Walk

Gramercy Park

2007-03-26T00:42:00.001-04:00

Gramercy Park
Originally uploaded by niznoz.

The Gramercy Park statue of famed 19th century actor Edwin Booth, (who said of his notorious brother "I can give you very little information regarding my brother John. I seldom saw him since his early boyhood in Baltimore. He was a rattle-pated fellow, filled with quixotic notions.").

The Gordon Riots of 1780 and Barnaby Rudge

2007-01-23T00:10:00.000-05:00

Museum, originally uploaded by niznoz.

Photo: A section of the Berlin Wall on the grounds of the Imperial War Museum. The march on Parliament began near here on open space known as St. George’s Fields on Friday 2nd June at ten o’ clock in the morning, 1780.

“A mob is usually a creature of very mysterious existence, particularly in a large city. Where it comes from or whither it goes, few men can tell. Assembling and dispersing with equal suddenness, it is as difficult to follow to its various sources as the sea itself; nor does the parallel stop here, for the ocean is not more fickle and uncertain, more terrible when roused, more unreasonable, or more cruel.

– Charles Dickens Barnaby Rudge: A Tale of the Riots of ‘Eighty.

London, 1780: Under the leadership of Prime Minister Lord North Great Britain was fighting a difficult war in her American colonies. American diplomats working in France had brought England’s old enemy into the battle. Britain was in desperate need of more troops, and one attempt to get them had been a government bill, the Catholic Relief Act of 1778 that was designed to lessen the obstacles to Catholics serving in the military. The Act inspired fierce resistance amongst Protestants in both England and Scotland. In 1779 violent protests against a similar act being introduced in Scotland had broken out in Glasgow and Edinburgh.

On June 2nd of 1780 60,000 members of the Protestant Association, led by Lord George Gordon, massed in London to present a petition to Parliament calling for the repeal of the act. It’s members wore blue ribbons in their hats as a sign of unity. Despite physical intimidation of the legislators, a vote on the petition that afternoon was overwhelmingly defeated.

That evening Catholic chapels belonging to foreign embassies were destroyed by a mob chanting “no popery”. Although the initial violence may have been political, or sectarian, and anti-Catholic violence occurred throughout the course of disturbance, the riots as they evolved over the next week became a savage and tumultuous expression of rebellion by London’s poorest. Violence was directed at the authorities and anybody who opposed the mob, and looting was rampant. For while it looked like the government would be unable to retain control of the city. Contemporaries found this taste of revolution profoundly shocking: “the English reaction to the French revolution began well before it’s out break.”

Mapped here

"At present I would prefer not to be a little reasonable"

2006-03-15T21:04:00.000-05:00

"At present I would prefer not to be a little reasonable", originally uploaded by niznoz.

"What miserable friendlessness and loneliness are here revealed! His poverty is great; but his solitude, how horrible! Think of it. Of a Sunday, Wall-street is deserted as Petra; and every night of every day it is an emptiness. This building too, which of week-days hums with industry and life, at nightfall echoes with sheer vacancy, and all through Sunday is forlorn. And here Bartleby makes his home; sole spectator of a solitude which he has seen all populous—a sort of innocent and transformed Marius brooding among the ruins of Carthage!" - Bartleby, the Scrivener: A Story of Wall-street

By the time Melville wrote Bartleby -- the story of the scrivener whose passive resistance so aggravates the narrator -- at least two qualities of the financial district were already evident. The dual nature of the neighborhood was well established: a buzzing hive by day, a desert at night and on Sundays. And resistance to Wall Street, passive or otherwise, was clearly useless.

Melville's birthplace at 6 Pearl Street is perhaps an example of this. The modest house is long gone, and the only trace of Melville's presence is a plaque and a bust of the author hidden behind plexiglass in a sconce at the base of towering white office building.

stars

2006-03-14T09:28:00.000-05:00

stars, originally uploaded by niznoz.

I am alone; I am alone! she cried, by the fountain in Regent’s Park (staring at the Indian and his cross), as perhaps at midnight, when all boundaries are lost, the country reverts to its ancient shape, as the Romans saw it, lying cloudy, when they landed, and the hills had no names and rivers wound they knew not where—such was her darkness; when suddenly, as if a shelf were shot forth and she stood on it, she said how she was his wife, married years ago in Milan, his wife, and would never, never tell that he was mad! Turning, the shelf fell; down, down she dropped.

-- Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf

And as the moon rose higher the inessential houses began to melt away until gradually I became aware of the old island here that flowered once for Dutch sailors' eyes - a fresh, green breast of the new world. Its vanished trees, the trees that had made way for Gatsby's house, had once pandered in whispers to the last and greatest of all human dreams; for a transitory enchanted moment man must have held his breath in the presence of this continent, compelled into an aesthetic contemplation he neither understood nor desired, face to face for the last time in history with something commensurate to his capacity for wonder.

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

It's not a moment as easily acheivable now as it was in 1925 when both these books were published -- at night Regents Park, Long Island and everywhere else remotely urban is lit up with shops, houses, streetlights like territorial markers for human civilisation. Harder to be lost, harder to imagine something commensurate to your capacity for wonder.

It would not be wonderful to meet a Megalosaurus.

2006-03-09T12:25:00.000-05:00

shadow dino, originally uploaded by niznoz.

LONDON. Michaelmas Term lately over, and the Lord Chancellor sitting in Lincoln’s Inn Hall. Implacable November weather. As much mud in the streets as if the waters had but newly retired from the face of the earth, and it would not be wonderful to meet a Megalosaurus, forty feet long or so, waddling like an elephantine lizard up Holborn Hill. Smoke lowering down from chimney-pots, making a soft black drizzle, with flakes of soot in it as big as full-grown snow-flakes — gone into mourning, one might imagine, for the death of the sun. Dogs, undistinguishable in mire. Horses, scarcely better; splashed to their very blinkers. Foot passengers, jostling one another’s umbrellas in a general infection of ill-temper, and losing their foot-hold at street-corners, where tens of thousands of other foot passengers have been slipping and sliding since the day broke (if the day ever broke), adding new deposits to the crust upon crust of mud, sticking at those points tenaciously to the pavement, and accumulating at compound interest

--Bleak House by Charles Dickens

Oliver's approach to London

2006-03-03T22:38:00.000-05:00

Oliver and the Artful Dodger start their journey in Islington, and end up in Saffron Hill, where Oliver is introduced to arch-baddy (and notorious negative ethnic stereotype) Fagin. Saffron Hill was a desperately poor neighborhood at the time--a rookery, so called--with a lot of crime. It was also, to an extent, an Italian neighborhood. Here Padroni, organizers of a human trafficking scheme which brought poor Italian children to London to beg on the streets (at least according to anti-immigrant news reports of the time), ran groups of semi-criminal urchins which resembled Fagin’s. Oliver Twist was “ripped from the headlines.”

As John Dawkins objected to their entering London before nightfall, it was nearly eleven o'clock when they reached the turnpike at Islington. They crossed from the Angel into St. John's Road; struck down the small street which terminates at Sadler's Wells Theatre; through Exmouth Street and Coppice Row; down the little court by the side of the workhouse; across the classic ground which once bore the name of Hockley-in-the-Hole; thence into little Saffron Hill; and so into Saffron Hill the Great: along which the Dodger scudded at a rapid pace, directing Oliver to follow close at his heels. Although Oliver had enough to occupy his attention in keeping sight of his leader, he could not help bestowing a few hasty glances on either side of the way, as he passed along. A dirtier or more wretched place he had never seen. The street was very narrow and muddy, and the air was impregnated with filthy odours. There were a good many small shops; but the only stock in trade appeared to be heaps of children, who, even at that time of night, were crawling in and out at the doors, or screaming from the inside. The sole places that seemed to prosper amid the general blight of the place, were the public-houses; and in them, the lowest orders of Irish were wrangling with might and main. Covered ways and yards, which here and there diverged from the main street, disclosed little knots of houses, where drunken men and women were positively wallowing in filth; and from several of the door-ways, great ill-looking fellows were cautiously emerging, bound, to all appearance, on no very well-disposed or harmless errands.

