There is no greenery, it is enough to make a stone sad - Nikita Kruschev, when visiting New York to attend the UN
She stands like a witch at the gateway to the continent - Not sure the source, about NY.
When I was a kid I read a book called "The Open City," which was about Washington. Essentially, it said that DC was remarkable in that you as an average citizen could enter into high government buildings, including the White House, basically for free.
If DC was the open city in the time before terrorism, New York has always been the closed one. To gain access to its monoliths, one usually needs a few things: money, some kind of card, a name that you are going to, an invitation to an apartment or event, a key or a key-card, or some kind of numerical code.
It is no coincidence that architects refer to Manhattan's "street wall." It is usually as closed off to you as the Mongols were by the Great Wall of China unless you have the proper qualifications.
Thus I always take any chance to penetrate the facade. This usually means parties, but can also mean receptions in places ordinarily off-limits to you. I still regret not going to see a speaker from Georgetown Prep at the Met Life Building a few years ago. Not because I wanted to see the speaker, but because it was in the businessmen's exclusive club at the top of the building that dominates the boulevard. I could have looked at the building from then on and said "I've been to the club on top" and would thus possess it rather than being forever an outsider.
This is also why I always took any excuse to go to the Ivy League clubs clustered in Midtown. I've been to the Penn Club (formerly the Yale Club), the Yale Club (the most impressive, across from Grand Central), and the Princeton club (a modern disappointment).
However, I still must penetrate the sanctum sanctorum of the Eastern Establishment, the Harvard Club, on 44th near Fifth.
This is no mean feat. There are two tailcoated doormen/goons at the door ready to escort you in, or out. It is a historic landmark/McKim, Mead, and White Georgian building, and imposing.
My father went to Harvard as a grad student, but most of the time you need a registered member to allow you passage. Most of my father's acquaintance members are now dead or inactive. Maybe there's a service entrance I could sneak in as a pastry chef.
The NYT ran a feature called "rooms" for awhile. It showed you the inside of these guarded fortresses of the elite. Still, the Metropolitan Club at 5th and 60th refused to allow them to photograph the dining room.
Park Avenue at one point was called "a democracy of millionaires." You cannot tell from the outside the tremendous wealth inside. Harder still is to get a glimpse of the penthouses and terraces usually set back on top.
Hunter College, through an accident of history, actually has one building on Park and 68th. There was one computer lab that was up high, which I used for spying on these hidden terraces with their desperate little gardens in the sky.
I guess the most impressive apartment I've seen is Leslie Stahl's duplex on top of a building that overlooks that strange little park that surrounds the Museum of Natural History (she's married to a rich guy). On the roof deck, if you looked sideways, you could see over Central Park to the east side.
But the best view I've ever gotten was from my Wisconsin roomates parent's rather small and drab place on Central Park West. The Eisenbergs. Ordinary upper-middle class New York Jews. How they got the place is one of those NY real estate mysteries that are better left untouched.
Rachel and I also got a chance to stay at a duplex on top of a building at 57th and Sixth. A rather small (12-14 stories) plain brick number situated on some of the highest-priced real estate in the world. It had a terrace, too, but was dwarfed by the surrounding skyscrapers.
The Times ran a story a few weeks ago about the great NY sport of trying to peer into your neighbors' interiors. The last time I did this, at the back of an ordinary upper east side apartment, I looked into a place that was paneled from top to bottom with Oak or Mahogany or some other expensive wood.
There are ten thousand rooms in the closed city, but I have yet to wrangle entrance to a Park or Fifth Ave duplex palace like in "Metropolitan." Maybe I'll do like that couple in the White House and just wander in. A beautiful woman would help. Contact me at Gatecrashers.com.
Friday, November 27, 2009
Wednesday, November 25, 2009
There's Pictures of Mirrors on the Wall
I may have misheard him, but I swear this lyric lies in the center of the intro to Bruce Springsteen's "Candy's Room."
I have a bone to pick with Springsteen detractors. This somehow encompasses most friends and hipster types. Springsteen has written in the American vernacular (Woody Guthrie, Bob Seeger, Bob Dylan) for years, yet has been denied hipster cred by the very honesty of his words.
