New York
Rockefeller Centre, from Fifth Avenue
National September 11 Memorial: no man is an island
I visited the National September 11 Memorial recently. There are no words to express the enormity of the effect this attack had and continues to have on individuals and their families, on the psyche of America and on the implications for the rest of the world.
But I can say that now I’ve lived here for a while that I have become increasingly aware of how it’s impossible to underestimate the enormous effect the September 11th attacks must have had on Manhattan, and New York in general. The city is so densely packed and areas intimately connected that a wave in one area will ripple throughout the island.
No man is an island,
Entire of itself,
Every man is a piece of the continent,
A part of the main.
If a clod be washed away by the sea,
Europe is the less.
As well as if a promontory were.
As well as if a manor of thy friend’s
Or of thine own were:
Any man’s death diminishes me,
Because I am involved in mankind,
And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls;
It tolls for thee.John Donne, ‘No Man is an Island’
190 Bowery, Lower Manhattan: Germania Bank Building [photos]
Words and photos, © Phil Greaney, 2014
Reading Saul Bellow’s Ravelstein, I wondered what he made of New York. Invited to read his work in the city, Bellow considered it thus:
“When I got the invitation I thought, ‘Should I do it?’ Then I thought that it’s a very pleasant time in New York and this would provide official cover for my trip. Besides, I haven’t seen the graffiti in some time.” [my emphasis]
Watching New York on the tv in the 1970s and -80s, as a nascent hip hop and street art dominated the facades of trains and buildings, I thought then that all of New York was covered in graffiti.
The address, visible from the top of the door on the corner, has an interesting history. It began life as the Germania Bank Building, designed by Robert Maynicke who also built the Guggenheimer Building in New York’s Waverley Place. An expert in loft design, his work set the prototype for some of Manhattan’s skyline during its development.
Later, the photographer Jay Maisel purchased the building. Maisel once rented parts of it to artists Adolph Gottlieb and Roy Lichtenstein. It remains in use still now by Maisel.
In 2005 it was given New York City Landmark status. Somehow, it seems right that its covered in street art, tags and graffiti. It’s a New York.
Photos: Mwahahaha – Halloween on the Upper East Side
On Sunday, whilst looking for something else, we instead found the most desperate sights: of men with mouths hanging open, base sounds gurgling from their parched lips; of women clad from head to toe black, lurching around the streets of the Upper East Side, whispering gentle moans of despair.
No, it’s not the bridge and tunnellers at Sunday brunch.
It’s a couple of otherwise respectable houses fulsomely bedecked with some creepy Halloween effigies. There were around half-a-dozen or so such places in the area. I’ll have to look up what it all means. But, judging by this and the enormous amount of space dedicated to Halloween in drug- and department stores, Halloween is as big a thing as you might have anticipated before visiting.
I, for example, am wearing a pumpkin head as I write. Mwahahaha.
Brrr. Just looking at them gives me the wiggins.
Fart sock is a thing
Look closely at the left-hand ‘Equipment’ panel. ‘Fart sock’, taken in downtown Manhattan
Click the photo to enlarge
I took it at first to be the scribblings of a drunken prank, the playful bringing together of two incongruous words to create a nonsense.
When I got home, I idly looked it up. Lo and behold, a meaning, albeit a single entry in that most reliably unreliable narrators, Urban Dictionary:
An individual who derives enjoyment from frustrating others, especially by pretending he does not understand something they are trying to explain
“If that fart sock Larry says ‘What do you mean?’ one more time, I’m gonna beat him with the wrong end of a claw hammer.”
What’s interesting is the entry dates from 2003. That’s some comeback. Or maybe it never left. In any case, it’s destined to become part of the ever-expanding lexicon in the Greaney household. Your’s too, I trust.
Coming home: all passengers must now get off the boat [video]
I took the ferry to Governors Island, via Queens and Brooklyn. This is a video I recorded of the final moments, as we embark from Queens to Manhattan and home. Forgive the noise of the wind.
And yes, it’s a big boat – and it really does move that fast.