Deep in the heart of London

2006-02-21T11:06:00.000-05:00

Deep in the heart of London, originally uploaded by niznoz.

Pickering Place. Once the home to the Texas Legation to the Court of St. James. Which brings to mind this song, somehow:

London Homesick Blues
by Gary P. Nunn. As sung by David Allan Coe, et al.

London you're a goner.
Even London Bridge has fallen down,
and moved to Arizona,
now I know why.
And I'll substantiate the rumor
that the English sense of humor
is drier than the Texas sand.
You can put up your dukes,
and you can bet your boots,
that I'm leavin' just as fast as I can.

Chorus;
I wanna go home with the armadillo.
Good country music from Amarillo and Abilene.
The friendliest people and the prettiest women
you've ever seen.

Well it's cold over here, and I swear,
I wish they'd turn the heat on.
And where in the world is that English girl,
I promised I would meet on the third floor.
And of the whole damn lot, the only friend I got,
is a smoke and a cheap guitar.
My mind keeps roamin', my heart keeps longin'
to be home in a Texas bar.

Chorus

Well, I decided that, I'd get my cowboy hat
and go down to Marble Arch Station.
'Cause when a Texan fancies, he'll take his chances,
and chances will be takin, now that's for sure.
And them Limey eyes, they were eyein' a prize,
that some people call manly footwear.
And they said you're from down South,
and when you open your mouth,
you always seem to put your foot there.

The Big Match

2005-10-25T17:17:00.000-04:00

The Big Match, originally uploaded by niznoz.

fromThe physiology of taste
by Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin

II. A NATIONAL VICTORY.

When I lived in New York I used every once in a while to pass the evening in a kind of tavern kept by a man named Little, (the old lank coffee house) where one could always get turtle soup and all the dishes common in the United States.

I often went thither with the Vicomte de la Massue and M. Fehr, an old broker of Marsailles; all three of us were emigrants, and we used to drink ale and cider, and pass the evening very pleasantly together.

There I became acquainted with a Mr. Wilkinson, who was a native of Jamaica, and a person he was very intimate with, for he never left him. The latter, the name of whom I do not remember was one of the most extraordinary men I ever met. He had a square face, keen eyes, and appeared to look attentively at everything, though his features were motionless as those of a blind man. When he laughed it was with what the English call a horse's laugh, and immediately resumed his habitual taciturnity. Mr. Wilkinson seemed about forty, and, in manner and appearance, seemed to be a gentleman.

The Englishman seemed to like our company, and more than once shared the frugal entertainment I offered my friends, when Mr. Wilkinson took me one evening aside and said he intended to ask us all to dine with him.

I accepted the invitation for three o'clock on the third day after.

The evening passed quietly enough, but when I was about to leave, a waiter came to me and said that the West Indian had ordered a magnificent dinner, thinking their invitation a challenge. The man with the horse's laugh had undertaken to drink us Frenchmen drunk.

This intelligence would have induced me, if possible, to decline the banquet. It was, however, impossible, and following the advice of the Marshal de Saxe, we determined, as the wine was uncorked, to drink it.

I had some anxiety, but being satisfied that my constitution was young, healthy and sound, I could easily get the better of the West Indian, who probably was unused to liquors.

I however, went to see Messrs. Fehr and Massue, and in an occular allocution, told them of my plans. I advised them to drink as little as possible, and to avoid too many glasses, while I talked to our antagonists. Above all things, I advised them to keep up some appetite, telling them that food had the effect of moderating the fumes of wine.

Thus physically and morally armed, we went to the old bank coffee house, where we found our friends; dinner was soon ready. It consisted of a huge piece of beef, a roasted turkey, (plain) boiled vegetables, a salad and pastry.

Wine was put on the table. It was claret, very good, and cheaper than it then was in France.

Mr. Wilkinson did the honors perfectly, asking us to eat, and setting us an example, while his friend, who seemed busy with his plate, did nothing but laugh at the corners of his mouth.

My countrymen delighted me by their discretion.

After the claret came the port and Madeira. To the latter we paid great attention.

Then came the dessert composed of butter, cheese and hickory nuts. Then came the time for toasts, and we drank to our kings, to human liberty, and to Wilkinson's daughter Maria, who was, as he said, the prettiest woman in Jamaica.

Then came spirits, viz., rum, brandy, etc. Then came songs, and I saw things were getting warm. I was afraid of brandy and asked for punch. Little brought a bowl, which, doubtless, he had prepared before. It held enough for forty people, and was larger than any we have in France.

This gave me courage; I ate five or six well buttered rolls, and I felt my strength revive. I looked around the table and saw my compatriots apparently fresh enough, while the Jamaican began to grow red in the face, and seemed uneasy. His friend said nothing, but seemed so overcome that I saw the catastrophe would soon happen.

I cannot well express the amazement caused by this denouement, and from the burden of which I felt myself relieved. I rang the bell; Little came up; I said, "see these gentlemen well taken care of."? We drank a glass to their health. At last the waiter came and bore off the defeated party feet foremost. Wilkinson's friend was motionless, and our host would insist on singing, "Rule Britannia."

The New York papers told the story the next day, and added that the Englishman had died. This was not so, for Mr. Wilkinson had only a slight attack of the gout.

diverged: tiled vaulted ceiling Municipal Building, New York City.

2005-10-19T09:51:00.000-04:00

diverged: tiled vaulted ceiling Municipal Building, New York City., originally uploaded by niznoz.

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I--
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
-- Robert Frost: from The Road Not Taken (1915)

Guastavino tiled, vaulted ceiling in the Municipal Building (maybe you will get married here), New York City, 1914.

The lines of the tiles made me think of the poem. I like that they, the poem and the ceiling, are of roughly the same vintage, although its a pretty meaningless coincidence.

Recuerdo

2005-09-28T09:07:00.000-04:00

Ferry, originally uploaded by niznoz.

We were very tired, we were very merry—
We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry.
It was bare and bright, and smelled like a stable—
But we looked into a fire, we leaned across a table,
We lay on a hilltop underneath the moon;
And the whistles kept blowing, and the dawn came soon.

We were very tired, we were very merry—
We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry;
And you ate an apple, and I ate a pear,
From a dozen of each we had bought somewhere;
And the sky went wan, and the wind came cold,
And the sun rose dripping, a bucketful of gold.

We were very tired, we were very merry—
We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry.
We hailed, "Good morrow, mother!" to a shawl-covered head,
And bought a morning paper, which neither of us read;
And she wept, "God bless you!" for the apples and the pears,
And we gave her all our money but our subway fares.

Edna St. Vincent Millay

christchurch, spitalfields

2005-09-19T21:22:00.000-04:00

christchurch, spitalfields, originally uploaded by niznoz.

In 1902 Jack London arrived in London, and attempted to visit the East End. His friends told him not to, Thomas Cook’s the travel agency, who could organize a trek across Tibet--could take you to the very ends of the earth, said it was impossible, and a cab driver didn’t know how to find it (London cab drivers still don’t want to go anywhere they don’t think they’ll pick up a good fare, although I've never heard of them saying they couldn't find the "East End." Besides, there are plenty of fares there now). So, nearly 30 years before George Orwell was down and out in Paris and London, Jack London donned a scruffy suit of second hand clothes, and walked east to see how the other half lived. Here he describes the garden of Hawksmoor’s Christchurch.

The shadow of Christ's Church falls across Spitalfields Garden, and in the shadow of Christ's Church, at three o'clock in the afternoon, I saw a sight I never wish to see again. There are no flowers in this garden, which is smaller than my own rose garden at home. Grass only grows here, and it is surrounded by sharp-spiked iron fencing, as are all the parks of London Town, so that homeless men and women may not come in at night and sleep upon it.

