Choice quote: “it’s hard to imagine New York without Moss…. Jeremiah Moss, the mourner of a lost Manhattan, could become New York’s conscience.”
Tuesday, September 1, 2009
Next American City
An interview in Next American City: "The Gospel According to Jeremiah Moss."
Choice quote: “it’s hard to imagine New York without Moss…. Jeremiah Moss, the mourner of a lost Manhattan, could become New York’s conscience.”
Choice quote: “it’s hard to imagine New York without Moss…. Jeremiah Moss, the mourner of a lost Manhattan, could become New York’s conscience.”
*Everyday Chatter
"I Heart" takes a look at the High Line's graffiti cover-up. [IH]
Doctorow tackles Harlem's infamous pack-rat Collyer brothers in "a kind of male, New York City version of Grey Gardens." [NYT]
The Brooklyn Book Festival schedule is now available. [MCB]
Mark you calendars for Open House NY: 10/10 & 11. [OHNY]
Take an odorific walking tour of Manhattan. [NYT]
Getting clipped at Kings barber on 14th. [HG]
NY Post "scoop" ends with a punch in the nose. [NYS]
Viral corporate graffiti attacks the EV. [EVG]
Doctorow tackles Harlem's infamous pack-rat Collyer brothers in "a kind of male, New York City version of Grey Gardens." [NYT]
The Brooklyn Book Festival schedule is now available. [MCB]
Mark you calendars for Open House NY: 10/10 & 11. [OHNY]
Take an odorific walking tour of Manhattan. [NYT]
Getting clipped at Kings barber on 14th. [HG]
NY Post "scoop" ends with a punch in the nose. [NYS]
Viral corporate graffiti attacks the EV. [EVG]
Chase Theater
In this Vanity Fair article (which, months later, I still enjoy), James Wolcott recalls a time when, "Each day in Manhattan (can’t speak for the other boroughs) offered an outdoor excursion into street theater. It was carnival-esque... like impromptu psychodrama performed alfresco."
Those days are mostly gone. But if you want to experience the street theater psychodrama of the Now, pick any night of the week and go to Astor Place. Stand facing the sleek glass tower of Gwathmey's Green Monster, peering in to the Chase Bank, closed for the night.
Under the blue hum of the glowing sign, listen to the soundtrack--snippets of cell-phone talk from the commuters streaming behind you.
"I want to party like it's Sex & the City."
Move from west to east, from cubicle to cubicle. Let your eyes scan the flat, empty desks, impersonalized, cleared of all human traces. There is nothing here to spark or stimulate. Notice that you feel nothing, only a vague, spreading depression.
"Well, yeah, it was bad, but I was totally drinking rosé, so it was okay."
On each computer's dark face, the Windows screensaver bounces up, then down again, then up again. The carpet, the color of a corn husk, denies you the drama of even a spill, a stain, a crumpled note angrily tossed away. Here, there is nothing to wonder about.
"So my mortgage broker called me and she was like, Did you send in your co-op package? And I was like, Of course I did!"
And then, at the end of the line, in the very last cubicle, a spark of sorts, a jolt in the otherwise blah topography: A googly-eyed, egg-shaped knick-knack, green and grinning. A crafty doo-dad. A trace of humanity. And you want to weep, because at least this is something.
Think now of Frank O'Hara's line, the one that used to mean so much: "I can't even enjoy a blade of grass unless I know there's a subway handy, or a record store or some other sign that people do not totally regret life."
Those days are mostly gone. But if you want to experience the street theater psychodrama of the Now, pick any night of the week and go to Astor Place. Stand facing the sleek glass tower of Gwathmey's Green Monster, peering in to the Chase Bank, closed for the night.
Under the blue hum of the glowing sign, listen to the soundtrack--snippets of cell-phone talk from the commuters streaming behind you.
"I want to party like it's Sex & the City."
Move from west to east, from cubicle to cubicle. Let your eyes scan the flat, empty desks, impersonalized, cleared of all human traces. There is nothing here to spark or stimulate. Notice that you feel nothing, only a vague, spreading depression.
"Well, yeah, it was bad, but I was totally drinking rosé, so it was okay."
On each computer's dark face, the Windows screensaver bounces up, then down again, then up again. The carpet, the color of a corn husk, denies you the drama of even a spill, a stain, a crumpled note angrily tossed away. Here, there is nothing to wonder about.
"So my mortgage broker called me and she was like, Did you send in your co-op package? And I was like, Of course I did!"
