Classic Mr NYC

About four years ago I blogged about George Plimpton, the great Renaissance Man and NYC icon who died almost ten years ago.

If you'd like, go back and read about a real NYC original. 

Corporate City Redux

Last year I blogged about how NYC is increasingly becoming a corporate city -- a city ruled by and for the very rich. Of course, NYC has always been a "corporate city" since it has long been the capital for corporate America, with many great national and international businesses headquartered here. But there used to be a division between the corporate world in NYC and how the city government was actually run. 

The corporate/private enterprise world didn't control our government, didn't have power over our land-use, our public schools, even our parks. 

But now it does: charter schools are replacing public schools, parks are being run less by the parks department and more by private foundations -- and the city is turning over huge swaths of our public lands to corporations. 

Look at this week's New York magazine for proof. There are two huge articles -- one a huge new super-expensive luxury apartment building (that is primarily for people who don't even really live in NYC) and another on Hudson Yards which will be the biggest, most expensive private development in our city's history. 

This is radical. And totally out of character with NYC's history. 

It's very depressing and scary to think about how this wonderful, great city -- a place where "our poor huddled masses" used to come in search of a better life is being turned into a place where only the rich are welcomed and can survive. It's still a great city, still great place to live but, if we continue down the road of the corporate city, will we still be so?

Christopher Columbus on the Couch

Today is Columbus Day, one of those convenient pre-holiday holidays where people sleep-in, go to bargain sales, clean the apartment, maybe even visit a friend.

Of course, it's also a day where we celebrate the Italian who, on Spanish ships, discovered America.

It used to be a perfunctory aspect of American life that we accepted that Columbus discovered America on the Nina, Pinta and Santa Maria in 1492, that he was welcomed by the indigenous people that he found there, and that the story of America began there and then. Of course, it was always a little more complicated than that (like the fact that Americo Vespucci discovered America first) but basically it was an accepted and non-controversial fact of American lore.

Then ... It Got Real.

Twenty-or-so years ago a bunch of people began kvetching that we shouldn't celebrate Columbus because he did unfortunate things like commit genocide against the said indigenous folks, spread diseases, seized their lands -- you know, stuff like that. Suddenly a man who had been dead for centuries -- and was best known as the man responsible for used car sales and parades where lots of smoked sausages were sold -- became very controversial. The PC police yelled that CC was the Devil while the old timers said he was the hero we always knew he was, historical facts be damned. 

Then people realized it was a stupid debate and it died down.

This year, however, things are a 'lil different. Today, as we again "celebrate" Columbus Day, here in NYC,  the statue of the man's likeness in the square that bears his name on 59th street is covered up by ... a living room ... A huge scaffolding containing a living room covers the statue and people are allowed to walk up the stairs and look at the great marble man face to face. 

It's a tad odd but also interesting and re-invents this particular piece of public art -- and maybe the man its celebrates.

Justice Delayed. Justice Denied?

As another presidential election grinds to a close, let's go back to those halcyon days, those days of yore, that lovely memorable time -- the year 2004 -- when another president was running for re-election. That's right, I'm talking about when George W. Bush, without a doubt one of our greatest presidents, was seeking a second term to continue his magnificent work governing this country.

In that year of wonderful peach and prosperity, Bush's Republican party held its convention right here in NYC. It was only three years after some trouble had occurred but obviously the then-POTUS's party didn't want to politicize the event so it was only a mere coincidence that the party held its convention here. 

And when they did, for some totally inexplicable reason that only highly-paid psychiatrists in Austria could figure out, thousands upon thousands of people turned out to protest the convention, the president, his party, and situation in the country in general. They were mad for some reason, and they had the chutzpah to let the world know.

This resulted, naturally, in mass arrests. The NYPD went medieval on the protesters, sending in provocateurs to turn them violet and then caged them in their thousands, beating them up, throwing them into pens unfit for human habitation. No, never the mind the misfits on Wall Street who were quietly plotting to blow up our economy -- these were the people who were arrested. 

And, unsurprisingly, they sued. 

Now, eight years later, justice has been served. No, not on the arrested protesters but on the NYPD.  A US judge has ruled that they were arrested without probable cause, clearly violating their 4th Amendment constitutional rights. 

So it only took a decade for some justice to be smacked down. Too bad it took so long.

Barclays Center Officially Opens in Brooklyn

The Warhol Archives

Just a postscript on the previous Andy Warhol entry: I've written a lot about him over the years (which makes sense, since he was the ultimate NYC artist) so you can check out this link that will take you to all the old posts.

"Regarding Warhol" at the Metropolitan Museum

Recently the family and I went to the new exhibit at the Met, Regarding Warhol, an interesting hybrid show of work by the legendary artist and those he influenced.

Andy Warhol was perhaps the most famous American artist of the last fifty years. If anyone defined art in NYC and America in the 1960s and 1970s, it was this Pittsburgh-born transplant who married the avante-garde, almost Dada-esque sensibilities of the counter-culture with the world of commerce and pop culture.

His paintings were of Campbell's soup cans, Marilyn Monroe, and totally unknown people. He was unabashed in making art that people either loved or hated. Besides paintings, he also made movies -- very, very weird movies -- of people sitting at a table doing nothing, or making love, or (as we see in this show) a nearly eight-hour single shot of the Empire State Building. Either you found his work the aesthetic equivalent of a warm hug or a cold slap -- or both. That was the whole point.

Andy Warhol was an artist who became more than just his work -- he became an icon, an idea, an inspiration. And that's the whole point of this exhibit.

