Category: Uncategorized

I walked around Soho, Tribeca and the World Trade Center yesterday.

Soho is still enormously crowded with shopping, tourists and black leather jacketed Long Islanders with frosted hair. There are some unique stores. But many other retailers are just international chains, with enomous loft showrooms, such as Apple and Patagonia.

Compared to atomized Los Angeles (why bother comparing?) the streets are vibrant and stimulating. You don’t know what you will find when you turn a corner. There are hidden jewels in every corner: Bakeries, gelati, cheese shops, bars, galleries.

In Tribeca, more high end shopping and pristinely elegant modernism. Architecture is moving beyond mere contextualism and actually building in the present tense. But these are for very wealthy people. It’s a neighborhood of young money, older money, celebrity money, modeling money, finance money, legal money, trust fund money, divorce settlement money. But it’s the brightest, cleanest, and most historic section of Manhattan, the most interesting example of taking old industrial buildings and putting them to newer, more lucrative uses.

The World Trade Center area is more crowded with tourists than before 9/11. Before the attack, this section was dominated by the windy, bleak and brutalist twin towers. There was no life on weekends. Now there are thousands who come here to see the site of the tragedy. Business is returning to “normal” but imagine that one walks in the shadows of the event that precipitated our newest war. Thousands died in one day from the actions of maniacs, now tens of thousands have died from the false reasoning that led to our invasion of Iraq.

The Daily News is reporting a new sting operation to target prostitutes and johns along Sepulveda Boulevard in Van Nuys and Mission Hills.

Shockingly, we have just learned that there is prostitution and sleazy hotels along Sepulveda and that this might be problem for our area.

If you are a man, and you witness a scantily dressed woman in Los Angeles who is walking along the street, please stop your car and dial “911” immediately. This is a brand new social problem that we must try and stop before it gets out of hand. I fear that the reputation of our area might suffer if we don’t do something about it.

Photo: Myung J. Chun / LAT

The LA Times has an article today about the founder of Design Within Reach entitled, “Rob Forbes’ Ruthless Vision”. The master of minimalism, who runs a successful chain store based on timeless modernism, lives a spartan and controlled life amidst very little in Sonoma County, Ca.

The Times says, “Forbes’ modern aesthetic at home and work is perhaps best summed up by a quote by California architect William Wurster that is printed on the walls of Design Within Reach showrooms: “Over and over again I would reiterate that modern is a point of view, not a style.”

Forbes disdains superficial modernism, the kind of retro styling like some Chryslers or his hard-to-program digital thermostat. He wants simplicity that works, and cites Google, the Ipod and Renzo Piano stainless flatware.

“Design Notes” is a weekly newsletter, published by Forbes, and sent out via email to 400,000 readers. It contains photos and commentary about street design, architecture, and examples of what he considers good and thoughtful creations. He extols biking, walking, public transportation and rethinking the American dream on a material diet.

Forbes tells the Times: “Someone called me a ‘design missionary.’ I see myself more like a design streetwalker,” says Forbes. “I take 5,000 photographs a year while walking the streets and looking for evidence of design. I’m fascinated by composition. I look for extraordinary details in ordinary objects. I’m really a student of design, trying to see and learn more for myself everyday.”

Why is that ruthless? It sounds humane, liberating, imaginative and sensible.

It is impossible to return to New York, where I lived from 1989-1994, and not think about its vulnerabilities. We know that it is a target, yet it has somehow escaped terror since 9/11/01. Is it doing something right? Is the crack team from Homeland Security, backed by the full financial resources of the United States, holding the fort together? Or is it simply lucky, and the honeymoon of false security may soon be ending?

I asked my friend “Katrina” about how well the largest city in the US could survive and respond to a nuclear attack or even a coordinated bunch of suicide bombings. She really didn’t have an answer. A dirty bomb in Times Square, a bus exploding in the Lincoln Tunnel, even a suicide martyr in Macy’s…all horrific and amplified by the media and our own dismal imaginations.

In reality, New York is still run extremely poorly. For example, I had to take a train from Northern NJ to Penn Station and transfer at the new Secaucus station. I walked off the first leg, which stopped at Secaucus, into a public hall where there was not a single sign directing me to the “Penn Station” inbound train. When I finally found the train, and boarded it, it went to Penn Station but never announced that we had arrived. If this had been an emergency, the speakers would not have functioned.

The highways around New York City, the Cross Bronx, the Deegan, the NJ Routes 3, 17, 80, 46…are among the most decripit, dangerous and overcrowded in the nation. Would they function well in a mass evacuation?

The subways are again covered in graffiti..are we to believe that they can detect explosives when they can’t even stop vandals?

At the entrance to the Lincoln Tunnel, two young policeman are eyeballing incoming trucks. Is this our version of the “Green Zone” or is it visible evidence of the appalling lack of security in New York City? Maybe Oz is watching us from behind the curtain, and we should feel OK. Or maybe Toto is a terrorist and knows the truth about our anemic domestic defenses.

When Bush allowed the Dubai company to potentially run the port, Senator Schumer (D-NY) and others immediately jumped to fight the deal. Maybe they are right, that the ports are unprotected and security woeful. But are they doing enough to right the eternal wrongs that plague the physical condition of New York City?

The hourglass is running of sand and we are really in the eleventh hour, and all the other cliches we can think of are quite true and absolutely damning.

Another St. Patrick’s Day is upon us. Is any day so insufferable? We will see Al Roker cook corned beef and cabbage. We will hear tone deaf idiots sing “Danny Boy”. Thousands of paper leprechauns will be glued to store front windows in Boston, New York, Chicago and Philadelphia. The streets will be full of broken glass and drunken hoardes and the littered alleys will smell of piss. Chicago will pour green dye in the river and paunchy, middle aged office slaves will wear green crewneck sweaters to work. Every Italian, Thai, Indian, Swede, Jew, Ethiopian and Brazilian will claim a great grandmother who came from County Cork. We will hear of the great famine and the Kennedy clan, and how Boston once hung signs that said, “No Irish Need Apply”. Thousands of pro-life Catholic parades will march glorifying war and military heroes. The next day, a great hangover. Another year… the same celebration of American idiocy to demean the Irish heritage.

Along Riverside Drive, the graceful curve of a pre-war apartment house overlooking the Soldiers and Sailors Monument.

Bishops Crook lampposts and the barren winter trees in the park.

People coming home from work, disembark from the bus and subway.

Pedestrians along Broadway carrying groceries.

Parents walking children home from school.

A benefit to help Darfur at a local synagogue.

Life lived without freeways or McMansions.

How DO they? do it?