Sign I saw at a 1st-Avenue deli yesterday: “Marlboro Lights: $6.66”
End of the world as we know it
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Category Archives: New York
World Trade Center update
I agree with Felix that I don’t really like any of the proposals; they remind me too much of Canberra, or Brasilia–mainly because of the unimaginative repetitive blandness these towers exhude. But there are some elements I like, that I hope they will keep in the final proposal:
I like the fact that all proposals reconstitute Greenwich street, a portion of which was erased when the WTC was built in the early 70s. It opens up the whole area, and connects Tribeca to the financial district in a much more organic fashion.
I like the idea of a tunnel for most traffic on West street, with green replacing concrete. This also opens up the whole World Financial Center area to the rest of the city, without the need to commute over an 8-lane highway via one of three pedestrian bridges as was the case before.
I like demolishing the huge damaged black building on the Southern end of the WTC site, as the proposals suggest. I believe it is the Deutsche Bank building, and it is ugly.
But I do not like the Memorial Square proposal Felix fancies. I know he only likes it because he is a sucker for Opera. My problem with it is that the square is surrounded by a “multi-level public arcade” which in effect visually cuts off the whole space from the rest of the city. And these public arcades are reminiscent of the well-intentioned public spaces constructed in the 60s that proved way larger than human scale, and which we shunned.
The proposals are disappointing. Where is our Guggenheim Bilbao? Our Sydney Opera House? Our Sagrada Familia? (Great caption, by the way, to the Sagrada Familia photo.)
The store as modern design museum
Apple is opening its flagship store here in Soho today, and the New York Times treats it as a major industrial design event. Which it is. You might just need to switch to a Mac if you haven’t already.
World Trade Center proposals
The 6 official proposals for rebuilding the World Trade Center site have been unveiled and are up on the web. Make sure to view each as a QuickTime animation. I haven’t had a chance to have a good look yet, but a cursory viewing has me choosing the Memorial Garden as my early favorite.
Emerging trend watch
Clubs have always had DJs. They would bring their records and spin. More recently, DJs have been been using laptops to create live music from prerecorded loops and samples, and they often do so at Open Air, a bar on my block in the East Village.
Now, we are beginning to see VJs performing live mixing of video to accompany the music. Thanks to Apple technology, all you need is two PowerBook laptops, Final Cut Pro, a mixing panel and lots of footage. The best practitioners of this new art are playing in the East Village at an event called Lapdance, on July 18.
Cortland Street stop, N/R
For 4 years up until September 10, 2001, I often took the N/R subway to work, getting on at 8th Street and getting off at Cortlandt Street, where passengers were disgorged into the huge underground mall below the World Trade Center. I would track past hundreds of commuters, a J.Crew, a Gap, a Sephora; perhaps I’d get a cafe latte from New World Coffee, at the North-east base of the North tower, before heading though its entrance hall on my way to the pedestrian bridge that led to the World Financial Center.
Soon after Sept 11, 2001, the N/R train resumed its service, but without stopping at Cortlandt Street. The first few days, passengers would look up from their doings and stare quietly out the carriage windows at the wooden support struts that had been hastily built. In orange spray paint on the walls, “DO NOT STOP,” conductors were told. After a few months, as the salvage efforts on Ground Zero progressed, the station was cleaned up, and the struts disappeared. People no longer looked up or grew quiet as we passed the station.
Yesterday, for the first time, out of the corner of my eye, I noticed a bright spot where the mall was. Today, I confirmed it: the exit that used to take me to the mall has been opened by workers, and it leads to bright daylight.
I’ve grappled with the idea that in my head, the mental map I’ve built up from years of walking through the World Trade Center still exists, even though the place does not. Until today, subconsciously, the mall still existed behind those boarded-up doors.
In the same way, being kept away from the actual site of the disaster protected me from having to update this map, but as of yesterday, they let you walk all along the southern perimeter of Ground Zero, with an unobstructed view of the site, much like any construction site. I walked by there. You can clearly see the rebuilding of the 1/9 subway line, as well as many partly demolished subterranean levels. I’d seen some of this before from our office’s window at Falkor LLC, but being right next to it, on the ground, makes it all a lot more immediate. Go and have a look if you haven’t been recently.
Cup Runneth Over-time
Another reason why the east coast is better than the west coast: New York cops don’t care if England fans are screaming their heads off in your bar over pints of ale at 7am, while in San Francisco they’ll raid you if you give out free coffee after 2am.
World Cup predictions? Ideal finals would be Germany-Turkey (for the geopolitical implications) and Brazil-Korea (for the effect it will have on football’s popularity in Asia if Korea wins, as well as the blow to Brazil’s ego).
A favorite east village haunt,
A favorite east village haunt, Bar Veloce, was the site of a bizzare hostage taking/shoot-out with police last night.
Blog map of NYC
Blog maps: what a great idea, and probably the next big thing in the blogging universe. Of course, New York is leading the charge: nycbloggers.com is a gorgeously designed site with a great concept–using subway maps to drill down to local blogs while preserving their privacy.
But the content referenced by nycbloggers.com is what’s most compelling. I never partake in online chats because anonymous opinions tend to the utterly stupid. Blogs, meanwhile, are personal and have a reputation to defend, so there is room for intersecting interests. One obvious interest that strangers share is their neighborhood–but until now, there was no way of linking blogspace to meatspace. Blogmaps do precisely that. I look forward to scanning through all the East Village blogs, and then virtually foraying into Brooklyn along the N/R.
And when you’re done, here is a Belgian/Dutch blogmap to peruse.
Apartment 5E
There is no denying it: I will do silly things for the sake of art. if you are in New York in July, come watch the premiere of Apartment 5E. Else, just watch pictures from the making of.