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.