As we entered the garden, an old woman, between fifty and sixty, passed us, striding with sturdy intention if somewhat rickety action, with two bulky bundles, covered with sacking, slung fore and aft upon her. She was a woman tramp, a houseless soul, too independent to drag her failing carcass through the workhouse door. Like the snail, she carried her home with her. In the two sacking-covered bundles were her household goods, her wardrobe, linen, and dear feminine possessions.

We went up the narrow gravelled walk. On the benches on either side was arrayed a mass of miserable and distorted humanity, the sight of which would have impelled Dore to more diabolical flights of fancy than he ever succeeded in achieving. It was a welter of rags and filth, of all manner of loathsome skin diseases, open sores, bruises, grossness, indecency, leering monstrosities, and bestial faces. A chill, raw wind was blowing, and these creatures huddled there in their rags, sleeping for the most part, or trying to sleep. Here were a dozen women, ranging in age from twenty years to seventy. Next a babe, possibly of nine months, lying asleep, flat on the hard bench, with neither pillow nor covering, nor with any one looking after it. Next, half a dozen men, sleeping bolt upright or leaning against one another in their sleep. In one place a family group, a child asleep in its sleeping mother's arms, and the husband (or male mate) clumsily mending a dilapidated shoe. On another bench a woman trimming the frayed strips of her rags with a knife, and another woman, with thread and needle, sewing up rents. Adjoining, a man holding a sleeping woman in his arms. Farther on, a man, his clothing caked with gutter mud, asleep with head in the lap of a woman, not more than twenty-five years old, and also asleep. -- The People of the Abyss by Jack London (Lawrence Hill Books, New York, 1995)

.

For much of the twentieth century the small park remained a place where the homeless slept and was known, after the vermin that afflicted them, as Itchy Park (one of several green spaces in London to have that nickname).

Photo by Jack London. An illustrated The People of the Abyss is available online from berkeley.edu

fire patrol

2005-09-07T12:57:00.000-04:00

fire patrol, originally uploaded by niznoz.

Nearly every "full-blooded" Bowery male, whether immigrant or native-born, laborer or artisan, belonged to a fire company. These volunteer organizations were para-political, para-fraternal entities, organized by neighborhood, by ancestry. Like army divisions, they were formally numbered but were actually known by allusive nicknames: Big Six (famous for being Boss Tweed's company), Black Joke, Old Rock, Charter Oak, Americus, White Ghost, Shad Belly, Dry Bones, Red Rover, Hay Wagon, Bean Soup, Old Junk. -- from Low Life by Luc Sante.

The municipal fire service began in 1865 and eventually replaced the fire companies. But the insurance companies had started the move to a professional service in the 1830's when the Fire Patrol was created.

Fire Patrol is not the FDNY, although their jobs are just as dangerous. This Patrol house dates from 1907.

From The Wall Street Journal Mar 16, 1987:

NEW YORK -- Garbed in black fire-resistant coats and heavy red helmets, sirens on their red trucks wailing, three crews from the New York Fire Patrol race to an early-morning fire in an office building. They aren't firefighters. Their trucks carry no hoses or other equipment for dousing flames.

Instead, the fire patrolmen troop into the burning building and set about protecting the interests of their private-sector employers: insurance companies that write fire policies. Working mainly on the two floors directly below the firemen and the fire, the patrolmen deploy heavy canvas tarpaulins and electric pumps to minimize water and smoke damage -- and thus cut insurance claims.

Almost unknown to city residents, the New York Fire Patrol has been rushing to fires here since the 1830s. It traces its roots back even further, to 1803, when merchants organized the Mutual Assistance Bag Co. to haul out goods from one another's premises (in bags) during fires. The patrol, in fact, predates the city's paid fire department.

Once there were fire patrols in more than 20 American cities. But for 25 years, since closings in Chicago, Philadelphia and Baltimore, New York's has been the only one. London insurers ended a similar operation in 1983.

Patrol House 2, shown above, in Greenwich Village, is located opposite the site of a house where Edgar Allen Poe used to live. It is, apparently, haunted.

Hawker

2005-08-31T17:13:00.000-04:00

Hawker, originally uploaded by niznoz.

Rev. Hawker, opium smoking poet and vicar of Morwenstow.

Robert Stephen Hawker (1803-1875)

The Song of the Western Men

I.
1 A good sword and a trusty hand!
2 A merry heart and true!
3 King James's men shall understand
4 What Cornish lads can do.

II.
5 And have they fixed the where and when?
6 And shall Trelawny die?
7 Here's twenty thousand Cornish men
8 Will know the reason why!

III.
9 Out spake their captain brave and bold,
10 A merry wight was he:
11 "If London Tower were Michael's hold,
12 We'll set Trelawny free!

IV.
13 "We'll cross the Tamar, land to land,
14 The Severn is no stay, --
15 With `one and all,' and hand in hand,
16 And who shall bid us nay?

V.
17 And when we come to London Wall,
18 A pleasant sight to view,
19 Come forth! Come forth, ye cowards all,
20 Here's men as good as you.

VI.
21 Trelawny he's in keep and hold,
22 Trelawny he may die; --
23 But here's twenty thousand Cornish bold,
24 Will know the reason why!"

Stormy nights, and a sea mountains high, and the thunder on the shore, heard three miles inland -- those are the times when I like to think of Parson Hawker, the Cornish mystic and poet. He was born at Plymouth in 1803, he went to the Grammar School, Cheltenham, and a a boy he was given to practical jokes. There was, for instance, the time when he dressed himself up in sea weed and little else and sat singing on the rocks at Bude and combing his hair. Some of the people of the place thought he was a mermaid. He went to Oxford and at the age of nineteen he married a lady of forty-one. He loved her very much indeed all her life. She died in 1863 aged eighty. 'It will be long before I shall sleep,' he wrote, 'Nearly forty years and never five night away from her. And now I start up to desolation.' But a year later, at the age of sixty, he married a Polish girl of twenty and had two daughters. He died in 1875. For forty years he had been Vicar of Morwenstowe. . . Hawker would sand at his Vicarage door, hand outstretched to welcome, He was large, silver haired, red-faced, excitable, and humorous, with blue eyes. He refused to war black like a clergyman, so he had a plum-colored tailcoat, a fisherman's dark blue Jersey with a red cross embroidered on the side where the centurion's spear pierced our Lord, breeches, and high sea boots made of Hessian. If he had a hat it would be a plum-colored or brown beaver. He did not tolerate fools who came to see him. There is the story of a tourist who said, 'Mr. Hawker, what are your views and opinions?' The Vicar took him to a window in the passage facing the sea. 'There is Hennacliffe, the highest cliff on this coast, on the right; the church on the left; the Atlantic Ocean in the middle. These are my views. My opinions I keep to myself.' But he dearly like a talk with genuine people. Tennyson called once, with his long black hair, Spanish face and cloak. They walked out on to the cliffs, quoting Homer and retranslating him to the thunder of the rollers hundreds of feet below them. From Hawker of Morwenstowe (BBC WESt of England Home Service broadcast 7 October 1945 - abridged version printed in The Listener, 18 October 1945) collected in Coming Home: An Anthology of Prose by John Betjeman (Vintage, London 1998)

Morwenstow today is, possibly, even quieter than it was in the days of Hawker. Tourists come in the summer for cream teas, and there's a solid inn where you can get a pint and a meal all year round. The wind howls, the surf roars, surfers have replaced smugglers, and the spooks at GCHQ have taken the place of the revenue men. The church is on the site of an 8th century celtic chapel, which, the leaflet for sale in the church explains, was probably on the site of a pagan religious structure as there is often a remarkable continuity in the places that man chooses to worship.

Wiliam Blake

2005-08-30T13:34:00.000-04:00

Wiliam Blake, originally uploaded by niznoz.

