photo courtesy New York Times
Ok, I may just be a little cranky today. I’m going to lose my beloved dog and I’m beyond devastated about it. And yes, I need something else to become fixated on today…….. to yap about, to become full of ire about, in order that I might not just turn to mush. It didn’t take me too long to find it once I opened the newspaper. I already knew the story. The article just became a vehicle of convenience.
Well, I may know next to nothing about anything, but I do know that some spots in the greatest places in the world really shouldn’t be touched, especially in the name of money or ego, or some otherwise little petty squabble .
I confess to often finding myself wondering why some of the brightest and most powerful people in the world look to self-destruct in a heap of ruin and longer term misery – they can’t help it, in spite of themselves.
In a world where terrorists don’t even hesitate to destroy the priceless artifacts of their own cultures, here we sit, right adjacent to the greatest city in the world, New York – where, if we don’t watch it, and very carefully, we will transform it into a bland and homogenous shadow of what it once was. People will say, “remember when New York was really something, really beautiful?” I say, go ahead, migrate uptown, downtown, all around the town, but don’t destroy what is already beautiful in the process. Please, I beg of you. Let us adopt just a smidgeon of European sensibility here about preserving beauty. Perhaps it just takes a short drive through a tunnel and a glance back to see the importance of this more clearly. Perhaps if you’re in it, day in and day out, year after year you are just too close to it. Maybe the ridicule shed upon we folk over the river and the relative pathos of NJ is actually good for something – like a reality check.
I confess I often find myself wondering why someone like a Vladamir Putin wouldn’t rather be the hero upon heroes of the “Russian Empire” by way of liberating and transforming his country into one of the most post-modern, iconic and cultural pinnacles of the 21st century, rather than to become obsessed with repression, control, fear and destruction. Go ahead, call me a crazy idealist! Can’t these characters see beyond their own personal pathology? I guess not. Well, just perhaps that is the $64 ba-zillion question – and, of course a great PhD case study for poly-sci and psych students everywhere.
Here I sit, having just finished reading the cover story of today’s Food Section of the New York Times. Once again, there is a common thread in the long-term string of stories about New York City real estate. It reads like this: Landlord wants more rent, markets change, egos become entrenched and poof, before you know it, another iconic spot disappears into the dust. And sadness and regret prevail in the rear-view mirror.
For once, I’d like to see just one of these moguls step out and say something like this: “Yeah, I could kick these people out, I could get 3 times the rent than they are paying now, yeah, the food is not stellar, but this place is a classic spot that deserves to be supported. It is beautiful just as it is. It is one of the gemstones of New York, and if we let them all go, well then, what is New York going to look like? And, I’m willing to step up and keep things going here, in the name of tradition, glamour, and individuality, in spite of a few lost dollars of what is chump change to me. And yes, it’s just that important. And yeah, I could make more money, but I really don’t need more money and I don’t feel like being remembered as a jack-ass. It’s so easy to be another jack-ass. This is my gift to the City. This is what is in my heart – generosity and not parsimony.” Just once I’d like to see this.
Now, I’m not stupid enough to think that there aren’t some of the most generous and benevolent people in New York power circles that do these kinds of things every day. They leave fortunes to museums, hospitals, shelters and the like all the time. They form foundations and preservation efforts all the time. They dedicate their time and effort to the city they love. And, a whole new generation of philanthropists and activists is coming up right behind the last. This is nice and helps me to have hope in humanity. What seems absent to me, aside from the obvious greed and ego driven “this is my space to ruin if I want to” grandstanding and ideology, is the realization that, like every other old and new city in the world, New York needs to have a face that is unique, ceremonious and beautiful. Precious icons need to remain in the landscape or else we will descend into a state of one large continuous pop-up cheap clothing store after another dominating the landscape. And really, to tear down the Rizzoli townhouse and replace it with one more nondescript mid-town revenue magnet, that a million people will walk by and never every notice, is just a crying shame.
Yes, the landscape is the pivotal word here. Just what do we really want in our landscape, for perpetuity, for grandeur, for inspiration? What do we want to be in our mind’s eye when we think of New York? It is so very easy to diminish it, and so very hard to fight for its long-term, enduring beauty in its own right. After all, it is the ultimate statement of who we are, of who we have become.
Beyond the restaurant model, the big bad chain store, you know who I mean, as well as all the Company-owned retailers who are completing cannibalizing the West Village, lets say, have to know they can’t possibly escape the law of diminishing returns in their quest to have their face on every corner of everywhere. Just how many pairs of $200. jeans do we need anyway? Isn’t visiting their store in mid-town, SOHO, the West Village and soon to be Hudson Yards just a tad bit redundant, not to mention every remaining shopping mall in the universe? And, I can go to London and Paris and Rome and yada, yada yada and see the same merchandise there, too! Ugh, how totally boring and uninspiring! Yuck! Sooner or later, this model is going to collapse and sooner or later people’s quest for the different, the unique and the original is going to follow its nose elsewhere.
Well, that’s all I have to say about this mess. Perhaps we might just consider the Tavern on the Green debacle – or the other wonderful spots vanished from the landscape that are mentioned in the article.
I just wish these characters who have the world at their fingertips would look just a little deeper and longer in the mirror, and would consider, and after they do and if in fact they still decide that their own ego does have to be the be-all-and-end-all, how their legacy might just be even more wonderful, more grandiose, if they could just bring themselves to do the noble thing. All those who profess to love New York so very much should spend a moment considering……… And anyway, two final thoughts: if the Four Seasons and the Pool Room were good enough for Sophia Loren, they’re surely and timelessly good enough for me – and, finally, those windows? you’d have to be out of your mind to touch them.