Londoners

The publication of LONDONERS by Craig Taylor this week (long title: THE DAYS AND NIGHTS OF LONDON NOW--AS TOLD BY THOSE WHO LOVE IT, HATE IT, LIVE IT, LEFT IT AND LONG FOR IT) is cause for excitement.  It has received great reviews and is written by a Canadian who has been living in the Big Smoke for a dozen years.  


One reviewer (Sarah Lyall in the New York Times) noted that London is not known for its tell-all characters, the likes of which can be found in Dublin or New York.  Indeed, London is cloaked in a wall of silence.  From the unspoken rule that one does not talk on the tube (I once met a Londoner who would stop a conversation with his oldest friend when stepping on the tube) to the post-7/7 reserve New Yorkers met with dismay, London is not one for talking.  So the revelation of London as an oral history is a true achievement indeed.  


Beyond that aspect of its achievement, the book is also a timely reminder of what makes cities unique in an age of globalization.  The Wall Street Journal today ran an article about the increased use of LED lighting on top of skyscrapers, in which several individuals complain that New York will soon look like Shanghai or Hong Kong.  Still, for all the apparent similarities globalization brings our way, each city retains its unique character in unspoken ways.  This is nowhere more true than in London.  

Performa

On Monday night at the home of Tracey and Philip Riese in TriBeCa, Performa founder RoseLee Goldberg hosted a Curator's Circle talk detailing the history of performance art across the 20th century. The event was intended for supporters and friends of the performance art biennale that recently completed its fourth year.  


Ms. Goldberg delivered an entertaining lecture to an enthusiastic crowd.  At one point, she mentioned that while biennales in Europe receive five million euros in start-up funds, the only international biennale in the United States, Performa, received approximately $10,000 from the City of New York. She saluted the generosity of those in the room and others for the success of Performa.  Ms. Goldberg also mentioned that the loft she was standing in would have been available to rent for $200 a month in the 1970s, when she moved to the city.  


While the skyrocketing costs of being an artist in New York and lack of government funds was not the point of her talk, it does cause one to wonder how New York will continue to attract the artists that have made it a cultural capital.  Perhaps the answer will always be the influx of twentysomethings eager to make their mark on the city.  One hopes that success stories like Performa will encourage them to stay.

Schooling

The New York Times reported on Sunday that tuition at New York’s private schools is or soon will be $40,000.  As someone who has just spent four years living in England, it strikes me that not being able to afford Spence or Andover is not the same disadvantage in America as not attending South Hampstead or Eton in the United Kingdom.  The British character of Lane Pryce on Mad Men once comments that he loves New York because he has been there for six months and no one has asked him where he went to school.  (A cynic would tell Lane this is because of Yankee prohibitions on talking about such things, but school simply doesn’t play the same role this side of the Atlantic.)  

Still, the remarkable resilience of these institutions in a liberal democracy is somewhat remarkable.  In France or Austria, private schools are the haunts of dim-witted aristocrats.  But in America, and particularly in New York and Boston, they remain the province of the elite.  Boston magazine ran a story a few years ago about the number of parents who are taking their students out of Milton or Commonwealth to attend a public school.  The tenor of the story is nothing if not angst.  

The role of property taxes is a ghost in the attic here. What seems to matter to parents is where their students go to college, and the feeling remains that the better the school, the better the college, the better the career, etc.  A smart student at Stuyvesant or Wellesley High will go to a very good college.  But if property prices push out the middle class in Manhattan neighborhoods where there are good schools, students who test into Stuyvesant may be traveling an hour to get to school because the school down the block isn’t good enough.  Does a parent pay $31,000 at Saint Ann’s, or saddle their child with two hours of commuting rather than doing homework?  And why would someone choose to live in a city that forces such a choice?

Manhattan Visions

A few years ago, The Wall Street Journal published an op-ed piece detailing the numerous reasons that artists should no longer flock to New York. (I’m not posting it because the article isn’t available to non-subscribers.) Their reason was basically the web. Why would a jewelry maker pay to live in New York when he or she can showcase on Etsy? The article posited Portland, Oregon as a lovely, inexpensive alternative.