London:

I wander through each chartered street,
Near where the chartered Thames does flow,
And mark in every face I meet
Marks of weakness, marks of woe.

In every cry of every man,
In every infant's cry of fear,
In every voice, in every ban,
The mind-forged manacles I hear.

How the chimney-sweeper's cry
Every blackening church appals;
And the hapless soldier's sigh
Runs in blood down palace walls.

But most through midnight streets I hear
How the youthful harlot's curse
Blasts the new-born infant's tear,
And blights with plagues the marriage hearse.

No. 5

2005-05-17T16:02:00.000-04:00

No. 5, originally uploaded by niznoz.

The Great Figure
by William Carlos Williams

Among the rain
and lights
I saw a figure 5
in gold
on a red
fireturck
moving
tense
unheeded
to gong clangs
siren howls
and wheels rumbling
through the dark city.

As an illustration of William Carlos William's poem, with the exception of the figure 5 in gold, the above picture is pretty lousy. Even more so on the scene: the firemen seemed relaxed and deliberate. They had travelled, at a modest pace, only about 300 yards from the firehouse on 7th Avenue along Houston to Sullivan Street. None the less, I was slightly star-struck by the number 5 on the fire engine: "I saw you in a poem, just the other day."

Peter Stuyvesant

2005-05-10T21:25:00.000-04:00

Peter Stuyvesant, originally uploaded by niznoz.

[Peter] Stuyvesant [1602-1672] had other ideas. He was family man now, and he wanted to put down his roots. Within the year [1650] he would arrange to buy the farm, called Bouwereie Number One, outright from the company, and then purchase acreage on both sides of it, giving him a plantation stretching from the East River west to the center of the island and covering approximately three hundred acres. Here he built a manor and chapel. Here he would live out his life and be buried, and here, over the parade of centuries, flappers, shtetl refugees, hippies, and punks--an aggregate of local residents running from Trotsky to Auden to Charlie Parker to Joey Ramone--would shuffle past his tomb*

*As a nice metaphor for the way history has muddled Manhattan's Dutch period, Stuyvesant's tombstone, embedded in the foundation of the Church of St. Mark's-in-the-Bowery, manages to get both his age and title wrong.

The Island at the Center of the World: The Epic Story of Dutch Manhattan and the Forgotten Colony That Shaped America by Russell Shorto, Vintage Books, 2005

(former) McGraw-Hill Building

2005-04-20T23:12:00.000-04:00

(former) McGraw-Hill Building, originally uploaded by niznoz.

330 West 42nd Street

The building accommodates three categories of activity that correspond to the setbacks of its section; printing works in the base, loft spaces for book productions in the middle and offices in the slender shaft. Once, when it suited him, Hood pretended to have no feeling for color: "What color? Let's see. How many colors are there--red, yellow and blue? Let's make it red." Now he considers yellow, orange, green, gray, red, Chinese red and black with orange trimming for the building. The tower is to be shaded from a darker tone at the base to a lighter one toward the top, "where it finally blends off into the azure of the sky. . ." To realize this denial of the tower's presence, one of Hood's assistants checks the location of each single tile--its fit within the overall project of "disappearance"--with binoculars from a window opposite the construction site.

So here we have a building, which now hovers over the Port Authority Bus Station, whose airy top, which by design is indistinguishable from the surrounding sky, can take an equally (or not) airy idea and, as it travels down through the body of the building apply to it the alchemy of the publishing industry, until, at some length, it is ejected on the pavement as a book. Textbooks from heaven. Ephemeral excreta from the jolly green giant.

its golden shades pulled down to reflect the sun, the McGraw-Hill Building looks like a fire raging inside an iceberg: the fire of Manhattanism inside the iceberg of Modernism.

Both quotes from Delirious New York by Rem Koolhaas, The Monacelli Press, New York 1994.

Ansonia Hotel

2005-04-19T20:34:00.000-04:00

Ansonia Hotel, originally uploaded by niznoz.

2109 Broadway

Built in 1904, the Ansonia Hotel is a gorgeous confection. Beaux-Arts? So they say. Mit schlag? Absolutely! Full of architecutural creamy goodness outside, the hotel (despite its name it's an apartment house) possesses extra thick walls, making the apartments attractive to musicans (Arturo Toscanini, and Igor Stravinksy both lived there), and anybody who doesn't mind living next door to musicians as long as you don't have to hear them. Other residents included Babe Ruth, Enrico Caruso, Florenz Ziegfeld, and Theodore Dreiser.

The naughty 70's swingers club "Plato's Retreat" was housed in the basement

power station

2005-03-28T09:27:00.000-05:00

power station, originally uploaded by niznoz.

The connection of this picture to the music of Pink Floyd is, in reality, tenuous, but pretty obvious:

...In the late 1980's, Yakutsk musicians in the Arctic regions of Siberia became obsessed with the music of Pink Floyd. All the best young bands sounded like Pink Floyd except somehow more immediate and more authentic. It was a cargo-culture phenomenon. Asked to explain how a renegade copy of Dark Side of the Moon could galvanize an entire subculture, one musician said, "The sound reminded us of the snow."

Destiny in My Right Hand: "The Wreck of Old '97" and "Dead Man's Curve" an essay by Dave Thomas (lead singer and founder of Pere Ubu) in The Rose and The Briar: Death, Love and Liberty in the American Ballad. edited by Sean Wilentz and Greil Marcus, Norton, New York, 2005.

Assassin

2005-03-24T12:25:00.000-05:00

guerilla, originally uploaded by niznoz.

This bullet is an old one.

In 1897, it was fired at the president of Uruguay by a young man from Montevideo, Avelino Arredondo, who had spent long weeks without seeing anyone so that the world might know that he acted alone. thirty years earlier, Lincoln had bee murdered by that same ball, by the criminal or magical hand of an actor transformed by the words of Shakespeare into Marcus Brutus, Caesar's murderer. In the mid-seventeenth century, vengeance had employed it for the assassination of Sweden's Gustavus Adolphus in the midst of the public hecatomb of battle.

In earlier times, the bullet had been other tings, because Pythagorean metempsychosis is not reserved for humankind alone. It was the silken cord given to viziers in the East, the rifles and bayonets that cut down the defenders of the Alamo, the triangular blade that slit a queen's throat, the wood of the Cross and the dark nails that pierced the flesh of the Redeemer, the poison kept by the Carthaginian chief in a n iron ring on his finger, the serene goblet that Socarates drank down one evening.

In the dawn of time it was the stone that Cain hurled at Abel, and in the future it shall be many things that we cannot even imagine today, but that will be able to put an end to men and their wondrous, fragile life. -- In Memoriam, J.F.K., Jorge Luis Borges

tea rooms

2005-03-22T15:01:00.000-05:00

tea rooms, originally uploaded by niznoz.

A tea-shop is a delightful place. It is the milestone that marks the end of a day's work.

In the provinces, and particularly in the north and in Scotland, where men take tea with passionate sincerity, frequently starting with sardines and ending with apple tart, the tea-shop occupies an appropriately massive position in daily life. London's tea-shops are, however, talk-shops, refuges from a day's shopping, trysting-places after a terrible eight hours' separation.

O, the eyes that meet over a muffin every afternoon in London; the hands that thrill to a casual touch beneath the crumpet plate. . .

London's tea-shops are of many kinds, from the standardized shop to the good pull-up for millionaires constructed on the Paris plan, where slim Gruyere sandwiches hide in paper coats, and cakes taste of Benedictine, and bills have a queer habit of working out at fifteen shillings.

Then, of course, there is the cosy type of tea-shop run on amateur lines where genteel young women who do not seem to have forgotten William Morris bend wistfully over the meringues in brown or sage green crepe de Chine gowns and an air shattered romance. -- Women and Tea from The Heart of London by H.V. Morton, Methuen, 1922.