And then, at the end of the line, in the very last cubicle, a spark of sorts, a jolt in the otherwise blah topography: A googly-eyed, egg-shaped knick-knack, green and grinning. A crafty doo-dad. A trace of humanity. And you want to weep, because at least this is something.
Think now of Frank O'Hara's line, the one that used to mean so much: "I can't even enjoy a blade of grass unless I know there's a subway handy, or a record store or some other sign that people do not totally regret life."
Monday, August 31, 2009
*Everyday Chatter
Standard Hotel exhibitionism inspires cover story on voyeurism in NYC. [Metro]
The closing of Cafe des Artistes--"the death of an intrinsic part of old New York." [NYT]
"We Live in Public"--remembering the silicon 90s, when our Webbed life today was forecast in an underground Soho bunker. [NYT]
At Spike Lee's party in Brooklyn for Michael Jackson. [Gothamist]
Slacktivists rally outside Christodora, asking to be adopted. [SG]
The Howl Festival kicks off this week. [BB]
Buying a bra on Orchard Street. [HNY]
The closing of Cafe des Artistes--"the death of an intrinsic part of old New York." [NYT]
"We Live in Public"--remembering the silicon 90s, when our Webbed life today was forecast in an underground Soho bunker. [NYT]
At Spike Lee's party in Brooklyn for Michael Jackson. [Gothamist]
Slacktivists rally outside Christodora, asking to be adopted. [SG]
The Howl Festival kicks off this week. [BB]
Buying a bra on Orchard Street. [HNY]
Friday, August 28, 2009
*Everyday Chatter
Rally tonight with the Slacktivists at the Christodora. [EVG]
Irrationally exuberant Brooklyn condos in danger. [Gothamist]
The story of how Hell's Kitchen didn't become Clinton. [CR]
More gunfire in the East Village. [NMNL]
Michael Jackson's Neverland ride is for sale at Coney Island. [ATZ]
Street art in E. Williamsburg. [NYS]
Irrationally exuberant Brooklyn condos in danger. [Gothamist]
The story of how Hell's Kitchen didn't become Clinton. [CR]
More gunfire in the East Village. [NMNL]
Michael Jackson's Neverland ride is for sale at Coney Island. [ATZ]
Street art in E. Williamsburg. [NYS]
Thursday, August 27, 2009
*Everyday Chatter
Young professional men who can't get laid are looking to hire "wing-women" to help them. [HG]
The experiment to luxurify W. 8th St. may be coming to a crashing halt. [Eater]
More public nudity hijinks--gone awry. [Gothamist]
Meet the Man in the Van in a short film by Sean P. Dunne. [EVG]
The experiment to luxurify W. 8th St. may be coming to a crashing halt. [Eater]
More public nudity hijinks--gone awry. [Gothamist]
Meet the Man in the Van in a short film by Sean P. Dunne. [EVG]
Naked City
I keep thinking about the sexual exhibitionism of the Standard Hotel guests and why, as much as it has captured the national attention, it isn't quite as compelling as one might hope.
First, a quote from Penelope Green's 2007 New York Times article "Yours for the Peeping," on the proliferation of glass towers in the new New York:
"City life has always been to some degree a public performance, and one of its pleasures is the opportunity to catch a glimpse of other habitats, to watch the movie of others’ lives through a half-drawn curtain, as Jimmy Stewart did in 'Rear Window.' But in the same way overheard phone conversations used to be tantalizing until cellphone use reached saturation point — 'I’m on 14th and Fifth,' bellows the guy into his Bluetooth, and your ear — ogling other people’s apartments is no longer so appealing..."
In the old New York of Rear Window, we do catch glimpses. Of Miss Lonelyhearts and her candlelit supper for one.
Of Miss Torso with her balletic legs and many suitors. Of luckless pianists, giddy newlyweds, bored housewives, and violent husbands. All of them unaware they are being seen. All of them caught in flashes and moments, half-hidden by curtains and brick walls. In the blanks, we are left to fill in the story for ourselves, using our imaginations. That is what the gazed-upon city as depicted in Rear Window was all about--the creation of mystery.
At the High Line's Standard Hotel, there is no mystery. The hotel management instructs, via their Facebook page, "We encourage you to exercise your inner exhibitionist... It's all about sex all the time, and you're our star."
