Even as the past week has seen some trechant commentary that seems to be a harbinger of a change in public discourse over the continued dissappointment that is the redevelopment of the WTC site, it also has an air of resignation — the last gasp of an angry but fatigued opposition that will now pass into browbeaten silence. At times, the anger feels like an exercise: something we were told once to do, and now dutifully execute, even as it seems like the anger is manufactured for its own sake.
Certainly, this is the explanation those who are running the show now would prefer to be the accepted wisdom. Disconnecting the cause of our anger attenuates it’s efficacy. With the practical and symbolic efforts failing on so many levels, it also requires a rather elaborate effort to synthesize the magintude of the failure. The history of opposition to large-scale urban development has either been wholesale rejection, or tactical efforts to make the least bad possible. There has been very little acceptance of the argument that nothing should be built, at least not for a long while, allowing for more reflection. So we make small points, over and over, in hopes that there is a tacit recongnition that they are legitimate, and perhaps worthy of negotiation, as the voices who at one time weren’t overwhelming, but certainly numerious, found the entire redevelopment plan ill-conceived. While doing research on yet another small corner of dissent, I came across this, an account by Leslie Gill of her experience on September 11, delivered just two weeks after at a event at the Architectural League (there are a number of others, including Peter Wheelwright, who lost his home and office that day). My memories — many of them mediated through the same lens of those near and not so — do not register with great frequency. I willifully avoid the site, mostly in small protest against the decisions made to date. And though I do not avoid anything else that might evoke memories, I do not seek them out, perhaps in fear of the day that I look upon something, an image, a narrative, and the moment passes, undifferentiated. The degree to which is does not is also shocking, a horrifying reminder of the power of memory and how it can and should shape our commitment to the future. My memories are only those of an ‘average’ New Yorker that day; there are one or two details that might stand out, but given the number of people and the magnitude of the event, they are hardly singular. But living them while reading Gill’s narrative, they remind me both how unthinkable that day was, and how unthinking our response now seems.Let’s not get bogged down with details.
Only pennies a day from each household in New Jersey to provide temporary housing for 22 men? That’s a good deal. The same amount for working families that can’t find affordable housing? That’s socialism. Fortunately, we got promises of both this week, to assuage our redness and blueness. As is apropos to the metaphoric interpretation of the latter, the blue promise is only a promise to fulfill a promise made fifteen years ago (yes, that’s a lot of promises), even as there’s still some talk that perhaps that money should go to another 22 semi-homeless millionaries.
The Times ran a piece today detailing the finer points of the Giants stadium deal. Or not, since no one can seem to get their mitts on it. Well, the Times couldn’t. And if they can’t, it can’t be got. But the talking points today are that the $6.3 million in yearly income wasn’t net maintenance (estimated currently to be $3 million), lowering the projected direct income to $120 million over the 40 years of the agreement. Meanwhile, the current estimated expenses are $190 million (if retiring the current debt is part of the state nut). Or not, because there are things like the $720 million in lost income (the current tenants pay, you know, rent), but also the potential of $612 million in projected tax revenue. So you can see how it gets murky. But who’s counting? Asks Mark S. Rosentraub, an economist at Cleveland State University — let us note here that Cleveland is the most segregated large city in the country and has more people living in poverty than Detroit, so they know from good planning — pointing out that the $10-20 million a year the state might lose is ‘neglible’ when spread over the millions of NJ households. Hmmm. Maybe we could tack on a little more negligence and give everyone in Jersey a decent home?
Meanwhile, over here, our own bit of reclaimed trash heap is helping out the needy as well, and Mike-Mike is trying to get you to love him the only way he knows how: buying you (me? one-bedroom, south of 14th Street, southern exposure preferred). Well, not you, but a bunch of people who look like you (and me), except they are less white and more poor. That’s right: after 15 years, the city is going to make good on the promise to use excess revenue from Battery Park City — excess defined as the money left over after the BPCA gets done paying the poshest park staff in the western world — to fund affordable housing.