National Poetry Day: Walt Whitman’s ‘Crossing Brooklyn Ferry’, with photos
Ferry at Manhattan’s East Side
Today is national poetry day, so I’m turning this blog over to the more than capable hands of Walt Whitman and his wonderful poem, ‘Crossing Brooklyn Ferry’. Or rather, we’re sharing the platform, if that’s not too impertinent: I’ve taken the liberty of inserting my images amongst his words. All images © Phil Greaney, 2014.
Crossing Brooklyn Ferry
Flood-tide below me! I see you face to face!
Clouds of the west–sun there half an hour high–I see you also face
to face.
Crowds of men and women attired in the usual costumes, how curious
you are to me!
On the ferry-boats the hundreds and hundreds that cross, returning
home, are more curious to me than you suppose,
And you that shall cross from shore to shore years hence are more
to me, and more in my meditations, than you might suppose.
“And you that shall cross from shore to shore years hence are more
to me, and more in my meditations, than you might suppose.”
2
The impalpable sustenance of me from all things at all hours of the day,
The simple, compact, well-join’d scheme, myself disintegrated, every
one disintegrated yet part of the scheme,
The similitudes of the past and those of the future,
The glories strung like beads on my smallest sights and hearings, on
the walk in the street and the passage over the river,
The current rushing so swiftly and swimming with me far away,
The others that are to follow me, the ties between me and them,
The certainty of others, the life, love, sight, hearing of others.
Others will enter the gates of the ferry and cross from shore to shore,
Others will watch the run of the flood-tide,
Others will see the shipping of Manhattan north and west, and the
heights of Brooklyn to the south and east,
Others will see the islands large and small;
Fifty years hence, others will see them as they cross, the sun half
an hour high,
A hundred years hence, or ever so many hundred years hence, others
will see them,
Will enjoy the sunset, the pouring-in of the flood-tide, the
falling-back to the sea of the ebb-tide.
“A hundred years hence, or ever so many hundred years hence, others
will see them,
Will enjoy the sunset, the pouring-in of the flood-tide, the
falling-back to the sea of the ebb-tide.”
3
It avails not, time nor place–distance avails not,
I am with you, you men and women of a generation, or ever so many
generations hence,
Just as you feel when you look on the river and sky, so I felt,
Just as any of you is one of a living crowd, I was one of a crowd,
Just as you are refresh’d by the gladness of the river and the
bright flow, I was refresh’d,
Just as you stand and lean on the rail, yet hurry with the swift
current, I stood yet was hurried,
Just as you look on the numberless masts of ships and the
thick-stemm’d pipes of steamboats, I look’d.
I too many and many a time cross’d the river of old,
Watched the Twelfth-month sea-gulls, saw them high in the air
floating with motionless wings, oscillating their bodies,
Saw how the glistening yellow lit up parts of their bodies and left
the rest in strong shadow,
Saw the slow-wheeling circles and the gradual edging toward the south,
Saw the reflection of the summer sky in the water,
Had my eyes dazzled by the shimmering track of beams,
Look’d at the fine centrifugal spokes of light round the shape of my
head in the sunlit water,
Look’d on the haze on the hills southward and south-westward,
Look’d on the vapor as it flew in fleeces tinged with violet,
Look’d toward the lower bay to notice the vessels arriving,
Saw their approach, saw aboard those that were near me,
Saw the white sails of schooners and sloops, saw the ships at anchor,
The sailors at work in the rigging or out astride the spars,
The round masts, the swinging motion of the hulls, the slender
serpentine pennants,
The large and small steamers in motion, the pilots in their pilothouses,
The white wake left by the passage, the quick tremulous whirl of the wheels,
The flags of all nations, the falling of them at sunset,
The scallop-edged waves in the twilight, the ladled cups, the
frolic-some crests and glistening,
The stretch afar growing dimmer and dimmer, the gray walls of the
granite storehouses by the docks,
On the river the shadowy group, the big steam-tug closely flank’d on
each side by the barges, the hay-boat, the belated lighter,
On the neighboring shore the fires from the foundry chimneys burning
high and glaringly into the night,
Casting their flicker of black contrasted with wild red and yellow
light over the tops of houses, and down into the clefts of streets.