Where do hands not thrill to a casual touch beneath the crumpet plate. The memory of the memory of the tea shop is fast fading in London. You'll get the same tea-bag in six ounces of tepid water you get anywhere else in the world, and you'll like it.

1917: Republic of Greenwich Village

2005-02-16T22:50:00.000-05:00

The Washington Arch was built in 1889. It was designed by Stanford White. A fitting tribute to the father of our country to be sure, and a gem of the beaux art school of architecture. But, better than this, a great place to party and excellent vantage point to see in dawn while declaring your independence from the bourgeois world:

[Gertrude Drick] discovered a neglected but accessible staircase (now sealed) that led to the top of the Washington Square arch, an don a fall evening led Sloan, Marcel Duchamp, and three actors, . . . up there. They carried Chinese lanterns, red balloons, hot-water bags for sitting on, and supplies of food and wine. [Drick] read a Greenwich Village declaration of independence, proclaimed the existence of the republic, and everyone fired cap pistols and released the red balloons. The party went on until dawn. In the morning passersby noticed clusters of red balloons in the neighborhood trees. p 336 Low Life by Luc Sante (FSG, New York, 1991).

London: mini-true

2005-02-08T11:28:00.000-05:00

mini-true
Originally uploaded by niznoz.

Winston kept his back turned to the telescreen. It was safer, though, as he well knew, even a back can be revealing. A kilometre away the Ministry of Truth, his place of work, towered vast and white above the grimy landscape. This, he thought with a sort of vague distaste -- this was London, chief city of Airstrip One, itself the third most populous of the provinces of Oceania. He tried to squeeze out some childhood memory that should tell him whether London had always been quite like this. Were there always these vistas of rotting nineteenth-century houses, their sides shored up with baulks of timber, their windows patched with cardboard and their roofs with corrugated iron, their crazy garden walls sagging in all directions? And the bombed sites where the plaster dust swirled in the air and the willow-herb straggled over the heaps of rubble; and the places where the bombs had cleared a larger patch and there had sprung up sordid colonies of wooden dwellings like chicken-houses? But it was no use, he could not remember: nothing remained of his childhood except a series of bright-lit tableaux occurring against no background and mostly unintelligible.

-- George Orwell 1984

Senate House and its library, despite being the architectural basis for the Ministry of Truth in George Orwell's 1984 is still the repository of archived material. No one is working there, busily recreating the past, changing history to suit the needs of the government.
Even if it would be a convenient.

London: Roman Baths

2005-01-31T11:23:00.000-05:00

An American once told me in Vienna that the Strand possesses a Roman bath well worth seeing, but, being a good Londoner, I did not believe him -- until I went there.
This Bath, which was constructed in A.D. 200 -- seventeen hundred years ago -- is opposite Bush House, in the Strand. Think of that. bush house and Rome! It is in the basement of No. 5 Strand Lane, an astonishing, a narrow, dingy alley that, in one step, takes you back to the darkest days of Victorian London, when lanterns glimmered in passages and 'Peelers' twirled truncheons and wore stove-pipe hats. No. 5 belongs to the Rev/ pennigton Bickford, Rector of St. Clement Danes, who bought the house a few years ago to save the bath, which was - O incredible London! - in danger of destruction.
Page 143 - Our Roman Bath. Notes from London by H.V. Morton - fifth edition, Methuen and Co, Ltd. London 1941

O credulous Morton! Architectural critic Nikolaus Pevsner(page 371 -- The Buildings of England: London and Westminster Simon Bradley and Nikolaus Pevsner. Yale), for one, thinks this unlikely: "David Copperfield took a cold plunge in it before setting off to walk to Hampstead." which is all very well, but he's fictional. "The dimensions of the bricks are not Roman, and the high ground level also rules out a Roman origin. More likely is that the bath belonged with ARUNDEL HOUSE, which would suggest a C16 or early C17 date." Case closed. So what you have in this back alley off the strand, is merely a 16th century bath -- an era not noted for bathing -- built by some aristocratic collector of antiquities. It dosn't really matter who built it. Its weird enough to find the alley with the bath. Its owned by the National Trust (check the link for directions etc.), but it is unattended. You push a light switch on a timer and peer down into what looks like a flooded basement (well lit, made of a khaki sandstone). It makes you wonder what's hidden around the next corner, what building has a lightswitch on it so you can peer inside. It is fantastic.

My friend Ben Chant, in his as yet unpublished Liars Guide to London (copyright Benedict Chant) imagines that the Roman Bath is part of a ancient Temple complex. Here he describes a visit:

Turn left out of the cafe and walk up Arundel Street until you reach Temple Place on your left. This is the site of the spectacular Roman Temple that gave the area its name. Follow the lane round to the right and ring the bell. The Temple is open from 9:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m., but it's frequently rented out in the evenings to parties of lawyers and business people from the nearby Inns of Court or the City, so call ahead if you are planning to arrive after 6:00 p.m. The National Trust looks after the temple so there's no admission fee, just the venerable custodian standing next to a collection box as you enter. If you do donate something you'll find the staff eager to give you an informal tour. You should probably do this because although the temple appears to be simply designed (it was merely the "private chapel" of a minor Roman official), your guide can point out some peculiar details. Note, for example, the mosaics of exceptionally priapic rams and dolphin-boys playing in the water. The story goes that there is a room in the back of the temple with wall paintings that match the licentiousness of Pompeii's frescoes, but I have never been able to donate enough money to pry a definite "yes" or "no" from the guides.

Wonderful Saloon

2005-01-17T10:57:00.000-05:00

To a devoted McSorley customer, most other New York City saloons are tense and disquieting. It is possible to relax in McSorley’s. For one thing, it is dark and gloomy, and repose comes easy in a gloomy place. also, the barely audible heartbeatlike ticking of the old clocks is soothing. Also, there is a thick, musty smell that acts as a balm to jerky nerves; it is really a rich compound of the smells of pine sawdust, tap drippings, pipe tobacco, coal smoke, and onions. A bellevue intern once remarked that for some mental states the smell in McSorely’s would be a lot more beneficial than psychoanalysis or sedative pills or prayer. - The Old House at Home from McSorely’s Wonderful Saloon collected in Up in the Old Hotel by Joseph Mitchell. Pantheon, New York, 1992.

Until the 1970's (when, conincidently, the Swiss finally allowed women to vote) McSorely's refused to serve women their ale. Such is the way of small landlocked nations. It's probably Joseph Mitchell's fault as much as anybodys, but the peaceful bar he describes no longer exists. It looks the same, to be sure, but, on weekends, it full of loud beer enthusiasts obliterating history with their weird slogans (i.e. "fucking A!"). But go during the week, early in the day, and you'll get a sense of what made the place special. Of course, you'll be drinking -- early in the day, and in the middle of the week. Thats an excellent way to feel special in itself. Order ale two mugs at a time, but go easy on the cheese, onion and saltine platters.

The Poor Man's Stork Club: 267 The Bowery

2005-01-16T01:49:00.000-05:00

While I was there absorbing the atmosphere and drinks, a midget walked in. . .he was about three and a half feet. I invited him for a drink. He told me that he had just arrived from Los Angeles, where he had been working for Brown & William's Tobacco Co., walking the streets dressed as a penguin. The midget was flush and started buying me drinks. He proudly showed me his social security card, told me that he was thirty-seven years old, was single as the girls only after money, that once in a while he got some affection, but had to pay for it. . . .After the seventh round he got boisterous and offered to fight any man his size in the house. Sammy grabbed the midget and threw him out through the doorway which has a red neon sign saying “Thank you, call again,” hollering at him not to ever come back again. Sammy’s has a blacklist just like Billingsley’s Stork Club uptown.-- Naked City by Weegee (Arthur Fellig). Dacapo Press.

