So what does constitute an ideal 'urban experience'? Journalist Philip Kennicott raises the question today in the Washington Post by tackling the aesthetics and effects of a new sterilized downtown 'City Center' complex replacing the old moribund Convention Center site. This one comes with the backing of Qatar money and may be the vision of a British architect (Norman Foster) imagining what Washington is or should be. The upshot does not look good for our fair DC city: bland, impersonal, slick, copycat modernity. Worth a thought or two...
Saturday, August 16, 2014
Thursday, July 31, 2014
DC VS NYC
The subject is routine: differences in 'quality of life' between Washington, D.C., and New York (meaning Manhattan and/or Brooklyn). From whose perspective, you may ask. Take a genial 35-year-old single man earning minimal income: where is he to find housing in 'hot' neighborhoods in either place? He once lived in the upper reaches - black and Hispanic - of Manhattan and now resides in a decidedly - but probably only temporarily - 'uncool' outlying D.C. neighborhood without a car. He walks 20 minutes to Metro, where previously in New York he sat on the stoop of his close-packed Manhattan dwelling and was the only white man on the block. Compare 'quality of life?" He was never mugged until he came to DC and lived for a time in the still-developing Shaw - and lived through the experience three times, the last time with a mugger who shook his hand after robbing him, saying 'Have a great day.' What does he conclude? That he never feels really safe in DC; that hostility by darker skinned people towards him is much more prevalent in DC. In New York, he actually was warned by his stoop fellows to be careful. In a way, they looked after him, feeling one of them since police assumed he was a downtown whitey coming uptown only for drugs. What explains the disparity? Southern blacks with a more vivid history of slavery in their ones populate DC, where Caribbean natives or offspring are more common in NY? The population density in Manhattan lends itself more easily to familiarity, hence even family feelings? Who knows...
Tuesday, July 29, 2014
Ah, Portland
Portland, Oregon - at last. High anticipation from one who never had seen the satirical show on TV- or I might otherwise have seen "the city that works' (its favorite slogan) through cracked lenses (as it were). I had newbie's eyes wide open, ready to be charmed. Which was easy, given the first day's sunshine and low humidity, the abundance of cafes and smiles. Chalk one up to the airport bathrooms, first of all: toilet handles painted green with a sign saying they are treated against germs. Handle up for liquid; down for solid waste. What could be more sanitary and efficient and environmentally sound....
Then there was the comfortably solid looking man behind the Info desk in the lobby of the Portland Building, David Muir by name. (Read on to see why this is the one building in Portland I had on my list to visit.) He had received a plaque for being some sort of superior citizen in his role of greeting visitors and directing them around what is a 15-story municipal office building next to city hall and headquarters for the city's service agencies. I wanted the day's New York Times and the newsstand in the lobby was closed for some reason that afternoon. He wasted no time reaching for the phone and dialing up the nearest Starbucks, asking them to put aside a copy for me. That led to a conversation about why all the tragedies of the week were being portrayed so graphically on front pages of newspapers.
Ah, Portland, the last holdout of the sanctified.
But it was the sight of a crew in blue on trams marshaling riders in person to see who was a registered voter and, if not, why not - sign right here. Young friendly faces patiently approaching strangers who, like as not, looked up in annoyance. It was a contract job, conducted by FieldWorks (see the web please). Nonpartisan, bipartisan, what have you. The first of its kind I've ever witnessed in any city in the world.
One free bus later my friend and I are deposited outside Portland's famous rose garden: masses of them, even bluish purple blooms, lined up in squares across rolling acres on the north side guarded by tall stately pine trees. Another welcome face, only a bronze statue this time: model of a man called a Rosarian, the official greeters for the city who traditionally turn out in white suits. Why white? Who knows. And the jolly bus driver so willing to put all us tourists straight about the what and why and where. Public restrooms in Pioneer Square, the open center for visitors to mingle or simply rest on stone steps while perusing the next sight on their itinerary. Ok, so back to Michael Graves' magnificently eclectic Portland Building with its landmark status. It cost $29 million to build, opened in 1982, has a green roof installed in 2006 (so goes Portland) but workers there are said to hate the place. It works on the outside: a colorful range and variety of surface materials and decorative touches that made its mark as one of the early and most successful Postmodernist structures of this century. Anything but gray steel and predictable straight lines.Like a phoenix rising from the ashes of contemporary blandness. Ah, but there was apparently not enough money to ensure its functioning features. A debate currently rages (as debates are said to do) whether it is a tear-down or a remodeling job. My vote, probably the majority now, is for the latter. Keep Portland green but not boringly so.