“…the white sails of schooners and sloops…”
4
These and all else were to me the same as they are to you,
I loved well those cities, loved well the stately and rapid river,
The men and women I saw were all near to me,
Others the same–others who look back on me because I look’d forward
to them,
(The time will come, though I stop here to-day and to-night.)
“I loved well those cities, loved well the stately and rapid river”
5
What is it then between us?
What is the count of the scores or hundreds of years between us?
Whatever it is, it avails not–distance avails not, and place avails not,
I too lived, Brooklyn of ample hills was mine,
I too walk’d the streets of Manhattan island, and bathed in the
waters around it,
I too felt the curious abrupt questionings stir within me,
In the day among crowds of people sometimes they came upon me,
In my walks home late at night or as I lay in my bed they came upon me,
I too had been struck from the float forever held in solution,
I too had receiv’d identity by my body,
That I was I knew was of my body, and what I should be I knew I
should be of my body.
“I too walk’d the streets of Manhattan island, and bathed in the
waters around it”
6
It is not upon you alone the dark patches fall,
The dark threw its patches down upon me also,
The best I had done seem’d to me blank and suspicious,
My great thoughts as I supposed them, were they not in reality meagre?
Nor is it you alone who know what it is to be evil,
I am he who knew what it was to be evil,
I too knitted the old knot of contrariety,
Blabb’d, blush’d, resented, lied, stole, grudg’d,
Had guile, anger, lust, hot wishes I dared not speak,
Was wayward, vain, greedy, shallow, sly, cowardly, malignant,
The wolf, the snake, the hog, not wanting in me.
The cheating look, the frivolous word, the adulterous wish, not wanting,
Refusals, hates, postponements, meanness, laziness, none of these wanting,
Was one with the rest, the days and haps of the rest,
Was call’d by my nighest name by clear loud voices of young men as
they saw me approaching or passing,
Felt their arms on my neck as I stood, or the negligent leaning of
their flesh against me as I sat,
Saw many I loved in the street or ferry-boat or public assembly, yet
never told them a word,
Lived the same life with the rest, the same old laughing, gnawing, sleeping,
Play’d the part that still looks back on the actor or actress,
The same old role, the role that is what we make it, as great as we like,
Or as small as we like, or both great and small.
“Saw many I loved in the street or ferry-boat or public assembly, yet
never told them a word”
7
Closer yet I approach you,
What thought you have of me now, I had as much of you–I laid in my
stores in advance,
I consider’d long and seriously of you before you were born.
Who was to know what should come home to me?
Who knows but I am enjoying this?
Who knows, for all the distance, but I am as good as looking at you
now, for all you cannot see me?
“Who was to know what should come home to me?”
8
Ah, what can ever be more stately and admirable to me than
mast-hemm’d Manhattan?
River and sunset and scallop-edg’d waves of flood-tide?
The sea-gulls oscillating their bodies, the hay-boat in the
twilight, and the belated lighter?
What gods can exceed these that clasp me by the hand, and with voices I
love call me promptly and loudly by my nighest name as approach?
What is more subtle than this which ties me to the woman or man that
looks in my face?
Which fuses me into you now, and pours my meaning into you?
We understand then do we not?
What I promis’d without mentioning it, have you not accepted?
What the study could not teach–what the preaching could not
accomplish is accomplish’d, is it not?
“Ah, what can ever be more stately and admirable to me than
mast-hemm’d Manhattan?”
9
Flow on, river! flow with the flood-tide, and ebb with the ebb-tide!
Frolic on, crested and scallop-edg’d waves!
Gorgeous clouds of the sunset! drench with your splendor me, or the
men and women generations after me!
Cross from shore to shore, countless crowds of passengers!
Stand up, tall masts of Mannahatta! stand up, beautiful hills of Brooklyn!
Throb, baffled and curious brain! throw out questions and answers!
Suspend here and everywhere, eternal float of solution!
Gaze, loving and thirsting eyes, in the house or street or public assembly!
Sound out, voices of young men! loudly and musically call me by my
nighest name!
Live, old life! play the part that looks back on the actor or actress!
Play the old role, the role that is great or small according as one
makes it!