The ground floor contains one of the Bowery’s many kitchen supply stores. The upper floors look like they are being renovated--or dismantled. Bars had more or less left the Bowery by the early nineties (there was Pheobes, and CBGB’s, and Bowery Bar but nothing I can remember below Houston). Now they are coming back, upscale joints to go with the condos. There are a couple of missions left on the Bowery, but it takes a feat of imagination to conjure the world of the “poor mans stork club.”

Update: On October 5th, 2005 The NewYork Daily News ran a story by Elliot Rosenberg called "Last Stop Before Oblivion: Sammy's Bowery Folliers" on the last days of Sammy's on the Bowery and the aging vaudville performers who performed there. Great stuff.

Shirtwaist Factory Fire

2005-01-15T11:24:00.000-05:00

"And this also," said Marlow suddenly, "has been one of the dark places of the earth." -- Heart of Darkness by Joesph Conrad.

Another entry on the gruesome working conditions that existed for women in the early 20th century. The Brown building, on the intersection of Washington and Greene Streets, near Washington Square in Greenwich Village, is nowadays part of NYU, which uses it for office space and classrooms. It looks no different than many of the buildings surrounding it (although it appears to be in the midst of a renovation), but was once the scene of great horror.

In 1911 it was known as the Asch building, and was home to the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory. On the 25th March of that year, a fire started in the factory, on the eighth floor, and was quickly spread by the flammable materials used in clothing manufacture. With few exits, and those that existed blocked and locked, a large number of the almost exclusively female workforce were trapped. Many chose to jump out the windows rather than face the flames. Ultimately 146 Women died. The fire was witnessed by a large number of passersby, and the newspapers ran gruesome pictures of the dead. The public outcry at the disaster and the working conditions which led to the deaths of so many became the impetus for the successful efforts of the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union to organize in the garment district.
There is a small plaque on the building commemorating the fire and the building's status as a landmark, but thousands of people must pass the building everyday without being aware of its history.

Facts and figures from the The Encyclopedia of New York City.¹
¹The Encyclopedia of New York City. Edited by Kenneth T. Jackson. Yale University Press. 1995.

McGurk's Suicide Hall

2005-01-12T18:57:00.000-05:00

By popular accord, the very worst dive on the Bowery in the 1890’s was McGurk’s Suicide Hall, on the East Side just above Houston Street (the building is still standing), and it did not conduct its business in secrecy, since it possessed one of the first electric signs on the avenue. . . . . .Entertainment consisted of singing waiters and a small band; the customers were, as ever, mostly sailors. “It was said,” noted a contemporary, “that his business card reached every seaport in the world.” -- Low Life by Luc Sante.

The Hall got its nickname because of the many suicides which occurred there. In “1899, there were at least six, as well as more than seven attempts.” The victims were mostly the prostitutes who seem to be the main reason for the tavern’s existence.. It was a desperate place: none the less it became a morbid tourist attraction. I don’t know if the skull graffiti is a tribute to it’s past. I doubt it.

A building's history in the New York Times

2004-12-19T13:13:00.000-05:00

Riverside Drive: 1931-1957
A sad and sordid history for the most part. But that's what sells newspapers.

Nov 13, 1931- “Two Women and a 4-year-old girl were injured yesterday afternoon when the automobile in which they were riding was in collision with the rear end of a Fifth Avenue bus on Riverside Drive and Ninety-sixth Street. The accident occurred when the bus stopped suddenly to pick up a passenger and the private car, driven by Joseph Troy, 44, a chauffeur, of 124 West 109th Street, which had been closely following the larger vehicle, did not stop in time. The automobile was owned by Alexander Ostagard of 315 Riverside Drive, whose sister, Olga, 35, was among those injured.”¹
What I want to know is what the 5th avenue bus was doing on Riverside Drive. Perhaps it went to 5th Ave.

Dec 19, 1931 - “Swindlers obtained $400,000 from Katherine Beeson, sister of Charles E. Beeson, vice president of the Pittsburgh Steel Company, it was charged yesterday afternoon, when Peter Visconti, 39 years old, of 315 Riverside Drive, was arrested on a grand larceny complaint made by Miss Beeson.” Visconti, a.k.a. Peter Visco, was a stock salesman, manufacturer, and former pugilist.²

Nov 18, 1935 - “The admiration of Miss Olga Ostergard of 315 Riverside Drive for Will Rogers is expressed in her own memorial to the cowboy humorist in the form of a life of Rogers as told in newspaper and magazine stories. Miss Ostergard has been keeping her scrapbook on Rogers since she first saw him on the stage in 1929 when he substituted for Fred Stone.”³
A different spelling but surely the same Olga who was involved in the car crash.

Aug 23rd, 1936 - “An unidentified man, about 25 years old, fell or jumped to his death about 6 o’clock yesterday evening fromthe roof of a twenty-story apartment house at 315 Riverside Drive, according to the police. he wore a blue polo shirt, black sneakers and gray shorts. Persons on the Drive told police that earlier they had seen him running along a pathway there. The body landed on the Drive after striking an extension on the seventeenth story. The man was 5 feet 8 inches tall, had black hair and blue eyes.⁴

Dec 5th, 1938 - “Mrs. Helen F. Ryan, 38 years old, who, as Helen Cressman, appeared in the Ziegfeld Follies in 1922, was discovered a suicide yesterday in her apartment at 315 Riverside Drive. She was found by the superintendent at 6 A.M., seated in the kitchen near a gas stove with a jet open.”⁵ Her 12 year old daughter, affected by the gas, was treated, and placed with relatives.

Aug 4th, 1947 - “For the first time in its history the Police Department this morning will mobilize its entire personnel of nearly 18,000 men to sweep from street, saloon, pool hall and other hangouts the horde of bookmakers, estimated to run into the thousands, that infests the city.”⁶ Arrested before the sweep police arrested a “big-time gambler and bookmaker” namedVincent Alo (aged 43), of 315 Riverside Drive.

Nov 10, 1956 - 315 RSD sold by Laura Hall and others to Madison Properties. The building was valued at $760,000⁷

Jun 15, 1957 - “The police Department began a concerted drive yesterday to rid the city of “narcotics peddler, gamblers, prostitures, procurers, tinhorns, and drifters.”” Of the 100 arrested at the time fo the article, nine were ‘bigshots.’ One of those nine was Vincent (Jimmy Blue Eyes) Alo (aged 53) of 315 Riverside Drive, described as an associate of Frank Costello.⁸

Again they're rounding up the usual suspects, and Jimmy Blue Eyes is amongst them.

Links

Jimmy “Blue Eyes” Alo - "According to my best
recollection,I don't remember."

¹ New York Times Nov 13, 1931 “2 Women and Child Hurt in Crash on Drive.”

² New York Times Dec 19, 1931 “Woman Charges $400,000 Swindle.”

³ New York Times Nov 18, 1935 “Roger Admirer Keeps Scrapbook on His Life.”

⁴ New York Times Aug 23, 1936 “Dies in Plunge on Drive.”

⁵ New York Times Dec 5, 1938 “Ex-Follies Girl Suicide.”

⁶ New York Times Aug 4, 1947 “18,000 City Police Begin Drive Today to Rout ‘Bookies.’”

⁷ New York Times Nov 10, 1956 “Apartments sold on the West Side.”

⁸ New York Times Jun 15, 1957 “Police Open Drive on Undesireables.”

water towers

2004-12-03T23:13:00.000-05:00

water towers
Originally uploaded by niznoz.

Memory is redundant: it repeats signs so that the city can begin to exist.

Invisible Cities - Italo Calvino

Watertowers stand sentry above New York like a silent army. You sometimes become aware of their existance only when you see their shadows against a building's wall (a sight which must be more common in winter than in summer given the angle of the sun). Anyway-they're a benign presence. Helpfully providing water pressure to put out fires, or allow you to shower on the 13th floor. Despite their uniformity, they represent a pre-industrial technology, put together by hand and (to an extent) custom built. Pigeons are their only enemy. Hawks perch on them scanning the sidewalk for squirrels and other small critters.