Then there was the comfortably solid looking man behind the Info desk in the lobby of the Portland Building, David Muir by name. (Read on to see why this is the one building in Portland I had on my list to visit.) He had received a plaque for being some sort of superior citizen in his role of greeting visitors and directing them around what is a 15-story municipal office building next to city hall and headquarters for the city's service agencies. I wanted the day's New York Times and the newsstand in the lobby was closed for some reason that afternoon. He wasted no time reaching for the phone and dialing up the nearest Starbucks, asking them to put aside a copy for me. That led to a conversation about why all the tragedies of the week were being portrayed so graphically on front pages of newspapers.
Ah, Portland, the last holdout of the sanctified.
But it was the sight of a crew in blue on trams marshaling riders in person to see who was a registered voter and, if not, why not - sign right here. Young friendly faces patiently approaching strangers who, like as not, looked up in annoyance. It was a contract job, conducted by FieldWorks (see the web please). Nonpartisan, bipartisan, what have you. The first of its kind I've ever witnessed in any city in the world.
One free bus later my friend and I are deposited outside Portland's famous rose garden: masses of them, even bluish purple blooms, lined up in squares across rolling acres on the north side guarded by tall stately pine trees. Another welcome face, only a bronze statue this time: model of a man called a Rosarian, the official greeters for the city who traditionally turn out in white suits. Why white? Who knows. And the jolly bus driver so willing to put all us tourists straight about the what and why and where. Public restrooms in Pioneer Square, the open center for visitors to mingle or simply rest on stone steps while perusing the next sight on their itinerary. Ok, so back to Michael Graves' magnificently eclectic Portland Building with its landmark status. It cost $29 million to build, opened in 1982, has a green roof installed in 2006 (so goes Portland) but workers there are said to hate the place. It works on the outside: a colorful range and variety of surface materials and decorative touches that made its mark as one of the early and most successful Postmodernist structures of this century. Anything but gray steel and predictable straight lines.Like a phoenix rising from the ashes of contemporary blandness. Ah, but there was apparently not enough money to ensure its functioning features. A debate currently rages (as debates are said to do) whether it is a tear-down or a remodeling job. My vote, probably the majority now, is for the latter. Keep Portland green but not boringly so.
Thursday, July 3, 2014
Star Spangled 200th at LOC
You had to hear it to believe it, the July 3rd tribute to our national anthem at the Library of Congress, celebrating a very rich 200th birthday. Spokane-born baritone Thomas Hampson was the man in charge, more or less, humorously and tunefully assisted by University of Michigan musicologist/professor Mark Clague ( a former bassoonist, these are really talented men), for a two-hour program - free to the most eager as most of these things are and, equally free, now on the Web under various headings. Do check especially www.loc.gov/collections/songs-of-america. Our often-maligned patriotic verses began in 1775 - the music anyway - as a tribute to the sixth century BC Greek court poet Anacreon by members of London's Anacreontic Society (yes, keep reading, it gets better). The ancient poet had apparently "entertained his tyrannical patrons with lyrics celebrating wine, women and song" - BUT the society varied its interests, by having two hour symphonic music to head up its meetings. It was a musical society, the tune composed by one John Stafford Smith, presumably a member.
Oh, it gets better. The program of "Poets and Patriotism," included renditions of the anthem in German and Spanish, as well as the Abraham Lincoln 'Letter to Mrs. Bixby" set to music by contemporary composer Michael Daugherty. And anyone wishing to know why this most 'athletic melodies" (i.e. Star Spangled Banner) took root should consult LOC. History is as complicated as the humans who make it happen. Hampson is a marvel, his voice a miracle of nature. He stood tall and commanding to the end when the entire audience stood for the final rendition, hands over hearts, fronting the University of Michigan men's alumni choir. I may never have or see a better holiday/anniversary celebration.
Oh, it gets better. The program of "Poets and Patriotism," included renditions of the anthem in German and Spanish, as well as the Abraham Lincoln 'Letter to Mrs. Bixby" set to music by contemporary composer Michael Daugherty. And anyone wishing to know why this most 'athletic melodies" (i.e. Star Spangled Banner) took root should consult LOC. History is as complicated as the humans who make it happen. Hampson is a marvel, his voice a miracle of nature. He stood tall and commanding to the end when the entire audience stood for the final rendition, hands over hearts, fronting the University of Michigan men's alumni choir. I may never have or see a better holiday/anniversary celebration.