I’d go dig up the details, but affordable housing is simply the promise of love in the morning from a man trying to get you into bed tonight. Mike-Mike had four years to get this program off the ground. Guiliani had eight. Dinkins had four. Koch had a couple. You get the picture. Between subsidizing the tapis vert at Rockefeller Park (and providing play space for kids named things like ‘Tristan’) and shoring up the general fund, it’s been a lot big talk with no action regarding that money over the years.
Complicating Mike-Mike’s CYA action is that as recently as last year it was being suggested that those very same funds be redirected at the Hudson Yards project — which you should all read to mean ‘Jets Stadium’. This may have been a dream of Dan ‘the Visgoth’ Doctoroff, or simply some wonky underling looking for ways to pad the till back when the Jets were offering two tickets to The Lion King in exchange for the entire West Side. So it’s like 4,500 units or something, and a big ‘ole pile of money — big ‘ole being a fairly specific unit of measure, equivalent to roughly 5% of what the city will need to spend in bond service and infrastucture improvements to get the stadium built. But that’s some 8,000 votes Mike-Mike couldn’t count on yesterday (maybe: as of this week, it looks like the Democrats are planning to back a tape recording of the MLK ‘I Have a Dream’ speech for mayor). We’ll get all old-school and advise to not believe the hype. Put some shovels in the proverbial ground, Mike-Mike. About 4,500 of them. Then we’ll talk about making a difference and a real housing policy.
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And occassionally, I like something.
With no apparent fanfare, an impressive new mixed-use facility has opened on West 37th Street. Modestly named 37 Arts, it houses three Off-Broadway theaters (ranging from 290-499 seats) and, upstairs, is the home to the Baryshnikov Dance Foundation, which has both offices and studio space.
I noticed the construction sometime last year because it happens to be the path west from my garage, and the finish materials and layout made it hard to conclude what sort of use the final form would house. I decided to stop by in the nice weather to see what the status was, and to my surprise, it was mobbed by theater-goers and the building appears by-and-large complete. I’m pleased to share that it should stand as an exemplar for the coming development on the West Side, and as an impressive memorial to architect John W. Averitt, who passed away during construction. The building is very tall (150 feet) six stories, though the bulk encountered on the 37th Street side (the main entrance) is more modest, with a cornice that finishes at about two-thirds the full height, with a set back only visible from Tenth Avenue. A very simple gesture of an open, glazed ‘atrium’ (actually just the vertical circulation with very little open space exclusive of the stair runs) surrounded by an unfinished concrete façade that can be read as either Brutalist or Ando-ish, depending on your age. It is punctured by what appears to be arbitrarily located service vents. The glazing is welded glass block, though beam is perhaps a better term, since they are vertical units that run full height from floor to floor. Solid but clear, their the depth and welds distort the interior enough to produce a pleasant abstraction of the interior finishes, which appear to be a mixture of painted steel and wood panel (Hurlyburly just relocated there and I passed just at curtain, so a more detailed exploration was difficult). At what is presumably the terminus of the third theater, the building steps back and presents a completely blank face, continuing the raw concrete that frames the lower portion. Behind this sits a radically different configuration, three levels of dance studios with extraordinary south and west facing expanses of glazing. The mullion pattern mimics the industrial character of the surrounding buildings, and the cladding is corrugated aluminum. I’m often ambivalent about these binary conjunctions: light versus heavy, interlocking forms with contrasting materials. They reveal a diagrammatic formalism that often appears the result of either compromises in materials, or a facile handling of elevations. If it seems like undue harping, it is: the building makes such a strong statement on the 37th Street façade that the simple gesture of cleaving the form down the middle is a tad easy, even as it both responds to program and site issues — there are no opportunities for openings on the lower levels, and the possibility of adjoining development would obscure most of this portion in any case, and there is a strong local traditional of skimping on cladding for party wall construction. But this resolution does fulfill one crucial program requirement — those dance studios must be stunning to inhabit. Again, I’m quibbling. The building, experienced from the various vantage points (north and south of 37th Street on Tenth Avenue and the 37th itself), is a confident and elegant form. Given the extended run of Hurlyburly, I expect to have an opinion on the interior in the coming weeks. One hopes that the Prince of Pulsation, Mr. Charles Gwathmey (who has his offices across the way, along with another local titan Richard Meier), looks over occasionally and takes inspiration on what restraint and simplicity can produce.