Naked yoga

2004-11-19T14:55:00.000-05:00

New yorkers are keen on fitness.

Unfinished: The Cathedral

2004-11-09T19:14:00.000-05:00

Eight-thirty one morning found her staring up at the dim vastness of the dome of the cathedral of St. John the Divine. The great gray pile, mountainous, almost ominous, looms up in the midst of the dingy commonplaceness of Amsterdam avenue and 110th street. New Yorkers do not know this, or if they know it, the fact does not interest them. New Yorkers do not go to stare up into the murky shadows of this glorious edifice. They would if it were situate in Rome. Bare, crude, unfinished, chaotic, it gives rich promise of magnificent fulfillment. In an age when great structures are thrown up to-day, to be torn down tomorrow, this slow-moving giant is at once a reproach and an example. Twenty-five years in building, twenty-five more for completion, it has elbowed its way, stone by stone, into such company as St. Peter's at Rome, and the marvel at Milan.
-- Fanny Herself by Edna Ferber

My understanding is that the builders of St. John planned not to complete it until there were no more wars. Which, I would think, would theologically have to be at the time of the second coming of Jesus, which, for a lot of us, would mean the end of the world. So. No rush as far as I’m concerned, although a time-out on wars etc. would be fine and appreciated. Still -- nosing around St. John’s it sometimes seems like they are not even making an effort to finish it. Piles of gargoyles lounge around commenting on the world as it passes by. And up-to-the-minute equipment (in 1890) is idle (but ready to go). Still its nice to see a scene as rustic as this (as peaceful, anyway) in New York City.

The Shape of New York

2004-10-26T16:25:00.000-04:00

Where the gloomy prison of the Tombs now stands, there was a lake of crystal water, overhung by towering trees. Its silence and solitude were disturbed only by the cry of the water-fowl which disported upon its surface, while its depths sparkled with the spotted trout. The lake emptied into the Hudson river by a brook which rippled over its pebbly bed, along the present line of Canal street. This beautiful lake was fed by large springs and was sufficiently deep to float any ship in the navy. Indeed it was some time before its bottom could be reached by any sounding line.
Peter Stuyvesant, the Last Dutch Governor of New Amsterdam by John S. C. Abbott - Project Gutenberg

I became aware of the old island here that flowered once for Dutch sailors’ eyes — a fresh, green breast of the new world. Its vanished trees, the trees that had made way for Gatsby’s house, had once pandered in whispers to the last and greatest of all human dreams; for a transitory enchanted moment man must have held his breath in the presence of this continent, compelled into an aesthetic contemplation he neither understood nor desired, face to face for the last time in history with something commensurate to his capacity for wonder.
The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald

In New York the sun reaches everyone at the hour of the day appointed by their position in the grid pattern, weather blows in from every side, but one can go for days (weeks, years) without being aware of the shape of the natural world around one. You can forget entirely about topography (and for that matter, history) in New York City, but it is there, at the end of every street.

When the Sleeper Awakes

2004-10-19T23:51:00.000-04:00

"In place of these, a lean, bilious-looking fellow, with his pockets full of handbills, was haranguing vehemently about rights of citizens--elections--members of congress--liberty--Bunker’s Hill--heroes of seventy-six--and other words, which were a perfect Babylonish jargon to the bewildered Van Winkle."
Washington Irving (1783–1859) Rip Van Winkle and The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.

Ice floes frozen since the 60's are melting and hibernating mastodons creak about the earth, rooting through piles of ancient garbage for a bite to eat. The Yale debate team of 1967 is polishing their blazer buttons and slapping Old Spice on their craggy faces. I can't imagine being asleep for 30 years and waking up in this election and being confused. Right at home is more like it. We hear more about Vietnam than our current war. 36 years ago the media was obsessed with revolting youth, and revolting youth were obsessed with the war. That is different. Being a pissed-off young person seems like a minority pursuit at the moment.

1980-something

2004-10-12T18:26:00.000-04:00

Liza stares blankly, as if she might have regarded Quadrophenia more along the lines of that movie with Sting in it. Dylan feels despair rising. Fishnet tights do not a cultural vocabulary make. To the ironized, reference-peppered palaver which comprises Dylan's only easy mode of talk former prep-school girls have frequently proved deaf as cats. -- The Fortress of Solitude by Jonathan Lethem

This phenomena (ie looks like a duck, but seems not to understand my quacking) was most disconcerting at first. But even more disconcerting is the reverse: the situation where shared interests, even obsessions, do not preclude having absolutely nothing in common with a person.

Dried beef.

2004-10-09T16:11:00.000-04:00

Remains of cessina. east l.a.

Patio life.

2004-10-08T19:33:00.000-04:00

Lars thinks about dinner.

Regional differences

2004-10-08T19:20:00.000-04:00

Southern californian hill towns. Each with a distinctive cuisine, wines, and culture.

Italy superimposed on southern California

2004-10-08T13:30:00.000-04:00

From the moment I arrived in America, everyone told me that Los Angeles was horrible, that I would really like SFrancisco but would hate LA, so I had convinced myself that I would definitely like it. And indeed I arrive and am immediately enthusiastic: yes, this is the American city, the impossible city, it's so enormous, and since I only enjoy being in huge cities it is just right for me. It is as long as if the area between Milan and Turin were just one single city stretching north as far as Como and south as far as Vercelli.

Italo Calvino - Hermit in Paris

Now, of course, LA sretches roughly the equivalent of from just south of Rome to the Arctic circle, and European intellectuals spend most of the year here working on development deals.

Group A and B

2004-10-07T13:50:00.000-04:00

In New York one may find every class of paper which the imagination can conceive. Every grade of society is catered for. If an Esquimau came to New York, the first thing he would find on the bookstalls in all probability would be the Blubber Magazine, or some similar production written by Esquimaux for Esquimaux. Everybody reads in New York, and reads all the time. The New Yorker peruses his favourite paper while he is being jammed into a crowded compartment on the subway or leaping like an antelope into a moving Street car. -- P.G.Wodehouse - Psmith Journalist

Still true, of course, with the caveat that nowadays half of the specialty market is for pornography. And even more disturbing, but along the same lines of "a magazine about group A, written by possibly group B, but probably group A or indeed C, for group B" are shelter magazines. Group B being the folks lusting after what they haven't ready access to, at least not until they make a bunch of money or get out of jail.

Natures first green is gold.

2004-10-04T18:40:00.000-04:00

And its final green a dirty brown. Abandoned reading matter, October 2004.

Hotel Lincoln

2004-10-01T21:49:00.000-04:00

hotel
Originally uploaded by niznoz.

I walked all the way back to the hotel. Forty-one gorgeous blocks.
from Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger

Sometimes when you look up in New York you are allowed to imagine the city as it was 20, 30, 40 or 80 years ago. I think what suprised me about this building was, in fact, the name: Hotel Lincoln Square.

There's a location (the confluence of North-South Columbus Avenue and diagonal Broadway), next to Lincoln Center, that is being called Lincoln square these days. There's even a Loews Theatre called Lincoln Square. This building, though, is about 10 blocks up-town, looking down on Verdi Square. Which is odd. Increasing the oddness: I assumed Lincoln square as a location dated from no earlier than the building of Lincoln Center (sometime in the early 60's -- just after West Side Story was filmed. The "sets" for the movie are in fact the tenements which had been evacuated prior to being torn down so the Center could be built). But this Hotel is older than that: the sign could be an attempt to garner some reflected glamor from the downtown location, but that seems unlikely.

Anyway. I liked the fire escape, the painted sign, the water tower against the blue sky. I would have taken a picture which got more of the water tower, but there was a women having a loud argument with herself in the ideal spot, and I thought she needed her space.

