0According to the New York City Tree Map<\/a>, there are 11,471 street trees between West 59th and 110th Streets. What a treat to be bothered by leaves.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/IMG_1314-scaled.jpeg\")
Yvonne V\u00e1vra is a magazine writer and author of the German book 111 Gr\u00fcnde New York zu lieben (111 Reasons to Love New York). Born a Berliner but an aspiring Upper West Sider since the 1990s (thanks, Nora Ephron), she came to New York in 2010 and seven years later made her Upper West Side dreams come true. She\u2019s been obsessively walking the neighborhood ever since.<\/p>\n