I remember walking with my friend Kevin past a woman whose long hair had fused into a single filthy dreadlock, like a thick spout of vomit that had been bronzed. We were dumbstruck. We had no witticisms to offer. It’s a city that defeats efforts to ironize.

This woman used to stagger through my old neighborhood during the summertime; her hair was some kind of beehive that had been encased in decades of product until it was a hard waxen shell hanging off the back of her scalp. (Via The New York Times)