Yesterday I realized at 2 PM that the Lunar New Year street festival in Chinatown was happening that very moment

Yesterday I realized at 2 PM that the Lunar New Year street festival in Chinatown was happening that very moment — while I’d been calmly thinking it was “sometime around March.” I saw the live stream, felt time sliding through my fingers, grabbed an uncharged battery and whatever gear was breathing, and ran to Manhattan like a man chasing his own intuition. I arrived with what I thought were ten tragic minutes left and somehow found myself in the blazing epicenter for one perfect, chaotic hour — firecrackers exploding, red everywhere, faces impossible to isolate, heaven and nightmare for a street photographer. After weeks of cold, gray mood and no shooting, the city suddenly punched me awake — and these 29 frames are what survived that hour.