The trend away from New York was already in place when the WSJ published the piece. Visit a gallery in Chelsea and the artist on display most likely does not live in New York. If American, their place of residence is often in a place that many New Yorkers consider anathema: Los Angeles. The lower rents, low-key lifestyle and warm weather have drawn numerous artists to the West Coast, in addition to a burgeoning arts scene of its own. An Angelino would bristle at the term ‘burgeoning’ and point to the recent show, “Los Angeles 1955-1985,” at the Centre Pompidou in Paris as proof of New York’s out of date snobbishness.

Still, Brooklyn is full of artists: painters, filmmakers, etc. Manhattan can often feel like a playground for tourists, the über-wealthy and those lucky enough to have been born there or to have arrived before 2000. The 2008 downturn lowered rents across the city, but Brooklyn seems to have emerged as a rival more than a cheap, close alternative. MovieMaker Magazine recently voted Brooklyn--rather than New York--the seventh best place for filmmakers to live in the United States.

It’s all New York, some would say. Yet the peans to Manhattan and Brooklyn have often sounded off against one another. Truman Capote said he, “lived in Brooklyn. By choice.” E.B. White wrote THIS IS NEW YORK when he really meant THIS IS MANHATTAN. These can seem like internecine concerns, but the question seems essentially and profoundly architectural.

When Mies van der Rohe arrived in New York and proclaimed that it was a whole city built in the sky, he wasn’t talking about Brooklyn. Despite the fact that gentrification has cleaned up Manhattan, some native Manhattanites felt the grit and grime was a rite of passage that a true New Yorker had to endure. Has Manhattan’s unique architecture essentially priced it out of the normal function of a city that houses all classes? Does this matter since the other boroughs have picked up the torch? Or it essential that Manhattan remain affordable because it gives birth to unique visions of how life can be lived? Propser Assouline recently commented that New York is a not a real city; it’s just an outpost of JFK airport. Surely it needs to be more than that.

Newness

The long holiday pause ends, and with it there seems- perhaps it is only my imagination- something new in the air, as if New Yorkers are having a bit more fun; as if another layer of post-9/11 gloom has been shed. Perhaps it is the unusually mild winter that puts an extra bounce in our step; perhaps it is the rejuvenation of a new year, the expectation of novelty. The sky is that wondrous January blue and the air is fresh. Women smile seemingly at nothing, and upon returning from California I remember- in the cacophony of pedestrians and taxi horns, the rush of post-Christmas sales, the rush of the morning commute, the palpable energy of the city- why I love it, why it beckons so many, why it boasts of itself, why it seems always, endlessly new.

Closing

I went to Coliseum Books (link on the right) today to buy a book of haiku for my father, his Christmas present. I had gone to several other bookstores around town in search of a good book of haiku, but had been unsuccessful. I knew that Coliseum would have what I wanted, and as expected I found an excellent book of old and contemporary Japanese verse. Upon checking out, I received 30% off my purchase. I asked the reason and learned that they are closing their doors after 32 years. Sadly, it seems an independent bookstore cannot keep pace in Midtown anymore. I bought my book and told the woman behind the cash register that I was very sorry.

As I opened the doors onto 42nd Street, the street seemed a shade muted, the city slightly less now. Stationary figures seemed paused in salute, even if unaware. They say you are a New Yorker when you begin to say, "that used to be..." and soon we will have another occasion to utter that phrase. As I walked down Fifth Avenue however, I passed the HBSC building, where a Chinese acrobat was standing on her head in the display window for no apparent reason, several people watching her intently. Well, I thought, the face of the city may change, but the spirit, madcap and effervescent, remains the same.

Multiplicities

(photo by Normko)

How to contain the multiplicities of New York in one day or one mind? How to trace the line that is New York across the verisimilitudes of its numerous urbanities? This challenge seems the endless joy of New York, which is forever giving us a city wholly and remarkably different from the one seen yesterday. New York is a state of mind as much as a place, and with it comes all of the contradictions and whims of the mind; if we begin to feel that we have ascertained it, we are fools. The city’s fluctuating realities are at times a harrowing reality that creeps into us with the residue of fear, while at other times, it is the very fact of the city’s unpredictability that makes a New Yorker feel uniquely alive, in a city without equals, its masses assembling and conspiring to once again forge greatness out of the embattled, brilliant and insistent buildings we call home.