A Tree Grows There

One of my favorite websites (non-political) is a place called "Forgotten NY." Lots of explorations of dark and crumbling places in this city that never sleeps or remembers any of her history at all. The people who run the site go all over the five boroughs looking for remnants of the older city, no matter how old or obscure or tiny.

Tear it down! Build a newer and better and shinier and more expensive one!

I guess it's something of a sore subject for me right now because the theater near where I work is at 46th & 8th, the northeast corner of which once sported one of the great bars of all time: McHale's, featured in the monster Wesley Snipes/Woody Harrelson hit movie "Money Train." Now, instead of a warm, noisy and welcoming bar with pretty waitresses serving the best hamburger in New York City to hungry stagehands, performers and other assorted theater folk, that same corner now has the sleek, cold, glass-paned lobby manned by a scowling security guard of a luxury residential building that is so pretentious the people who built it don't think a mere street address is sufficient. They actually gave it a name: Platinum. It is not a place for rowdies and the common folk, I assure you. This lobby is a gatehouse intended to present to the street the exact income level desired for anyone to even enter. It, naturally, makes me want to camp out in front on the sidewalk (roughly where my favorite booth used to be at McHale's), eat my lunch and smile at the people coming and going.

You see, it's always about class with me. At least when the revolution begins, this building will at least keep the rich fucks corraled and easier to find.

Anyway, I've watched this shiny concrete and steel ugliness rise up over Hell's Kitchen for the last three years and I've resented every foot of its ascent. Now, for the last few months, I've endured seeing the old low-rise buildings (3 & 4-story) on the corner next to my theater and directly across the street from this futuristic architectural atrocity being razed, presumably for yet another luxury high-rise with another austere sidewalk presentation that will naturally rob this neighborhood of even more street-level vitality. I resent it and it makes me pine for an older New York City, one that I can see in little snippets and flashes.

Another interesting and colorful part of New York City is yet again in danger of being paved over to build something safe for the wealthy to enjoy a Disney-fied city and it's history forgotten.

Well, Forgotten NY's latest spread is about Smith Street in Brooklyn. Those of you who have known me for a long time will know that I used to live there and probably visited me there. For those of you who don't know, I got priced out of the place as the yuppies and hipster parents invaded and rents skyrocketed. I sometimes go back just to walk around, but the place hardly looks the same anymore.

The link is here. See pics of where I used to live and then stay at the website for a while and explore other places.

9/11Ru9/11dy G9/11iul9/11iani9/11

I'm of two minds about this.

One, I don't think a bunch of elected officials (with a HUGE conflict of interest in deciding the issue) have any right to overturn a decision made by a public vote about whether or not they are able to continue in their jobs. If the public installed term-limits, only the public can rescind term-limits. You can't just decide that the law which doesn't operate to your advantage simply no longer applies. It smacks of cronyism and the kind of corruption for which New York politics is famous. After eight years of gleeful, cackling, sociopathic GOP law-breaking, though, I guess I shouldn't be surprised that even a mild-mannered billionaire with a Napoleon complex figured he'd just vote himself an extension.

Two, however, I think Bloomberg has done a fine job overall. Were this law not already in place I wouldn't think twice about re-electing him for a third term - I just don't like the precedent this will set vis a vis other laws the city council doesn't like. In fact, he will likely be re-elected and that will mostly be OK, despite the fact that I am one of those bitter partisans. As another hizzoner, the late great Fiorello LaGuardia, once said of being a mayor: "There's no Democratic or Republican way to pick up garbage."

But, if Bloomberg gets a third term, I mostly just love the fact that it will be a huge FUCK YOU to Rudy Ghouliani who couldn't get the law overturned and thus himself a third term as "America's Mayor" - EVEN in the wake of September 11th.

Hey, guess what, you miserable little fuck? We just didn't want you. Now go crawl back into that coffin you sleep in and quit walking among the living.

Not Just For Political Blogging and Porn! - Part 2

So, further clicking around the inter-webs, I found this cool website, walkscore.com, where you can see cool, interactive maps of major cities and their relative walkability.

This is important because as we run out of oil and the world we know right now grinds to a halt, we're going to need those darned cities to be as walkable as possible since it will no longer be economically feasible to drive to a 7-11 to get a quart of milk in Phoenix or Dallas or Jacksonville or any of the other sprawling sunbelt drive-o-topias where voluptuous golf courses and cookie-cutter suburbs chew up arable farmland and suck the water-table dry in the name of green, green lawns and beautifully sculpted 9th holes. Those days are fast running out.

New York City is #2 on the list and the only one with any neighborhood to score a perfect 100. New York had three such 'hoods: Chinatown, Little Italy and SoHo. San Francisco is #1, with a greater number of 90+ neighborhoods than NYC, but no perfect 100s - although I think this system of ranking walkability fails to take into account the fact that those damned hills do impede walkability noticeably. That's why they installed the famous street cars in the first place, not as a novelty but as an absolute necessity. On that score, NYC also out-strips San Fran in the public transportation category, though (in all fairness) this website is about walkability and not car-free mobility.

I do think the two notions are intertwined, however, and are inclusive of not just low-enviro impact transportation options like overlapping regional and city rail systems supplemented by bus routes and bike lanes, but of transforming the public understanding of land use and the arrangements by which we feed and provision ourselves and our cities and towns. Gone are the days of year-round produce - no more strawberries in winter or avocados in the autumn - because we can't truck the stuff cross-country anymore, no more than we can continue to burn petroleum to ship cheap plastic crap (also made with petroleum) half way around the world from China to stock the shelves of the local-economy destroying WalMart. We have to re-think our whole way of doing things.

Electric cars are not the answer. Ethanol cars are not the answer. Solar-wind-biofuel-hamster-powered cars are not the answer. Auto-mobility is going the way of the dodo because we can no longer afford to pollute the planet to keep people able to have their alone-time idling on the freeway, listening to Rush Limbaugh while toxins spew from the tailpipe and the radio, and slowly, inexorably use up all the fuel we have left in the cool, green hills of earth. Our living arrangements will change and the car will not be part of that.

Compact, walkable cities are the answer.


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