Monday, June 30, 2014
New Yawk
Only in New York, you might say (Yawk, Yowhk, etc.), how a lone woman sitting on the stoop in Greenwich Village waiting for the restaurant to open reads intently from a large paperback book. She looks blessedly content. So much so that a stranger also hoping to get an early seat at the restaurant (the impeccably popular Pearl's Oyster Bar, even for people who don't do oysters), can't help but wonder at the title. Aha! It is the latest edition of Moss Hart's autobiography ("Act One"), the title of the dramatic adaptation that just closed at Lincoln Center, the very same book the stranger (myself) holds in her hand. Only my edition is dog-eared, decrepit, undoubtedly a 'first edition' paperback of the classic first published in 1959. "Have you got to the part yet where he joyfully escorts his family out of their old apartment, telling them to 'leave it all behind ...we're rich'"....? she asks me. We settle in together at the bar while she waits for a friend to join her.
Of course, this being The City, the woman could not help herself - she had given away the ending, something of a surprise, towards which Hart had been building throughout its 383 pages. Typically, too (generalization?), his final words: Intermission. Always another saga to come.
Always in this gem of a city, a labyrinthine metropolis, is a Next Best Thing. Sometimes the best is some of the oldest, most venerated - as in the 101-year-old Woolworth Building, sanctified now with landmark status and thus, presumably, a public monument. Only it is not. A developer has in mind to build fancy residences (yes, in that tower!) above the office space now let and the building these days is off limits to passersby. The only way to view its imposing interiors - lobby, basement and mezzanine - is by signing up online for the Woolworth Building Lobby Tour WoolworthTours.com and pay $45. It's worth it just to see the sculpted face in limestone of Mr. Woolworth himself, counting his money, just one of the many surprising features available to the quick of eye (though guides explain all this of course). The entrepreneurial merchant from Watertown, NY, grew up enamored of French Renaissance styles and strove to make his headquarters an epic recreation of the European art.
Of course, this being The City, the woman could not help herself - she had given away the ending, something of a surprise, towards which Hart had been building throughout its 383 pages. Typically, too (generalization?), his final words: Intermission. Always another saga to come.
Always in this gem of a city, a labyrinthine metropolis, is a Next Best Thing. Sometimes the best is some of the oldest, most venerated - as in the 101-year-old Woolworth Building, sanctified now with landmark status and thus, presumably, a public monument. Only it is not. A developer has in mind to build fancy residences (yes, in that tower!) above the office space now let and the building these days is off limits to passersby. The only way to view its imposing interiors - lobby, basement and mezzanine - is by signing up online for the Woolworth Building Lobby Tour WoolworthTours.com and pay $45. It's worth it just to see the sculpted face in limestone of Mr. Woolworth himself, counting his money, just one of the many surprising features available to the quick of eye (though guides explain all this of course). The entrepreneurial merchant from Watertown, NY, grew up enamored of French Renaissance styles and strove to make his headquarters an epic recreation of the European art.
Wednesday, April 16, 2014
Down At the P.O.
A Post Office isn't just a service stop, it is now a convenience store. Buy that pretty picture envelope you never knew you needed or wanted; pick up a remembrance card of a kind you might like to receive yourself. The variety of never-before-thought-necessary purchases is presumably to help keep the mighty mail distribution machine in operation.
What chance? I've yet to see many people actually buy the pretty colored things being offered. The sight of these accessory items fills me with guilt: maybe that's the point. Like looking at puppies for sale, alone without their mother in a store window. Buy Me, they cry out. Please help, find us a home, plunk down a few extra dollars so the P.O. can live. The items are no bargain, as far as I can tell.
And then there are all those picture stamps. Endless variations on topical themes. "But no global stamps at all!' says an exasperated friend, accustomed to sending mail across the oceans. "The round stamp you can find everywhere else but not here." Not here, as at that moment but the issue gives her an outlet for her frustration, this fury of such dimension as to seem life-shaking. Instead, she is given three different stamps to make up for the amount ($1.15 and growing, for Europe anyway) needed. The global stamp was plentiful there the next day: Curiously enough, it is the image of a red ribbon bedecked pine wreath. Another enticement fairly new to these outposts of a redundant civilization: a customer service concierge, yes the very word.
