In New York, I exclusively wore a pair of knee-high black rubber rain boots. They weren’t necessary. Not once. It never rained properly, but they gave me the liberty to step in murky water, wallowing against curbs and potholes whose depths were blindboxed. I wore them to a candlelit dinner in LES, where they secretly served us rare steak, revealed by the flashlight of my friend's iPhone 17. I wore them to the MET. On my long walk to Harlem from 106th Street for a pack of Esse Capri’s. I wore them until my calves began to strain like rope and the muscles in my feet became taut.  And I wore them again today, on a 70-degree day in California with no sign of rain. Perhaps the grey never let up on behalf of me and my boots. Wearing them today for the first time since New York, I felt protected. Lifted an inch off the ground by rubber baptized in contaminated street water, I was untouchable. Accessible only via heavy, melancholic bass lines that feel akin to the city's temperament