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That’s the Way the Money Goes.
The LMDC issued a draft report for comment last week, putatively an outline of how the remaining $735 million in Community Development Block Grants will be disbursed. With over $4 billion in requests remaining, the majority of requests will go unfunded. The document does not detail if the $4 billion figure represents all requests, only eligible projects, or priorities — the funnel that comprises the decision making process. Nor does it detail how the money will be specifically allocated, in the form who gets how much for what.
Five priorities are named, but no hierarchy is specified:- Memorial complex
- WTC site (including public infrastructure)
- Planned high-impact, large-scale, off-site initiatives
- Long Island/JFK Rail Link
- Broader Lower Manhattan recovery and revitalization projects
If I were trying to be glib, I’d say this section could be better written as “It was clear from public meetings that there were concerns about excessive development on the WTC site, but the Advisory Committee pretty much ignored that and focused on insuring their was plenty of retail, even as it was unpopular.” I’m sure I could go back and look for a precisely crafted sentence that explains that public feedback was encouraged, but not necessarily incorporated, but seems hardly necessary, since evidence of this abounds. Reviewing the extant PAP’s provides a general level of detail, but does not correlate to the chart in this new document in any way. The one item that can be precisely calculated is that $47 million (not including $15 million allocated for oversight for the infrastructure grants, which are the largest single line item to date, at $750 million) has been spent so far on administration (about 2.5% of total grants to date). Even with my limited command of the information, I could cobble together a decent breakdown, so, aside from bureaucratic stasis and poor document design, it is hard to imagine why the LMDC wouldn’t. Perhaps this is Achilles Heel of all conspiracy mongering: mistaking incompetence for malice. But if you can find something to object in this largely vacant update, be sure to get your comments in by the end of the month. Perhaps one could note that more information would be helpful, but given this is likely the final PAP, a promise to make the process more transparent or inclusive would ring a little hollow. I’ve already tried the commenting route, and I’d have to say I was disappointed at the results. So my questions about what this will do to the status of the performing arts building, given that the Memorial foundation recently announced is not providing any funds in the near terms, and why the affordable housing initiative is still pending, even as the rental housing grants (which I have heard anecdotally are being uneven distributed, in a seemingly random and arbitrary process, along with the expected misrepresentation on the part of brokers about which apartments qualify) — which amount to some five times the affordable portion — have been disbursed. Of course, the big question — how long will 7 WTC have to sit empty before we start rethinking, if not the Freedom Tower itself, then the current planning for three additional office blocks — is conveniently outside the purview of this round. And is likely to stay there.Early on in the planning process, there was far-ranging discussion about the program for the World Trade Center site, particularly in terms of the amount of commercial office space and other uses included in the initial six concept plans. Participants in the Listening to the City events expressed concerns about the site being overdeveloped while members of the LMDC Advisory Councils focused on the need to restore the retail that was destroyed with an emphasis on street-level retail that serves residential needs.
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White Elephant Roundup.
Keeping track of all the schemes regional leaders dream up to fritter away our proverbial hard-earned can be a damn exhausting endeavor. What with the beautiful weather, who wants to give up their weekend trolling the internets for the skinny? Not you, and not really me either. But I made my bed, so now I must sleep in it:
Giants Stadium
Status: It’s a done deal. Last week, the NJSEA and the team put aside their differences and realized how much they love each other after all. That, and the realization that there wasn’t anyone else left to go home with. Call it a sympathy lay.
Stats: $185 million in (existing) debt service and infrastructure improvements in exchange for $6.3 million yearly PILOTs and permission to move ahead with the Xanadu entertainment complex.
