Transcontinentalism

Flying across the continent (this time from SF to NY) last Saturday provided me with the ultimate time out. This is especially true because I forgot to bring a book, and as a result was stuck listening to the the usual iPod playlist that he listens to nearly every day.


The quasi-silence was most welcome at this particular moment. The familiar mix of Rogue Wave, Buena Vista Social Club, and Death Cab for Cutie accompanied the gentle purple stream clouds over Iowa (I think), and my restless brain was put at ease. Suddenly, however, in my half-awake slumber, I realized that I had just scribbled a massive clump of black ink on my left hand. Immediately, I looked at my hand and thought, "Oh shit, what a mess I've put myself in". Seeping through the circuitous lines of black, a few skin-toned strands try to get through. They are overwhelmed and as I looked at them they seemed to sink deeper beneath the black.

The clouds were still drifting calmly below us - perhaps we are over Illinois now? I looked down and sought solace in their gentleness, their radiant simplicity.

Somehow when one is allowed to wrestle with a complicated situation and figure out a new way to approach it, perhaps there is no better place than a plane. You are literally above it all - or as the Carpenters would say, "Your on the top of the world looking down on creation".

In any city, even the most calming and beautiful of cities, distractions abound. People are restlessly searching and contemplating their next move. This is true in their careers, their social lives, but perhaps most unfortunately - it is true with love.

What I am wrestling with now requires many next moves. Much advice, greater understanding, and mutual exploration. Oh, how I want this! Will I get it? These are unanswered questions down below, but up here they dissipate, anf seem to float away with the now purple-hued clouds beneath me.

The blanket of clouds continued to darken. The wing turned black. Gotham was now only an hour away. Spoon started to blast "I Summon You" through my earphones. How do I summon you?

The song continued, "Remember the weight of the world is a sound that we used to buy." Yes, I have bought this particular sound too many times for a man of 26. Should I continue to consume such heavy-hearted feelings?

Suddenly, the stewardesses started coming down the aisle asking, "coffee, soda, juice. I felt like some OJ.

Ella Fitzgerald's, "Bewitched, Bothered, and Bewildered" squashed the repetitive beverage service calls. Suddenly, I felt transported to a Manhattan autumn, straight out of a Woody Allen movie - maybe Hannah and Her Sisters. So beautiful.

As we descended into JFK, the wing and the outside world became one - darkness completely consumed us. I felt stronger, more inspired. I really don't know why. Do I suddenly know everything that I am supposed to do? No, not at all. Yet as the black and white hues became one I was reminded that this world is filled with gray areas. We are not creatures of distinct colors or lines but many shades. Always seeking the next move is futile. Embracing the experience is key.

Sometimes you just have to get above it all to remember that.

Sidewalks of NYC: Lower East Side

The Lower East Side, according to the 1923 tour book, is the area east of the Bowery and south of 10th St. The author strangely refers to this area as simply, "the Ghetto". So the author described several ethnic neighborhoods in the book, so I did not understand why he described just one of them, the then primarily Eastern European Jewish one, as "the Ghetto". The term ghetto, after all, in modern use seems to refer to any neighborhood that is occupied primarily by any ethnic minority. Then I learned that prior to World War II the term "ghetto" was used almost exclusively to refer to Jewish neighborhoods. In fact the first "ghetto" was the walled Venetian Ghetto in Italy. Ghetto is the Italian word for "foundry". Lesson learned.

In the 1920s the neighborhood was described as, "everywhere, Yiddish signs, Yiddish newspapers, Yiddish beards and wigs". One of the neighborhood's main drags, Hester St. is described as being "alive with pushcarts where everything is sold on the sidewalks from pins to fur coats".

While there certainly are several neighborhood in Brooklyn where such a scene can be had, the Lower East Side is certainly not one of them. All of the signs are either in Chinese or Vietnamese now. Hester St. does not boast such a lively scene - the pushcarts seem to have been replaced by cell phone stores and the southern end of the street, west of the Bowery has been taken over by a massive, extremely ugly public school that look like it's right out of A Clockwork Orange.

The author makes the several blocks bounded by the Bowery to the west, Allen St. to the east, Grand St. to the north, and Hester St. to the south, as the nerve center of the neighborhood. Allen St. (pictured below), which at that time had an elevated rail line running above it, is called, "a virtual tunnel of a street" and as the "home of little brass shops, and in its basement and dingy stores ... one can find charming Russian candlesticks, samovars, and andirons (horizontal bars for fireplaces)". Today Allen St. feels almost suburban - the elevated tracks are gone, and the boulevard the tree-lined boulevard that has replaced seems like it would be more at home in Nassau County than in Manhattan.


The neighborhood is vastly disappointing, and not because it has changed hands from one ethnic group to another, but because it just seems so irrelevant now, like an outpost, a few secondary commercial streets to stop off for some fruit on one's way home from the subway to the many high-rises that tower along the East River. It is an outgrowth of the ever expanding Chinatown, with eastern Canal St as its verve center. The Bowery which clearly divided the Jewish enclave from its western neighbor, Little Italy is simply a large Chinatown street. This section of the city seems so balkanized in the 1923 description that it was difficult for me to feel as if I was in the same place. As I was walking from what had been fairly WASP-ish, to what was extremely Italian, and finally wholeheartedly Jewish in 1923, it seemed strange to be immersed in a remarkably homogeneous Asian-American neighborhood.

Traversing the Big Apple - One Sidewalk at a Time

Recently, a friend gave me a small antique tour book from 1923 titled, "The Sidewalks of New York". The book chronicles seemingly every street in Downtown and Midtown Manhattan as a passerby would have seen it. Many of the passages are quite dated, with references to several groups of people that are considered quite offensive today. My goal over the next couple of days is to post side by side comparisons of the neighborhoods included in the book with their 2008 counterparts. Stay tuned.