He is a fake, I'm told, a multi-milliniare writing about working-class blues. To which I respond, at least he addresses the facts. Too many hipster types reject the Springer viscerally, thinking his music unprogressive and derivative and sentimental. Good. Tangential, musically abstruse groups like Pavement have their place, but are ultimately a product of their times. The Springer remains. And the emotions of what it means to be a young man in America, like "Badlands," will always need to be addressed.*
*Lights out tonight
trouble in the heartland
there's a head-on collision
smashing in my guts, man
I'm caught in a cross-fire
But I don't understand
I have a bone to pick with Springsteen detractors. This somehow encompasses most friends and hipster types. Springsteen has written in the American vernacular (Woody Guthrie, Bob Seeger, Bob Dylan) for years, yet has been denied hipster cred by the very honesty of his words.
He is a fake, I'm told, a multi-milliniare writing about working-class blues. To which I respond, at least he addresses the facts. Too many hipster types reject the Springer viscerally, thinking his music unprogressive and derivative and sentimental. Good. Tangential, musically abstruse groups like Pavement have their place, but are ultimately a product of their times. The Springer remains. And the emotions of what it means to be a young man in America, like "Badlands," will always need to be addressed.*
*Lights out tonight
trouble in the heartland
there's a head-on collision
smashing in my guts, man
I'm caught in a cross-fire
But I don't understand
Who Killed the Kennedys?
Why are the 1960s' still interesting? I know that when I was at Madison, I eventually couldn't stand the straw-men put up by the left to describe just how great they were compared to our slothful, indolent, and apathetic generation. I eventually wrote a column on it that was probably the best-received article I've ever written.
But the 1960s are still important in one singular way: they showed how a democratic society, once seriously threatened, supposedly acts like any other government regime: repression, police state actions, and quasi-fascist "spy" organizations that bloomed during times of real threat.
My ancient and wise father once said that he thought that 1968 was the one year he thought a revolution was possible in the US. This is understandable: the French revolution of 1968, actually bringing workers and students together, the campus and ghetto uprisings (or riots, depending on your view), and the challenges to America's military power abroad, especially the Tet Offensive in Vietnam, which showed Americans Vietnamese guerrillas inside our embassy for a fight we said we were winning in Saigon.
But then there is the question of dissent. How much is possible without the government taking counter-action? In Madison, there were University police, the National Guard, the FBI, and various types of military intelligence on campus. Many supposedly "undercover" (one was denounced when it was found he had a wedding band on).
So is the US just like any other ultimately repressive state? Will it kill (like at Kent State) when it finds it necessary to preserve its stature? Are we a democratic state or a thinly disguised republic of lies?
The Chinese present a conundrum in this case: free-market capitalism within a quasi-Stalinist government. No one, it seems, will complain unless the spigot of international commerce is somehow turned off. The state as leader in a pro-capitalist state is difficult to reconcile to its objective of repressing any dissent.
The Kennedy I regret passing is not John, but his brother Robert, or Bobby. Here was a man that was equally attractive to both worker and student, black and white. In an election, he would have easily beat Nixon, who after all barely beat back party hack Hubert Humphrey.
So capitalism is not the great balm of repressive government as advertised. It can bloom without a sound. It is up to us to make some noise.
But the 1960s are still important in one singular way: they showed how a democratic society, once seriously threatened, supposedly acts like any other government regime: repression, police state actions, and quasi-fascist "spy" organizations that bloomed during times of real threat.
My ancient and wise father once said that he thought that 1968 was the one year he thought a revolution was possible in the US. This is understandable: the French revolution of 1968, actually bringing workers and students together, the campus and ghetto uprisings (or riots, depending on your view), and the challenges to America's military power abroad, especially the Tet Offensive in Vietnam, which showed Americans Vietnamese guerrillas inside our embassy for a fight we said we were winning in Saigon.