Lawsuit? No word, but it’s a good bet that the squabbling from a few weeks ago has been put aside.
Winners: The team owners. It’s always the team owners.
Losers: A tie between the state, which made barely a break even deal on a property that had a solid 15-year lease in place, and the fans, who got only a tepid ‘maybe’ in response to the request that the new stadium not charge current season ticket holders PSLs (Personal Seat Licenses).
Westside Stadium
Status: The ESDC gave the thumbs up to the Jets bid last week, surprising no one who can use a dictionary.
Stats: The final numbers aren’t in, but you can bet it will end up costing you, me, and the lamppost a pretty penny.
Lawsuit? The suit filed by Cablevision shortly after they found out that offering the most money did not constitute a winning bid has a hearing on May 3. But folks aren’t resting easy in the interim, electing to bat each other around with the EIS — which, at 7,000-plus pages, is quite a weapon.
Winners: None yet, but it pains me to say it’s looking good for the stadium.
Losers: Anyone who can’t get their K-Y free.
Yankee Stadium
Status: Ha ha — you forgot all about everyone’s favorite convicted felon-cum-owner. Guiliani moved on to shaking down charities raising money for tsunami relief, and everyone forgets that his big stadium albatross was a new home for the Yankees. While the carpetbagging Johnson family was providing such a distraction, the Boss went and finagled hisself a pretty sweet deal.
Stats: Another one of those “private” financing deals that includes $300 million in infrastructure (when this deal was first announced, it was only going to be $100 million) from the city and state, including parking and a Metro North station.
Lawsuit? Maybe we can get the Dolans and Steinbrenner to revive one of their greatest hits.
Winners: As of this week, it certainly isn’t the Yankees.
Losers: A-Rod.
West Side Tunnel
Status: Pataki painted himself the knight in shining armor last week, seeming to step in and an prevent the loss of the only viable private commercial development downtown. Which is interesting, since last year he was all about leaving the decision to the locals, who mostly rejected the plan. So he saved us from ourselves, or something.
Stats: Frees up about $500 million in rebuilding funds, or saves us from finding an additional $500 million. Either way, it seems Pataki wants the $500 million to be reallocated, indulgence-like, to the JFK rail link (or, as I like to call it, the Long Island Republican Base Express)
Winners: Henry Paulson and Goldman Sachs, who are playing their cards very close, or simply being decent and waiting a week or more to announce they are indeed moving ahead with their plans and avoiding making clear that when GS wants to put the screws to somebody, they do it right.
Losers: Lovers of high-speed subterrean vehicular improvements.
7WTC: [Sound of crickets, tumbleweeds, aroma of desperation]
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“All history was a palimpsest, scraped clean and reinscribed exactly as often as was necessary.”
“Interesting” information is coming out of the current spate of cases against protestors from the Republican National Convention — if by “interesting”, one means perjury, a term the Times assiduously avoids. It’s an odd, postmodern read because it seems like the script to every over-baked Norman Jewison film, until you realize that there will be no moment where Al Pacino delivers a withering diatribe and we will all be uplifted at the end. Even as they present what seems to be incontrovertible evidence that testimony was manufactured, the Times hesitates to characterize this as a developing scandal, and doesn’t press prosecutors, who may well have been complicit in the process.
