--
Arun R. Swamy
arswamy@gmail.com
562-544-7919
Sunday, March 16, 2008
Predicting campaign 08
A year ago, when the first reports of Obama's fundraising success emerged, I wrote the following on the NYT's politics blog, The Caucus. I'm starting to think it was prescient! (Note the reasoning.)
*
My prediction: A hung convention turns to Al Gore as a compromise candidate. (With so many big states going early now and two candidates with so much money and support, neither will be able to knock the other out with "momentum." And Gore is the one candidate who is likely to be acceptable to both camps — tho' just barely to the Clintons.
— Posted by Arun R. Swamy
* The original is comment no. 312 here
*
My prediction: A hung convention turns to Al Gore as a compromise candidate. (With so many big states going early now and two candidates with so much money and support, neither will be able to knock the other out with "momentum." And Gore is the one candidate who is likely to be acceptable to both camps — tho' just barely to the Clintons.
— Posted by Arun R. Swamy
* The original is comment no. 312 here
Saturday, March 15, 2008
Has New York Lost Its Soul?
Some months ago I posted this to an article in the New York Times. #
66. The link to the original blog is here.
October 4th,
2007
4:54 pm
Well this is a subject close to my heart but I just don’t know the answer. I love NY more than any place on earth but every time I move there I end up leaving … and wishing I could move back. I lived there in the mid 70s, early to mid 80s (lower east side and Tribeca) and for a year during the Giuliani era, ending just before 9/11. I just moved to LA from western Massachusetts where the only solace I could find was my ability to drive down to The City in 3 hours — for an afternoon, a weekend, a week it didnt matter.
In the early 80s when I was a high school teacher on the upper west I assigned my students two NYT articles to read on the “neighborhood preservation” debate one denoucning efforts to “clean up” 42nd St. (and yes I do miss the old Times Square and hate the new), the other about efforts on the Upper East Side to keep chains out. My students were all from the hip UWS and couldn’t care less about the snooty UES but now I notice that it’s Upper Broadway that is the biggest victim of chain mania while the UES looks like a quaint old NY neighborhood.
But are chains necessarily the problem? My one complaint about NY in the 70s and 80s is that you couldnt get a decent cup of coffee there — it was either cappuccino in an italian pastry shop or deli bilge. Moving to Berkeley which had a real cafe scene was a real discovery. The only real cafe I knew of in lower Manhattan other than the afore mentioned pastry shops with tiny tables, and where you could never hang out and read a book was the Cloister Cafe on E. 9th St. Sadly the Cloister Cafe went upscale and then out of business but it’s been replaced by many cafes in the area. For the most part, Starbuck’s has created the market for indie cafes (in NY and most of the country) not destroyed existing cafes.
So what do I miss about NY of the 70s and 80s when I visit now and which could plausibly be described as soul? Independent bookstores — as far as I can tell only the Strand remains. The Pageant, also once on 9th St., which appears in Woody Allen’s Hannah and her sisters, had three stories of old books and maps; now gone online, last I checked. The Village area used to have little bookstores all over the place, now gone. Small repertory movie theaters like the old St. Mark’s. Cheap good places to eat all over like those places that served huge helpings of pork chops and Spanish rice in the neighborhood that became Chelsea. The Odessa on Avenue A remains but what else? And the grit, which I do miss, also produced a kind of egalitarianism — everyone dressed scruffy (the better not to be mugged I suppose) whereas now people where their class status literally on their sleeves.
But for all that, if I could afford it, Id move there in a second still. NY’s soul for me is the street energy — people bustling rubbing shoulders walking. Long Beach where I live now has lots of indie cafes but most people drive which means they are still just islands in a sea of freeways. There is little interaction and when it does occur, it turns out most people dont have much to say.
So in the end Im reminded of an essay I assigned that high school class years ago along with those newspaper clippings. I think it was by H.L. Mencken — or else some equally iconic NY author. And it remarked on how the hallmark of NY is that it is always changing and people are always complaining that the true NY is dead. I guess I agree with all the people who say the soul of NY is New Yorkers — and the physical layout of Manhattan which forces them to acknowledge each other whether they want to or not.
66. The link to the original blog is here.
October 4th,
2007
4:54 pm
Well this is a subject close to my heart but I just don’t know the answer. I love NY more than any place on earth but every time I move there I end up leaving … and wishing I could move back. I lived there in the mid 70s, early to mid 80s (lower east side and Tribeca) and for a year during the Giuliani era, ending just before 9/11. I just moved to LA from western Massachusetts where the only solace I could find was my ability to drive down to The City in 3 hours — for an afternoon, a weekend, a week it didnt matter.
In the early 80s when I was a high school teacher on the upper west I assigned my students two NYT articles to read on the “neighborhood preservation” debate one denoucning efforts to “clean up” 42nd St. (and yes I do miss the old Times Square and hate the new), the other about efforts on the Upper East Side to keep chains out. My students were all from the hip UWS and couldn’t care less about the snooty UES but now I notice that it’s Upper Broadway that is the biggest victim of chain mania while the UES looks like a quaint old NY neighborhood.
But are chains necessarily the problem? My one complaint about NY in the 70s and 80s is that you couldnt get a decent cup of coffee there — it was either cappuccino in an italian pastry shop or deli bilge. Moving to Berkeley which had a real cafe scene was a real discovery. The only real cafe I knew of in lower Manhattan other than the afore mentioned pastry shops with tiny tables, and where you could never hang out and read a book was the Cloister Cafe on E. 9th St. Sadly the Cloister Cafe went upscale and then out of business but it’s been replaced by many cafes in the area. For the most part, Starbuck’s has created the market for indie cafes (in NY and most of the country) not destroyed existing cafes.
So what do I miss about NY of the 70s and 80s when I visit now and which could plausibly be described as soul? Independent bookstores — as far as I can tell only the Strand remains. The Pageant, also once on 9th St., which appears in Woody Allen’s Hannah and her sisters, had three stories of old books and maps; now gone online, last I checked. The Village area used to have little bookstores all over the place, now gone. Small repertory movie theaters like the old St. Mark’s. Cheap good places to eat all over like those places that served huge helpings of pork chops and Spanish rice in the neighborhood that became Chelsea. The Odessa on Avenue A remains but what else? And the grit, which I do miss, also produced a kind of egalitarianism — everyone dressed scruffy (the better not to be mugged I suppose) whereas now people where their class status literally on their sleeves.
But for all that, if I could afford it, Id move there in a second still. NY’s soul for me is the street energy — people bustling rubbing shoulders walking. Long Beach where I live now has lots of indie cafes but most people drive which means they are still just islands in a sea of freeways. There is little interaction and when it does occur, it turns out most people dont have much to say.
So in the end Im reminded of an essay I assigned that high school class years ago along with those newspaper clippings. I think it was by H.L. Mencken — or else some equally iconic NY author. And it remarked on how the hallmark of NY is that it is always changing and people are always complaining that the true NY is dead. I guess I agree with all the people who say the soul of NY is New Yorkers — and the physical layout of Manhattan which forces them to acknowledge each other whether they want to or not.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
