No matter what you think of Times Square, it is indisputably a people place. Throngs of people are a permanent fixture, creating a strange sort of vibrancy that transcends the city. On a cold and drizzly day, what happens to that vibrancy?

What I discovered is that although fewer people were out and about, there is always movement through Times Square. In some ways it’s amplified by the conspicuous lack of people.

Those that rely on a crowd must settle with inanimate proxies.

With people removed, the ever present construction takes on a new connotation: it offsets the glam and glitz to remind us of Times Square’s grittier past. Those divots and depressions in the road made apparent by the rain nag with every drop: what is hiding behind the clean lines of the facades?

Whatever it is, the police presence defies the all-encompassing movement to remain a constant.

The few that remain are thus free to move between the static and the dynamic, being both spectator and spectacle.