The story is at the nexus of several important issues of civic experience: what many characterize as an increasingly intolerant attitude on the part of the police regarding public assembly, particularly the ongoing fight between the city and Critical Mass (most of the video evidence pertains to gatherings in Union Square, where the Critical Mass rides originate each month), the narrative power of video in providing very hard to refute evidence of the belief that police are arrogant and domineering their exchanges with those they are charged with serving (and protecting), and the conflicted role pervasive video plays in civic life (just as this scandal unfolds, police are using security video in hopes of solving a hit-and-run case on 45th Street). The worst aspect of this is the unyielding attitude of the police in these situations — why would the police not disavow one of their own who quite clearly breaks the law? It creates the sense that the significant issue for them is solidarity, not respect for the law, and it starts to make our ‘finest’ look like a goon squad in Brazil. My own opinions are formed by a couple direct experiences, including being loosely part of an ACT UP demonstration at the AIDS rally at the 1992 Convention, back when the use of cages and forcing marching groups to side wind over blocks were being deployed for the first time, and watching the response to a squatter revolt a couple years after that. Before I moved to the city, I remember watching Do the Right Thing, and, even as a I sympathized in good white, liberal fashion, with the overall message, I also remember thinking the police invasion in the third act was presented in such a heavy handed and histrionic way that it made the film much less accessible to those even predisposed to think favorably of Lee’s thesis. Watching police tear the door off the front of my building (and then denying to my face), the next time I saw it, I was appalled when I realized that the scene was actually rather restrained compared to what I witnessed first-hand. Lacking the ‘objective’ eye of a video camera, my comments could be dismissed as only an excited recollection of what was, to be sure, a dangerous situation — this was back in the day when East Village residents still thought throwing bricks at cops would lead to the anarchist paradise. Yet, the minute police arrived, they staked out an us and them situation, intensified by the presumption that they were under siege, even as they possessed all the weaponry and far outnumbered residents on the block. The result was that for many, every cop is like the prototypical football player on steroids at a party — you never know when he’s going to go off, and he has a clear physical advantage. Now we have video — here, I’m not speaking specifically of arrest techniques last August, but of other more notable examples — of the worst aspects of what can result from disproportionately empowering one segment of your populace. Even as the examples are few and far between, there will reach a point where it will become entirely irrational to allow someone to speak of the violent protestors when the images stand in contradistinction. It’s a strange affirmation of the proverbial Orwellian dystopia: his figured on control entirely divested from the people. Such was the fear of pervasive video cameras. But with some rather powerful and seemingly independent resources for aggregating and disseminating information, and the means to collect evidence — limited, granted, to the affluent digerati, who, nonetheless, look an awful lot like the enlightened bourgeois — it may well be that this makes no difference. Look, here is evidence that police fabricate testimony. And nothing changes. Protestors continue to be painted as somehow lesser citizens, when in fact they are proved to be upholding what were seen as crucial notions of speech and protest by the founders of the grandest experiment in democracy ever attempted.Posted in Uncategorized Comments closed
Enormous Changes at the Last Minute.
After glossing over the promotion of Max Bond in the press release regarding the appointment of Gretchen Dykstra to chair the World Trade Center Memorial Foundation, The New York Times made up for lost time, having sussed out from the mice type that the Performing Arts facility is being left out of the only announced capital campaign.
The Foundation, which is looking like it should be renamed the George Pataki Presidential PAC, has set a target of $500 million to fund the WTC Memorial and one of the two ‘cultural facilities’ slated to house the International Freedom Center and the Drawing Center. The Times alludes to the belief of some that perhaps even the Drawing Center is extraneous. The Times covered this territory a few weeks back (I’ve given up trying to find the link — if anyone has it, I’d appreciate it: a Sunday Arts section piece on the fundraising challenges, and some snarky commentary on the potential cost overruns and delays of the Gehry building, something you can imagine I’m very pleased about), but at the time, the thrust of the article was that other arts organizations might be in a position to muscle their way in, if, say, the Drawing Center, which doesn’t quite have the same fund-raising ability as MoMA, couldn’t find the $200 million it needs. Given that every Podunk museum in this country has announced a Renzo Piano addition, that seems unlikely, but given the complexity and uncertainty of the site, it may be a taller challenge than everyone thought — a fact that might scare off other potential candidates, particularly in light of the short shrift implicit in Friday’s announcement. There are couple really broad generalizations one can make about this latest turn. The