BOOM WITHOUT THE BOX
Stumbling from the subway station to the office on Friday morning, in an end-of-the-week haze, I was overtaken by a young man playing a lusciously-textured slow-moving rap song out loud on his black Beats Pill XL portable speaker. The music hit me when he passed, a big warm cloud of sound. The Pill is a simple, sleek baton-like device that broadcasts audio from a remote player. Though it’s been branded “XL” it’s small, about the size of an evening bag, and could be tucked easily under the arm or in a tote bag. This man carried his from its handle, swinging it back and forth as he made his way breezily, otherwise unburdened, up Broadway. He was dressed smartly, in Levi’s straight legs with deep cuffs, a plain black t-shirt, a White Sox cap, and black high tops with a thick white sole. Brandishing the Pill, he was an image of supreme cool.
This encounter me took me back decades, to a time when young men in the city carried suitcase-sized boomboxes, with shining silver knobs and multiple cassette decks, that required six or more D-sized batteries to operate. Today the fashion is to listen to music on small devices like iPhones, through headphones with cushioned earpads the size of hamburger buns, retreating deeply into an inner world. Broadcasting one’s music in public has become outrageous, an act of transgression and aggression. The young man I saw was asserting his taste, his identity and his turf, and also sharing his tunes – something of himself – with the city. It would be tiresome, certainly, if everyone on the sidewalk played his music out loud. But that morning it made for magnificent street theater.