But then there is the question of dissent. How much is possible without the government taking counter-action? In Madison, there were University police, the National Guard, the FBI, and various types of military intelligence on campus. Many supposedly "undercover" (one was denounced when it was found he had a wedding band on).
So is the US just like any other ultimately repressive state? Will it kill (like at Kent State) when it finds it necessary to preserve its stature? Are we a democratic state or a thinly disguised republic of lies?
The Chinese present a conundrum in this case: free-market capitalism within a quasi-Stalinist government. No one, it seems, will complain unless the spigot of international commerce is somehow turned off. The state as leader in a pro-capitalist state is difficult to reconcile to its objective of repressing any dissent.
The Kennedy I regret passing is not John, but his brother Robert, or Bobby. Here was a man that was equally attractive to both worker and student, black and white. In an election, he would have easily beat Nixon, who after all barely beat back party hack Hubert Humphrey.
So capitalism is not the great balm of repressive government as advertised. It can bloom without a sound. It is up to us to make some noise.
Fatherhood
A second generation. A mini-me, a little person to carry on your family name and history. A slice of immortality, that you will not be instantly forgotten the moment of your death.
I've heard all the arguments, yet cannot get beyond the one that concerns me most: I cannot subject another human being to the suffering that I've been through.
My parents no doubt thought that their combination of genes would produce supermen (or women). And that's the way it should have been. Unfortunately, they did not account for factor X. That's the wild card in fertilization that produces unplanned problems.
I have a cousin in Park Slope with a child that has an autism-like syndrome that makes their child a permanent infant, though he is much older chronologically now. The doctors can't figure the child out, and get at what the problem is.
Mind you, these are hyper-educated Park Slope parents, yet the mystery of exactly what is plaguing their physically-beautiful son continues to elude them and the best minds of New York health care.
This is the central conundrum: what we know is still, despite modern science etc., much less than what we do not know. The breakthroughs in anti-depressants in recent years (Zoloft, Prozac et. al.)haven't helped me, nor a certain anguished acquaintance. A little modesty on medical science's part would go a long way - not all problems have a ready-made solution. Not then, not now.
I've heard all the arguments, yet cannot get beyond the one that concerns me most: I cannot subject another human being to the suffering that I've been through.
My parents no doubt thought that their combination of genes would produce supermen (or women). And that's the way it should have been. Unfortunately, they did not account for factor X. That's the wild card in fertilization that produces unplanned problems.
I have a cousin in Park Slope with a child that has an autism-like syndrome that makes their child a permanent infant, though he is much older chronologically now. The doctors can't figure the child out, and get at what the problem is.
Mind you, these are hyper-educated Park Slope parents, yet the mystery of exactly what is plaguing their physically-beautiful son continues to elude them and the best minds of New York health care.
This is the central conundrum: what we know is still, despite modern science etc., much less than what we do not know. The breakthroughs in anti-depressants in recent years (Zoloft, Prozac et. al.)haven't helped me, nor a certain anguished acquaintance. A little modesty on medical science's part would go a long way - not all problems have a ready-made solution. Not then, not now.
Monday, November 23, 2009
Communication Breakdown
The average readership on a blog is something like 1.3 readers. This is what I'm told by the roomer in our house, Dan, who worked for the Miami Herald online edition and is teaching new media at Princeton for a semester.
This is where you hit the wall. I've said mostly what I've wanted to say back when the blog was a novelty and fun. At this point, I should go back to the ancient art of e-mailing.
I look at the prodigious prolific put-out of Rambler, and think I can keep up. But he had the advantage of a geographic divide, which shouldn't matter but does, at least at first. Novelty can carry you a respectable distance. As an outsider, what the insiders do is strange and notable. I'm just sick of my situation, and hence don't feel like writing about it and making others sick.
But I know that some others are occasionally checking the output, so I'll talk about somebody else. A woman. Named after Ireland. And not the one married to one of my former best friends.
She called yesterday and said she had come back from New Orleans to NY. Then started to utter the scariest two-syllables in the language for single men: ba-by.
The horror! I knew she was half-kidding, but the idea of a six-fingered little mutant conceived by me, with my screwed up DNA, sent me packing for the hills.