obvious one: it continues to be a struggle to create several complex and very expensive structures — that must knit together formally and logistically, on a site that would be a tremendous challenge even if it weren’t the most emotionally fraught landscape in the history of the city — absent a functioning master plan. This would certainly be disputed by the LMDC, but the drastic revisions of the latest iteration of the Memorial are indicative of the indeterminacy. Decisions about security, access, and integration are still unresolved. Looming over it all is the commercial viability of the office properties, still untested as Larry Silverstein carpets the town with slick promotional materials to no avail. Another is the precarious situation, physically, of the Performing Arts Center. Occupying the site most physically proximate to the Freedom Center, it is situated astride the tower’s loading docks, the main entrance, or turning circle, depending on which day of the week (or Yale student ideas he’s riffing on) you talk to David Childs. As a result, there will be no plans presented until next year at the earliest. This delay helps, since Gehry isn’t even out of schematics (hell, they probably aren’t finished with programming) yet, and he’s already asking for more money. Given his seemingly craven comments about fees during the competition for the master plan, any discussion involving budgets and Gehry is going to ruffle feathers. But it is a discussion that is crucial, since no one knows how much any of this will cost, or who is paying. With the numbers currently available, the best estimate for the total cost of the PATH terminal, Freedom Tower, Freedom Center, Memorial, and Performing Arts center is over $5 billion, and it has never been made clear if these costs include site improvements (such as the security infrastructure, truck access, and bus garage). Some large sums are currently committed, but given a standard contingency for these projects in toto runs a half-billion dollars, the details count considerably. The LMDC has about $850 million left. The Memorial committee is starting at $500 million, but it’s not clear if they are counting on additional monies from the LMDC over and above that, or if that will fully fund the Memorial and Museum building. Even though there are a number of constituents making requests, you can be sure that a goodly sum will be allocated to the Memorial. Conjoining the Freedom Center — an institution that still lacks a clearly articulated mission statement, but is helpfully helmed by an enthusiastic support of President Bush, and, very importantly for the governor, an avid fundraiser for Republicans with national aspirations — and the Memorial itself ensures Pataki will be able to use the various events (fundraising, groundbreaking ceremonies, and the like) that come up as a sort of proxy patronage for his would-be donors. It’s interesting that this is happening more or less in plain sight. Now that community interest has been attenuated by both time and frustration, and likely by the misperception that subtle changes in language aren’t enough to drastically alter the final form of the master plan, not to mention its discrete elements, everyone has been lulled into an exhausted stupor.Posted in Uncategorized Comments closed
Solomon Bellows, 1915 — 2005.
At the corner he paused to watch the work of the wrecking crew. The great metal ball swung at the walls, passed easily through brick, and entered the rooms, the lazy weight browsing on kitchens and parlors. Everything it touched wavered and burst, spilled down. There rose a white tranquil cloud of plaster dust. The afternoon was ending and in the widening area of demolition was a fire, fed by the wreckage. Moses heard the air, softly pulled toward the flames, felt the heat. The workmen, heaping the bonfire with wood, threw strips of molding like javelins. The old flooring burned gratefully — the funeral of exhausted objects. Scaffolds walled with pink, white, green doors quivered as the six-wheeled trucks carried off fallen brick. The sun, now leaving for New Jersey and the west, was surrounded by a dazzling broth of atmospheric gases. Herzog observed that people were spattered with red stains, and he himself was flecked on the arms and chest. He crossed Seventh Avenue and entered the subway.
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This is what happens when your mayor claims to be a ‘non-politician’.
There’s not a whole lot more to be said about this that can’t be found elsewhere. But the Times gets a little dodgy and flashes a moment of Rampe-lovin’ with this quote:
“Goldman’s decision is tantamount to a vote of no confidence in a project that has been viewed as a critical symbol of downtown Manhattan’s redevelopment dreams.”
That’s interesting, since the LMDC keeps doing surveys downtown to see if anyone actually wants this tunnel, aside from Brookfield Properties, and the answers consistently come back: nyet. CB1 said no, Battery Park residents said no. Everyone said no. And now the only legitimate developer of commercial property (you can try and count Silverstein, but he would need to, you know, get tenants first) south of Canal Street has said a big resounding no. And how did our non-politician mayor respond? He said that Paulson didn’t respect how crucial a football stadium was for the Olympics. Oh, wait, no he didn’t. Actually, he said nothing. The largest private investment in downtown in years, and the city couldn’t be bothered to pick up the phone. That’s cheek. Goldman really doesn’t understand how development is done in this city. They should ask for a big ‘ole tax abatement, and demand the city write a big check, and then they’ll get some attention.