What stories are we meant to create from these scenes? These aren't glimpses we catch of people caught unawares in their everyday life, but wholly exposed performances staged like the dullest of movie scenes. In his direction, the luxury hotelier lacks the depth and nuance of Hitchcock.
In this glass slab, a man opens his towel and blandly displays his penis to the crowd below.
photo: NY Post
Another shows off his magazine-glossy muscles and tighty-whities.
photo: NY Post
Men masturbate in tandem. Couples press against the glass while having sex. Nude women pick up lamps and wave them in front of the window to call attention from viewers, "Look at us!"
All of them have paid hundreds of dollars to be in those high-flung fishbowls. And all of them stand as close to the glass as they can get, where every murky aquarium-green window frame is the same, each scene starkly similar to the next.
photo: NY Post
None of this is as sexy as Hitchcock's Miss Torso in the arms of a sailor. Nor as seductive as the red-haired man smoking a pipe in his pajamas in Carson McCullers' short story "Court in the West Eighties," another classic of urban window voyeurism.
In the Rear Window city, in its tenement backyards and apartment-house courtyards, drama unfolded like an old striptease, piece by piece, simultaneously revealing and disguising. The uninvited viewer felt furtive, yearning, filled with the thrill of voyeuristic taboo. Like Jimmy Stewart, he longed to know what was happening behind the curtains. Like Grace Kelly, she could spin from it a romantic, tragic tale.
Each window was a world--unique, colorful, half-hidden--loaded with possibility. In those old windows, we saw not flat-screen-TV objects, but subjects like ourselves.
There are 8 million stories in the naked city. What story are the High Line's naked people trying to tell us?
First, a quote from Penelope Green's 2007 New York Times article "Yours for the Peeping," on the proliferation of glass towers in the new New York:
"City life has always been to some degree a public performance, and one of its pleasures is the opportunity to catch a glimpse of other habitats, to watch the movie of others’ lives through a half-drawn curtain, as Jimmy Stewart did in 'Rear Window.' But in the same way overheard phone conversations used to be tantalizing until cellphone use reached saturation point — 'I’m on 14th and Fifth,' bellows the guy into his Bluetooth, and your ear — ogling other people’s apartments is no longer so appealing..."
In the old New York of Rear Window, we do catch glimpses. Of Miss Lonelyhearts and her candlelit supper for one.
Of Miss Torso with her balletic legs and many suitors. Of luckless pianists, giddy newlyweds, bored housewives, and violent husbands. All of them unaware they are being seen. All of them caught in flashes and moments, half-hidden by curtains and brick walls. In the blanks, we are left to fill in the story for ourselves, using our imaginations. That is what the gazed-upon city as depicted in Rear Window was all about--the creation of mystery.
At the High Line's Standard Hotel, there is no mystery. The hotel management instructs, via their Facebook page, "We encourage you to exercise your inner exhibitionist... It's all about sex all the time, and you're our star."
What stories are we meant to create from these scenes? These aren't glimpses we catch of people caught unawares in their everyday life, but wholly exposed performances staged like the dullest of movie scenes. In his direction, the luxury hotelier lacks the depth and nuance of Hitchcock.
In this glass slab, a man opens his towel and blandly displays his penis to the crowd below.
photo: NY Post
Another shows off his magazine-glossy muscles and tighty-whities.
photo: NY Post
Men masturbate in tandem. Couples press against the glass while having sex. Nude women pick up lamps and wave them in front of the window to call attention from viewers, "Look at us!"
All of them have paid hundreds of dollars to be in those high-flung fishbowls. And all of them stand as close to the glass as they can get, where every murky aquarium-green window frame is the same, each scene starkly similar to the next.
photo: NY Post
None of this is as sexy as Hitchcock's Miss Torso in the arms of a sailor. Nor as seductive as the red-haired man smoking a pipe in his pajamas in Carson McCullers' short story "Court in the West Eighties," another classic of urban window voyeurism.
In the Rear Window city, in its tenement backyards and apartment-house courtyards, drama unfolded like an old striptease, piece by piece, simultaneously revealing and disguising. The uninvited viewer felt furtive, yearning, filled with the thrill of voyeuristic taboo. Like Jimmy Stewart, he longed to know what was happening behind the curtains. Like Grace Kelly, she could spin from it a romantic, tragic tale.
Each window was a world--unique, colorful, half-hidden--loaded with possibility. In those old windows, we saw not flat-screen-TV objects, but subjects like ourselves.
There are 8 million stories in the naked city. What story are the High Line's naked people trying to tell us?
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