I should have known. I was watching "Chucky" on On-Demand. My kid would make Chucky look like Mother Theresa. An adult lifetime spent too often in hospitals and institutions is not a qualification for fatherhood. I know heredity is a crapshoot, but for now it looks like the dice was loaded from the start.
This is where you hit the wall. I've said mostly what I've wanted to say back when the blog was a novelty and fun. At this point, I should go back to the ancient art of e-mailing.
I look at the prodigious prolific put-out of Rambler, and think I can keep up. But he had the advantage of a geographic divide, which shouldn't matter but does, at least at first. Novelty can carry you a respectable distance. As an outsider, what the insiders do is strange and notable. I'm just sick of my situation, and hence don't feel like writing about it and making others sick.
But I know that some others are occasionally checking the output, so I'll talk about somebody else. A woman. Named after Ireland. And not the one married to one of my former best friends.
She called yesterday and said she had come back from New Orleans to NY. Then started to utter the scariest two-syllables in the language for single men: ba-by.
The horror! I knew she was half-kidding, but the idea of a six-fingered little mutant conceived by me, with my screwed up DNA, sent me packing for the hills.
I should have known. I was watching "Chucky" on On-Demand. My kid would make Chucky look like Mother Theresa. An adult lifetime spent too often in hospitals and institutions is not a qualification for fatherhood. I know heredity is a crapshoot, but for now it looks like the dice was loaded from the start.
Thursday, November 5, 2009
Bayonne
Surrounded on three sides by water, Bayonne could certainly be called insulated, even given its position at the heart of the New York metro area. But a new light-rail line from Hoboken and Jersey City has made this affordable, tight-knit city accessible, and if I ever move back to the area I might actually live there.
Bayonne is also where my uncle, the writer and journalist Steve Roberts grew up, and he wrote a book about it. I decided to check it out.
The light-rail let me off at 34th Street. The houses generally all looked the same; wood or aluminum three story houses, right next to each other but not touching. In other words, not the row houses one associates with Northeastern cities, but still close to the street and defining it.
I ended up on Steve Roberts' street, 31st between Avenue A and Newark Bay. As a boy, it was filled with Russian and Eastern European Jews and their children. Knocking on the door of the house that resembled his description of his boyhood home, I picked the right one, with a small Marine Corps flag in the tiny yard. A woman named (if I remember correctly) Cindy Callahan answered the door (so much for the shtetl). Two of her kids were at the Gothic-style Bayonne High School three blocks away; one was learning to be a teacher.
We chatted about the book, though what I really wanted to know was how much renting one of third floor rooms under the rooftops in the city would cost. I've gotten to the point where I will gladly give up hipness for a real room with a bathroom.
At the end of the street, much-maligned Newark Bay looked oddly beautiful with the giant containerized-cargo cranes all in a line on the other side, the rectangular cargo boxes piling up on the docks that destroyed Manhattan's (you need a lot of "upland" storage areas for containers. Not much of that in Manhattan).
Going back to the light-rail, I was struck by the beauty of the library, complete with the name of some of the great thinkers engraved on it, like the one at Columbia University. The High School and the Library were from the era when people took pride in civic buildings and built them to last, to provide immigrants and others a sense of what was important in a democratic society.
One wide street contained the most desirable properties, actual two-story brick with real lawns around them. Many were being used as Doctor's offices.
But on to the entertainment. A building with a giant carved wooden beer keg on top of the entrance. This was Hendricksons, a bar/restaurant from the 1870s that was hand-redesigned in the 1930s by a Bavarian architect. The place was small but beautiful, with stained-glass windows, intricate wood carvings, painted scenes of the old country, and barrel-vaulted ceilings.
But the tight-knit city is not lost in a time warp, no matter how much I'd like that. Snatches of Spanish could be heard on the main street, as well as on some signs. A city built by immigrants continuing the tradition.
It was only about a ten-minute ride to Exchange Place, where one can get the PATH train to downtown Manhattan. It's a little more to Hoboken, where the lines run to Midtown.