Consider, you who peruse me, whether I may not in unknown ways be
looking upon you;
Be firm, rail over the river, to support those who lean idly, yet
haste with the hasting current;
Fly on, sea-birds! fly sideways, or wheel in large circles high in the air;
Receive the summer sky, you water, and faithfully hold it till all
downcast eyes have time to take it from you!
Diverge, fine spokes of light, from the shape of my head, or any
one’s head, in the sunlit water!
Come on, ships from the lower bay! pass up or down, white-sail’d
schooners, sloops, lighters!
Flaunt away, flags of all nations! be duly lower’d at sunset!
Burn high your fires, foundry chimneys! cast black shadows at
nightfall! cast red and yellow light over the tops of the houses!
Appearances, now or henceforth, indicate what you are,
You necessary film, continue to envelop the soul,
About my body for me, and your body for you, be hung our divinest aromas,
Thrive, cities–bring your freight, bring your shows, ample and
sufficient rivers,
Expand, being than which none else is perhaps more spiritual,
Keep your places, objects than which none else is more lasting.
You have waited, you always wait, you dumb, beautiful ministers,
We receive you with free sense at last, and are insatiate henceforward,
Not you any more shall be able to foil us, or withhold yourselves from us,
We use you, and do not cast you aside–we plant you permanently within us,
We fathom you not–we love you–there is perfection in you also,
You furnish your parts toward eternity,
Great or small, you furnish your parts toward the soul.
“Great or small, you furnish your parts toward the soul.”
You can read a more detailed discussion of the poem ‘Crossing Brooklyn’s Ferry’ here. For more poems on New York, visit here.
Wanna be a hipster? Here’s what you’ll need…
I took a trip to the centre of hipster life in New York, Williamsburg, over in Brooklyn at the weekend. I like hipsters generally, and I like lampooning them too, stopping short of outright dismissal: I’m not Will Self after all. But it did strike me that the ubiquity of the hipster would be part their downfall and – believe me – we were at more or less ‘peak hipster’ over in Williamsburg.
When will the trend end? I was reminded of a line at the end of that cult movie Withnail and I where Danny – that prophetic seer, that revealer of eternal truths – tells an equally drug-addled Withnail that the 1960s are coming to an end.
They’re selling hippy wigs in Woolworths, man, says Danny ominously. (An equivalent for hipsters might be that they’re selling skinny jeans at Walmart.)
For the 60s counterculture, pitched fundamentally against ‘the man’ and his consumerism, this gross commodification marked the end of an era (a word sounding emphatically like ‘error’ in the mouths of New Yorkers, not incidentally). But commercialism can’t be the end of the hipster, since it has always been a key part of its definition: we’re not always sure of what books a hipster reads but we know what coffee they consume.
Instead, the hipster phenomenon will be killed by the thing it loves, or rather, an inversion of it. Hipsters will eventually become unhip. And perhaps that moment, that singularity, has already occurred.
Perhaps it happened when Wikihow, the website dedicated to telling you how to operate your Tivo player or heat up pizza in a microwave, offers a tick-box list on what you’ll need to be a hipster.
For any social phenomenon that has at its core a sense of difference, of being the ‘other’, this is surely the death knell. The only thing the list omits is that you’ll need a sense of humour to be a hipster, given the amount of (Starbucks-riddled, non-artisanal coffee-based) flak you’re likely to get before its over.
What this Brit thinks of the United States, Americans and New York (so far)
I’ve lived in New York for a couple of months now, and travelled through a dozen states or so as part of my trans-American/Route 66 road trip, so I’ve arrived at a few opinions about America and Americans that no doubt will seem naive and whimsical by the time I’ve been here a while. But since being naive and whimsical has never bothered me before without further ado, here’s what I think of America and Americans…
Manhattan’s three graces
Three immediate thoughts spring to mind to when asked by friends and family to summarise the unsummariseable: I have never seen a city with so many people in scrubs (hospital ‘uniform’); a city with so many dogs in handbags (or pushchairs); or so many people, seemingly caught in a volatile inner argument, shouting loudly to themselves on the streets. Bless and love them all, especially the latter. I could add young men in full, heavy beards but I’ve seen a lot of them in Asia, too.