Where detritus of a changing civilization is concerned: note, too, the existence on sidewalks virtually everywhere behind the walking postal delivery person is a trail of rubber bands. They are thrown to the ground helter skelter as soon as each delivery is made and left to rot. Would someone like to tally up the cost of these items - bought wholesale, one hopes - and estimate what a recycling program could do to defray further costs to the cash-pressed USPO? Male carriers do it more than female carriers, or so it can be deduced from a pointedly inauthentic survey when a young woman in uniform on a city street was asked 'why' so many are tossed away like this? 'I don't know. I don't do it. They can be recycled.'
PS The great MOMA in New York, I'm told, sells or has on display a round ball of multi-colored rubber bands for a nifty price cheerfully confident that it is a winning design.
What chance? I've yet to see many people actually buy the pretty colored things being offered. The sight of these accessory items fills me with guilt: maybe that's the point. Like looking at puppies for sale, alone without their mother in a store window. Buy Me, they cry out. Please help, find us a home, plunk down a few extra dollars so the P.O. can live. The items are no bargain, as far as I can tell.
And then there are all those picture stamps. Endless variations on topical themes. "But no global stamps at all!' says an exasperated friend, accustomed to sending mail across the oceans. "The round stamp you can find everywhere else but not here." Not here, as at that moment but the issue gives her an outlet for her frustration, this fury of such dimension as to seem life-shaking. Instead, she is given three different stamps to make up for the amount ($1.15 and growing, for Europe anyway) needed. The global stamp was plentiful there the next day: Curiously enough, it is the image of a red ribbon bedecked pine wreath. Another enticement fairly new to these outposts of a redundant civilization: a customer service concierge, yes the very word.
Where detritus of a changing civilization is concerned: note, too, the existence on sidewalks virtually everywhere behind the walking postal delivery person is a trail of rubber bands. They are thrown to the ground helter skelter as soon as each delivery is made and left to rot. Would someone like to tally up the cost of these items - bought wholesale, one hopes - and estimate what a recycling program could do to defray further costs to the cash-pressed USPO? Male carriers do it more than female carriers, or so it can be deduced from a pointedly inauthentic survey when a young woman in uniform on a city street was asked 'why' so many are tossed away like this? 'I don't know. I don't do it. They can be recycled.'
PS The great MOMA in New York, I'm told, sells or has on display a round ball of multi-colored rubber bands for a nifty price cheerfully confident that it is a winning design.
Friday, March 14, 2014
City Treasures
of the mid-March week: the sun comes out, the wind dies down, and the inner city resident has a free afternoon thinking to join the two-hour long Drawing Workshop at the National Gallery of Art www.nga.gov, free for first comers. (offered monthly, several days at a time, through May, in the West Building, East Garden Court).
It was Friday in tourist season (spring break, etc.) the museum was alive with visitors. Alas, I arrived too late to sign, all 35 spaces had been taken earlier. They would become part of a class on "Point of View: Cezanne's Landscapes" using two kinds of charcoal, a chamois cloth, and large sheets of paper, under the instruction of a museum staffer and a practicing artist. The session began with an earnest lecture on Cezanne in the busy noise-impacted gallery while participants adjusted to the portable stools supplied by the gallery, juggling drawing boards on their knees. Then artist Dan did a brief illustration of how to look at the shadings of light in a typical quite visible and beautiful landscape - modulated planes, mostly pastels, a concentrated assembly of houses in Provence. Next, the impromptu class of avid art aspirants - a mix of ages, mainly female - had 20 minutes to try to recreate on paper what they saw.
I grew tired of watching - shunned by numbers, forced to standby position - and wandered off into the sunshine, finding myself stopped on Constitution Avenue by a Presidential motorcade making its way from Capitol Hill to the White House in full regalia, ambulance included. All traffic in downtown Washington was arrested for at least one half hour though I hear not a single protesting horn; we natives may not be amused but we certainly are conditioned. And the procession, at least for visitors, is spectacular , with the gaggle of police cycles fore and aft the shrouded funereal black vehicles, flags flying. It almost seems as though the Marine Band - 'the President's own"! - should be regular accompaniment on this ritual drive.