Better check Craigslist for rents soon.
Bayonne is also where my uncle, the writer and journalist Steve Roberts grew up, and he wrote a book about it. I decided to check it out.
The light-rail let me off at 34th Street. The houses generally all looked the same; wood or aluminum three story houses, right next to each other but not touching. In other words, not the row houses one associates with Northeastern cities, but still close to the street and defining it.
I ended up on Steve Roberts' street, 31st between Avenue A and Newark Bay. As a boy, it was filled with Russian and Eastern European Jews and their children. Knocking on the door of the house that resembled his description of his boyhood home, I picked the right one, with a small Marine Corps flag in the tiny yard. A woman named (if I remember correctly) Cindy Callahan answered the door (so much for the shtetl). Two of her kids were at the Gothic-style Bayonne High School three blocks away; one was learning to be a teacher.
We chatted about the book, though what I really wanted to know was how much renting one of third floor rooms under the rooftops in the city would cost. I've gotten to the point where I will gladly give up hipness for a real room with a bathroom.
At the end of the street, much-maligned Newark Bay looked oddly beautiful with the giant containerized-cargo cranes all in a line on the other side, the rectangular cargo boxes piling up on the docks that destroyed Manhattan's (you need a lot of "upland" storage areas for containers. Not much of that in Manhattan).
Going back to the light-rail, I was struck by the beauty of the library, complete with the name of some of the great thinkers engraved on it, like the one at Columbia University. The High School and the Library were from the era when people took pride in civic buildings and built them to last, to provide immigrants and others a sense of what was important in a democratic society.
One wide street contained the most desirable properties, actual two-story brick with real lawns around them. Many were being used as Doctor's offices.
But on to the entertainment. A building with a giant carved wooden beer keg on top of the entrance. This was Hendricksons, a bar/restaurant from the 1870s that was hand-redesigned in the 1930s by a Bavarian architect. The place was small but beautiful, with stained-glass windows, intricate wood carvings, painted scenes of the old country, and barrel-vaulted ceilings.
But the tight-knit city is not lost in a time warp, no matter how much I'd like that. Snatches of Spanish could be heard on the main street, as well as on some signs. A city built by immigrants continuing the tradition.
It was only about a ten-minute ride to Exchange Place, where one can get the PATH train to downtown Manhattan. It's a little more to Hoboken, where the lines run to Midtown.
Better check Craigslist for rents soon.
Sunday, November 1, 2009
Behind the Wall of Words
It's taken me years to construct the wall. Word by word, brick by brick, you think I am communicating with you when I am really shutting you out.
The ruse looks like this: I write on many subjects, from many points of view. I am then established as normal.
Then my opinions and observations don't seem so odd. Just another unread guy in the blogospere. I project cosmopolitanism through references in many cities when the truth is I am an unemployed loser striking out at the world through a computer in New Jersey.
I can't accept this person as me, especially since I used to be all those good things in the paragraph above. I am a scarecrow, a hollow man, a vessel for pain in motion. Come, invite me into your pain. I can sympathize.
How do I do it? How long can I pull this off? I drag my hunched form across the landscape,transporting not brain but wretched body from here to there, but as they say in AA, it's only a geographical move. My body haunts me, seizes me, cloaks me into what you might say is carrying the weight of the world.
It is heavier than you will ever know.
The ruse looks like this: I write on many subjects, from many points of view. I am then established as normal.
Then my opinions and observations don't seem so odd. Just another unread guy in the blogospere. I project cosmopolitanism through references in many cities when the truth is I am an unemployed loser striking out at the world through a computer in New Jersey.
I can't accept this person as me, especially since I used to be all those good things in the paragraph above. I am a scarecrow, a hollow man, a vessel for pain in motion. Come, invite me into your pain. I can sympathize.
How do I do it? How long can I pull this off? I drag my hunched form across the landscape,transporting not brain but wretched body from here to there, but as they say in AA, it's only a geographical move. My body haunts me, seizes me, cloaks me into what you might say is carrying the weight of the world.
It is heavier than you will ever know.
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