By Liam Simonelli | For The Jersey Journal
It’s a humid July morning in Journal Square. Streaks of sunlight are piercing gray clouds as they pass overhead. Scattered flocks of pigeons briskly fly overhead to avoid the relentless heat.
Below all this lies a city in full motion.
A heavy traffic of cars, trucks and e-bikes greets me. A chorus of car horns and slices of casual street conversation muffle my radio tunes as I look for parking.
Here and there, I lean in to look up at the buildings I’m passing by. Bright red scaffolding is hugging their sides. Construction crews line the curbs with shovels. Light plumes of smoke and steam billow out tunnels and chimneys nearby.
At a red light, I notice a young man in a white button-up crossing the street swaying his arms back and forth while babbling to himself. A nurse looks on in confusion, taking a precautionary step back.
Soon, I’m moving through the crowds – sketchbook at my side. A jumble of faces passes behind and in front of me as I sketch furiously to capture it all. Some duck into a corner store while others park themselves underneath a tree. Looking to avoid the heat, no doubt.
Or are they perhaps looking to avoid that age-old, small-talk question: “Hot enough for you?”
Racing past me, I catch a glimpse of a wild-eyed, ponytailed man on a rental bike. Not far down the road, there’s a parking attendant sweating through his uniform.
Sprinkled in between all this, morning joggers pursue their routes as police officers look on. Perhaps the officers are a bit dumbfounded as to why anyone would be jogging in this heat.
But it’s not an arrestable offense to be superhuman while we mortals wait behind and melt.
Liam Simonelli’s cartoons have appeared in The Jersey Journal and Star-Ledger, on WashingtonPost.com, and on news pages nationwide through Counterpoint.com. A rising senior at the College of New Jersey where he draws cartoons for the school paper, The Signal, he has won multiple awards. In 2022, he won the national Mark of Excellence Award for Editorial Cartooning in the Society of Professional Journalists competition for collegiate journalists for work he did while a student at Mercer County Community College.