2004-09-30T11:36:00.000-04:00

103rd and Broadway looks like any Broadway block. A cafeteria, a movie, stores. In the middle of Broadway is an island with some grass and benches placed at intervals. 103rd is a subway stop, a crowded block. This is junk territory. Junk haunts the cafeteria, roams up and down the block, sometimes half-crossing Broadway to rest on one of the island benches. A ghost in daylight on a crowded street. You could always find a few junkies sitting in the cafeteria or standing around outside with coat collars turned up, spitting on the sidewalk and looking up and down the street as they waited for the connection. In summer, they sit on the island benches, huddled like so many vultures in their dark suits. The peddler had the face of a withered adolescent. He was fifty-five but he did not look more than thirty. He was a small, dark man with a thin Irish face. When he did show up - and like many oldtime junkies he was completely unpunctual - he would sit at a table in the cafeteria. You gave him money at the table, and met him around the corner three minutes later where he would deliver the junk. He never had it on him, but kept it stashed somewhere close by. -- Junky by William Burroughs.

This is a picture of 104th and Broadway. The Casa Puebla building used to be a Horn and Hardart cafeteria--possibly purpose built. I don’t know if Burroughs misremembered, or was changing the street names to protect the innocent. Maybe there were two cafeterias on one block. Up through the seventies cafeterias: fancy ones like Horn and Hardart with their little mailboxes of food which could be released for a nickel, and steam-table hells were common in New York. As common as Starbucks and big, chain-drugstores are today. None, as far as I know, now exist on Manhattan. They were full of junkies and beatniks anyway.

Self consuming Dragon

2004-09-30T01:31:00.000-04:00

"The boredom of the voyage is handsomely compensated for by the emotions stirred up on arrival at New york, the most spectacular sight that anyone can see on this earth. The skyscrapers appear grey in the sky which has just cleared and they seem like the ruins of some monstrous New York abandoned three thousand years in the future. Then gradually you make out the colours which are different from any idea you had of them, and a complicated pattern of shapes. Everything is silent and deserted, then the car traffic starts to low. The massive, grey, fin-de-siecle look of the buildings gives New York, as Ollier immediately pointed out, the appearence of a German city." Italo Calvino, 11-9-1959, 'Hermit in Paris' Vintage Books, New York, 2003.

I love this passage. I like the fact that the only comparison he can come up with for New York,is, in fact, New York "three thousand years in the future." Like a dragon eating its own tail. The picture is not illustrative, except of that metaphor (because the moon is waning.)

exit

2004-09-30T00:12:00.000-04:00

exit
Originally uploaded by niznoz.

Just another metaphor for existential angst? More than you know -- its a photograph of the exit (well you knew that!) at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York City. So there's the established church see, and all is dark within, and then there's a way-out, see, and light streams from it. Metaphors a damn fine thing.

Not that I'd take that one too seriously.

Sitting in Starbucks

2004-09-29T18:28:00.000-04:00

Back to this subject matter. Unoriginally I'm checking out the combination of a palm with a infrared keyboard and a wifi card and testing the feasibility of mobile blogging. I guess all I have to say is that it is totally feasible, and almost as convienient as a laptop. But a great deal lighter. I still seem to stuck in starbucks, although I could write anywhere and then cruise around looking to piggyback on somebodies home connection. Or an unprotected business connection, or something simple and free like Bryant Park. The only difficulty I come across is that the palm's browser doesn't automatically redirect to the sign-in page of the wifi network, and most networks, free and pay require you to sign in. Often this requires figuring out in advace where you are going to be and loading up the sign-in url in the browser bookmarks. Now I'm totally unprepared to answer the question "why" I would want to moblog, except, my-friends there is a certain transitory and no-doubt unreasonable feeling of power in being able to publish to the masses (even if no one reads the thing) via something you can fit in yr pocket. Better than postcards, and no duplicated effort, either. Next time I travel I am certainly subjecting my friends to a travel-blog. The next step in this pocket publishing thing will be to make it more automatic, more idiot proof. Something phone based. I can already send photos to my blog by phone. As you can, I hope, see. Anyway - lets see if this works

2004-09-25T11:59:00.000-04:00

40.714 73.999

What place is this, to which the squalid street conducts us? A kind of square of leprous houses, some of which are attainable only by crazy wooden stairs without. What lies beyond this tottering flight of steps, that creak beneath our tread? — a miserable room, lighted by one dim candle, and destitute of all comfort, save that which may be hidden in a wretched bed. Beside it, sits a man: his elbows on his knees: his forehead hidden in his hands. ‘What ails that man?’ asks the foremost officer. ‘Fever,’ he sullenly replies, without looking up. Conceive the fancies of a feverish brain, in such a place as this!
Ascend these pitch-dark stairs, heedful of a false footing on the trembling boards, and grope your way with me into this wolfish den, where neither ray of light nor breath of air, appears to come. A negro lad, startled from his sleep by the officer’s voice — he knows it well — but comforted by his assurance that he has not come on business, officiously bestirs himself to light a candle. The match flickers for a moment, and shows great mounds of dusty rags upon the ground; then dies away and leaves a denser darkness than before, if there can be degrees in such extremes. He stumbles down the stairs and presently comes back, shading a flaring taper with his hand. Then the mounds of rags are seen to be astir, and rise slowly up, and the floor is covered with heaps of negro women, waking from their sleep: their white teeth chattering, and their bright eyes glistening and winking on all sides with surprise and fear, like the countless repetition of one astonished African face in some strange mirror.
from American Notes by Charles Dickens

Five Points: in the 19th century New York's most notorious slum. It is now in the center of Chinatown, somewhere underneath Columbus Park (built in 1897 it is one of Chinatown's few areas of recreation, and is much used), which abuts the criminal courts (and their holding cells, still known as 'the tombs'). The points were created by the intersection of Park, Worth and Baxter streets. For his film of Gangs of New York, Francis Ford Coppola recreated the neighborhood in Rome, using local extras. The original inhabitants were mostly Irish and African-American (and their proximity to each other was probably one of the things that shocked Dickens). Such were the times.

Urban Appliance: My Fridge Wishes to Blog

2004-06-25T14:31:00.000-04:00

Type of fridge:LG Household
Settings: 38º F.
Condition: Slightly soiled.

Contents:
Top Shelf
1 jar Kalustyan's Chilli Pickle, 1 jar Grey Poupon Mustard, 1 jar Wos-Wit Chow-Chow: etc
Mid Shelf
Bag o' beet greens, half onion, left-over buffalo chili, blue berries, small haunch of rabbit.
Bottom Shelf
Left over golden beets in cilantro vinaigrette, Sabra hummus, 1 jar harrisa.
Door.
Orange juice. Two weeks past its sell-by date. Shouldn't matter, acid in orange juice will retard bacteria growth, but slight fermentation in evidence. Would pass as acceptable pruno in mid-security prison, or elite boarding school. (Here's a recipe for Pruno. I wouldn't make it if I were you. If you make it, don't drink it).
Vegtable bins
Left. sprightly. crisp. Not too humid. Radishes keep their color and shape. Cucumbers are firm, dark green, and cool. Right: Poor. Slight mold on onion. NE corner verges on compost. Decay everywhere.

NEXT -- My freezer blog's

Butterflies in Battery Park!!

2004-06-08T21:17:00.000-04:00

Battery Park is filled with these monarch butterflies painted on beige umbrellas. What I wonder about is where they got all those beige umbrellas--makes me think that there must be a LOT of wet Canadians (I mean who else is using beige umbrellas.) They probably own a lot of tan galoshes too. Perhaps someone will paint them as snails.

Victor Matthews’ Beyond Metamorphosis

But Battery Park looks great--rows and rows of giant butterflies receding off into the distance. It does emphasize the fact that New York City parks are becoming almost Parisian: the grass is something which the public does not get to stand on. Just as well. Too many ticks, boogers, snails and earwigs.