Headed down F Street, thinking to buy a pound of coffee beans from MS Swing's emporium a ways over at 17th and G NW, I duck into another local venue - one that tourists often miss. It is Fahrney's (www.farneyspens.com) famous pen shop, marked by an outsized green fountain pen suspended over the street. Within are some of the most exotic - and expensive - hand toys anywhere. It's almost pornographic, so enticing the tools. I eyed celebrity-named versions of the MontBlanc (blue cartridges available for lawyers' needs when signing original documents, etc.) now 30 percent off its $900 price. What would Jonathan Swift say - the namesake on one of the sleek black and silver models? And with matching cuff links, a bit more. I settled instead for an slim $18 stylus ballpoint in purple, buying a second one in white (both useful when handling smartphones with greasy fingers) that the obliging clerk volunteered to wrap in either green striped or red paper. "It's a birthday present," I had mentioned. Back came a handsome package encased in a mountain of carefully arranged twirling ribbon. It slipped neatly into a green-on-white bag - "Fahrney's Pens: The Write Place Since 1929," noticeably bereft of the usual web site marker.
Swing's was in full motion as usual: customers chatting over cups of various sizes at plain chairs and tables, the smell of fresh roasted coffee drawing people in like a drug. The pastry isn't much; besides good caffeine, the lure most days is Loraine, longtime employee dressed handsomely in glinting jewelry and TV-ready makeup. Such bliss, this sense of belonging in the bureaucratic kingdom and, then, the shock, a necessary one:
In front of the White House, outside the gates, two women with microphones call out the names of all the Syrians killed to date in that country's ongoing civil war.
The world is always with us in this town.
It was Friday in tourist season (spring break, etc.) the museum was alive with visitors. Alas, I arrived too late to sign, all 35 spaces had been taken earlier. They would become part of a class on "Point of View: Cezanne's Landscapes" using two kinds of charcoal, a chamois cloth, and large sheets of paper, under the instruction of a museum staffer and a practicing artist. The session began with an earnest lecture on Cezanne in the busy noise-impacted gallery while participants adjusted to the portable stools supplied by the gallery, juggling drawing boards on their knees. Then artist Dan did a brief illustration of how to look at the shadings of light in a typical quite visible and beautiful landscape - modulated planes, mostly pastels, a concentrated assembly of houses in Provence. Next, the impromptu class of avid art aspirants - a mix of ages, mainly female - had 20 minutes to try to recreate on paper what they saw.
I grew tired of watching - shunned by numbers, forced to standby position - and wandered off into the sunshine, finding myself stopped on Constitution Avenue by a Presidential motorcade making its way from Capitol Hill to the White House in full regalia, ambulance included. All traffic in downtown Washington was arrested for at least one half hour though I hear not a single protesting horn; we natives may not be amused but we certainly are conditioned. And the procession, at least for visitors, is spectacular , with the gaggle of police cycles fore and aft the shrouded funereal black vehicles, flags flying. It almost seems as though the Marine Band - 'the President's own"! - should be regular accompaniment on this ritual drive.
Headed down F Street, thinking to buy a pound of coffee beans from MS Swing's emporium a ways over at 17th and G NW, I duck into another local venue - one that tourists often miss. It is Fahrney's (www.farneyspens.com) famous pen shop, marked by an outsized green fountain pen suspended over the street. Within are some of the most exotic - and expensive - hand toys anywhere. It's almost pornographic, so enticing the tools. I eyed celebrity-named versions of the MontBlanc (blue cartridges available for lawyers' needs when signing original documents, etc.) now 30 percent off its $900 price. What would Jonathan Swift say - the namesake on one of the sleek black and silver models? And with matching cuff links, a bit more. I settled instead for an slim $18 stylus ballpoint in purple, buying a second one in white (both useful when handling smartphones with greasy fingers) that the obliging clerk volunteered to wrap in either green striped or red paper. "It's a birthday present," I had mentioned. Back came a handsome package encased in a mountain of carefully arranged twirling ribbon. It slipped neatly into a green-on-white bag - "Fahrney's Pens: The Write Place Since 1929," noticeably bereft of the usual web site marker.
Swing's was in full motion as usual: customers chatting over cups of various sizes at plain chairs and tables, the smell of fresh roasted coffee drawing people in like a drug. The pastry isn't much; besides good caffeine, the lure most days is Loraine, longtime employee dressed handsomely in glinting jewelry and TV-ready makeup. Such bliss, this sense of belonging in the bureaucratic kingdom and, then, the shock, a necessary one:
In front of the White House, outside the gates, two women with microphones call out the names of all the Syrians killed to date in that country's ongoing civil war.
The world is always with us in this town.
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