I *heart* New York
In short, I love living in New York. I’ve taken to it immediately. I love the variety of Manhattan – Midtown feels as different to Chinatown as the Upper East feels to the Financial District. The sheer range of things to do is mind boggling. You need a good strategy to see, hear, eat and enjoy all those wonderful things here, and a strong will to remember that you haven’t missed out. I still get a thrill out of the simple thought of living here. See, I said I was naive: wonderfully, innocently so, still. I hope it never goes.
I love the quality of its publications – especially The New Yorker, The New York Review of Books and the New York Times – and that I can have them delivered reliably and cheaply. I love the museums and the art galleries and cultural richness. The level of service is superb, from taxi drivers (perhaps I’ve been lucky?) right through to shopkeepers, to the doorman in our apartment. In fact, I’ve realised from reading Yelp! reviews of local resources that Americans demand high levels of service: poor service is the number 1 factor in complaints and low ratings. The grid system for organising avenues and streets – not found uniformly applied through Manhattan – is superb.
Americans
As for Americans, I don’t think I’ve met a difficult, rude or intransigent one yet. Most have been polite and friendly and not loud or obnoxious, as one might expect if you believe the video below. New York – as the title of my blog will attest – is not America and I did notice an enormous difference between the two coasts, east and west, and the rest of the country. I have heard an American confess that his countrymen do not have much of an idea what happens outside of the US. I suspect this to be true in much of the country.
I’ve found the American loudness and accent grating at other places but in America it makes sense. I’d go further, to hear people who are not in movies use the American vernacular is a joyous part of living here. I regularly hear phrases like ‘I’ll hit you up’, ‘ ‘You’re going down!’ or ‘Have a good one!’ and love it each time. It’s a myth that New Yorkers in particular are famously rude. Mostly, they are polite and courteous, even if they do have an advanced sense of the dynamics of negotiating a sidewalk. Here’s what some of my compatriots think of America and Americans.
Not up to muster
There are some things I don’t like. The subway is fine but inferior to London’s tube (I’m not alone on this). The stations here are dreadful spaces and the maps and routings complicated, although not entirely impenetrable. There’s too much dog ‘poop’ on the streets. Central Park isn’t as beautiful as, say, Lumphini in Bangkok or Sydney’s Botanical Gardens or even Hyde Park. Construction proliferates – a good sign in these economic times, I suppose – but it undermines the beauty of the streets, cluttering them for walkers, especially around the first floor exteriors.
I’ve never got used to seeing the police carrying guns, nor read of shootings. Some of the flavours take getting used to – I’m thinking of the heavily-herbed pasta sauces, or the added sweetness elsewhere – and the propensity to super-size meals, or to stuff them or cover them with cheese, can be a bit grating (see what I did there?). In most of the America I’ve visited (but not, I’m pleased to say, Manhattan) there’s a lot of fairly-priced, decent food, served in clean environments with competent staff, none of which tastes excellent. While I’m having a moan, here’s professional miserablist Morrissey’s take on America.
Some things I thought might be difficult but aren’t
It does get warm here and sticky but not overwhelmingly so (I have Delhi to thank for preparing me for that). It doesn’t matter that we don’t have a washing machine and dryer in our apartment: I like the laundry system here. Noise isn’t a problem for me, although it’s very loud at times (my one reservation is that I’d wish the emergency services would simply allow their sirens to wail rather than intermittently poke the button, creating a kind of jarring staccato cacophony, which I suppose gets the job done, too). I *do* like it when car horns converse with one another, one hitting the button three times – say – only to find it echoed moments later. I don’t mind trash on the streets either: it reminds me of my childhood in London, when the garbage collection went on strike in the 1970s. There are more things like that here but they’ve not gotten through yet. Oh, apart from the restrooms: disgraceful! I refuse to believe there are bedbugs in Manhattan.
What’s missing
What I think about quite often is finding a space where I can relax, one that’s relatively unpeopled, one that offers a beautiful vista – manmade or natural, celebrated or unknown. That is something I’ve yet to find in my part of America. But this is to quibble. And besides, where’s the thrill without looking for something I might never find? I am more than happy with what I have than sad about those things I don’t.
There are more things in Manhattan, Horatio, than are dreamt of in my philosophy.
This is not America 