Many of the other artists featured in this exhibit are, to be honest, people I never heard of. Except for one -- Jeff Koons -- perhaps the most famous and controversial artist Warhol ever influenced. While the Warhol work is (obviously) great and classic, I honestly found the work of the other artists rather uninteresting and unmemorable. When it comes to Koons' work, I find it less funky than boring and anti-septic. I honestly don't know why his work sells so well.

Still, I would urge you to see this exhibit for two reason. First, it makes you realize what a truly great, revolutionary artist Andy Warhol was and how his work managed to be both of his time and timeless. Second, the exhibit has perhaps the most beautiful ending of any exhibit I've ever gone to anywhere. I won't give it away -- you gotta see it yourself -- but it makes the whole experience worth it.

This exhibit has generated a lot of controversy (like the master himself) so I would recommend reading them here and here.   

Occupy Wall Street: 1st Anniversary

It's hard to believe but it was only a year ago that Occupy Wall Street -- or OWS, as it became known -- suddenly sprang to life and took over the national psyche.

What OWS was (or is?) is very simple: it was a group of Americans who felt totally shafted by the current economy and wanted to shed light on the enormous income inequality that exists in America today. This was represented by people literally occupying a private/public park in Lower Manhattan day and night. 

They called themselves "the 99%".

Like any social/political movement, OWS immediately caused controversy. Those on the political left praised it as grassroots movement against "the Man." Those on the political right called it basically a movement of, by, and for society's losers. Needless to say, this debate rages on more than a year later.

Yours truly had and has mixed feelings about OWS. The fact that people were able to grab the attention of the public and the media and start a national dialogue on income inequality in this country is a great thing. Before OWS, this issue had never received the widespread attention it deserved and has now gotten. But my problem with OWS, like any "movement", is that its legitimate message can sometimes come off as nothing more than rage, that the messengers themselves don't do themselves any favors by ranting. That's why I've never been a joiner of "movements" -- very often the messengers cannibalize the message. 

Last year, just as OWS was cresting in its public attention, I wrote a blog post about how NYC has become a corporate city and how it doesn't matter who we elect, it is and will probably always be so. Also, one of the things OWS showed is how the "liberal/conservative" schism in this country sort of misses the point: while one side may be socially liberal and the other side socially conservative, both sides are basically corporate and this shafts working and poor Americans no matter what. And how, no matter who we elect, this "corporate state" will only continue to thrive -- here in NYC and everywhere else. 

So I'm pretty sure that, a year from now, no matter if we have a President Romney or still have President Obama, OWS's message will still resonate.  

 

Welcome to NYCHALand!

This blog is dedicated to the NYC of our hearts, minds, and souls as much as to the real city of metal, concrete, and pavement.

One of the fun things about this blog is exploring the undiscovered places -- both literal and figurative -- that exist within the city we love. Cities within the city, if you will, that thrive around us, next to us, and in which many of us live too.

But there is one city within NYC that most readers of this blog don't know about, including yours truly. It's a place that almost 92% of New Yorkers -- let alone tourists -- never go to. It's a city that exists in many neighborhoods but is separate from just about all of them. And it certainly doesn't thrive.

It's called NYCHALand -- otherwise known as "the projects", those enclaves of poverty.

NYCHA is short for New York City Housing Authority which runs all of the public housing projects across the five boroughs. It houses over 400,000 people, almost 8% of the entire city's population, but those are just the official figures; unofficially almost 600,000 people live there. 

Think about that for a second: while 8% might not be a huge share of the city's people and 400,000 a small slice of the 8 million plus folks in this town, NYCHALand houses more people than New Orleans or St. Louis. In fact, you could transport the entire population of the state of Wyoming into NYCHALand and still have room left over for more people. It's that big.

The Queensbridge Houses in Long Island City, one of the bigger neighborhoods in NYCHALand.

The projects have long been a controversial aspect of American urban policy. Initially they were seen as an improvement over the slums and tenements that used to warehouse the poor, places where people could live in a certain amount of dignity while they worked themselves into the middle class. But it all went wrong: the projects basically became exactly what they were might to replace, and became new warehouses for the poor. Few worked themselves into the middle, instead caught in a cycle of dependency on city housing and services, members of the permanent underclass. The projects became havens for gangs and drug dealers and violence. The sound of gunshots became a daily a occurrence for the young and old alike who lived there. When one thought of the projects, one could only think of menace.

The "projects" became a symbol for everything that was wrong with 20th century compassion.  If the road to hell is paved with good intentions, the projects seemed like their final destination.

Many cities in the last decade tore their projects down and developed new housing policies to deal with the poor. But here in NYC, the projects remain. NYCHALand exists today much as it did forty, thirty years ago. Over the last 20 years, people have talked about how NYC has come back, better than ever, from the turbulent time of the 1970s and 1980s. Yet when you go to NYCHALand, it's like stepping into a time machine back to that time in the city's history that so many of us want to forget. 

However, NYCHALand might not be much longer. This long, very informative article from this week's New York magazine tells us about ideas some have to permanently change the landscape of the projects. The costs of maintaining them has ballooned and many are saying that perhaps it's time NYC develop a 21st century housing policy.

But what will that look like? What will happen to the people who, as miserable a place NYCHALand is for most, feel like it's the best home they could hope to have? Will a new housing policy for the poor help or hurt them? 

In the years to come, NYCHALand might became yet another relic of the city's past, a place most of have never gone to and hope never to go to but that will be, for good or for ill, a city within a city that was part of the character of the greatest city in the world.

 

Reading of the Names at Ground Zero - September 11, 2002 - with Paula Ro...