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Wednesday Lore: The Best Thing Ever.
Going to try out something newish here. One of the reasons for starting this was to capture the ‘physical life’ of the city (look down there, says it every day). That has mostly ended up being the buildings and streets that comprise it, and the battles over them. But there are places and events in the city that are part of the proverbial fabric that makes it a joy and a frustration, a never-ending struggle that manages (most days) to seem worthwhile. Part William Whyte, part Jimmy Breslin. Each Wendesday (or as often as I can muster) will feature an hopefully interesting anecdote that rattles around my head.
WE ARE A TOWN OF immigrants that strive to accentuate our distinct backgrounds, particularly if they provide adequate contrast in making our journey all the more impressive. The flip side is the relentless quest to establish our credentials as somehow more real than the person in the door just behind. Natives are looked at with a mixture of disdain and envy — and no small amount of confusion, theirs being something unfathomable to those who find their lives here as the terminus of a journey. Measuring ourselves is the distraction, sport, and obsession that fills our days. Not as simple as the concept of ‘cool’ it is a series of experiences and command of the relative regard of a multidimensional array of objects, people and places calculated with terrifying precision and speed when disporting ourselves. With the advent of untrammeled wealth and real estate, this all becomes murky, since the magnitude with which such markers interpose themselves skews the calculus, most often by simply piling atop all the difficult crests already in our path. To be sure, this was always the case. But the ineffable mythos that drew us had seemingly inviolate archetypes: starving artist, aspiring writer, gadabout, and it seems they are being slowly pressed in the mud under the heel of a largely uninteresting, but phenomenally affluent overclass. Still, we struggle to identify corners of experience, names or events that are insulated from the vicissitudes of stock market millions. For years, an old roommate and I harbored a secret trip, saved for all our weekend visitors. It was a grand event, the culmination of every trip, entirely divested of the straining concomitant with all the culture consumption and more literal largess that fills most vacations. With a word, it will be obvious — but perhaps not. I have given up mentioning it, since it is gone, but even before it passed into lore, I was surprised at how often I’d be met by perplexed stares when I would tell the story. We would start small, mention at some point the first night that we were saving the best for last, that we would organize Sunday around a trip. To the most amazing thing, guaranteed to astound the most jaded visitor, that would provide the best story to relay to the yokels, that would leave them awestruck. We would regale them over the course of the weekend, check into see if they were excited. “Are you excited? can you wait? We are going to see the chicken!” The Chicken, as many of you know, is the Chicken on Mott Street. Or better, the Chicken on Mott Street that Played Tic Tac Toe. There was also the Dancing Chicken, but that was even before my time. The way worked was that they put a chicken an old looking arcade machine, behind a glass wall, and you put in two bits (four? I can’t recall) and played the chicken a game of Tic Tac Toe. The chicken usually won, or at least tied, because it went first. Why did the chicken get to go first? Because it’s a chicken! (I was told by a friend that this bit of wisdom came from a radio call in show wherein a caller asked the same question, with no context whatsoever, and instantly received that response). You could see its head make little bobbing gestures before each move. Not to ruin the mystery, but all that was happening was that there was a grid that reflected the game board, and the rudimentary computer inside would issue a food pellet to the location it was about to play. Chicken would reach for the pellet, and an ‘X’ lit up. The response to people varied: our out-of-scale exhortations, over the course of three days, often affected their decision. In truth, it was our own little litmus test: if you couldn’t absorb the bizarreness of what was in front of you, coupled with our completely absurd run up, an not see it as a truly singular event, well, then the hell with you, New York wasn’t your kind of place. I mean, who wants to get that excited about going to the Met? Most everyone did in the end get it, some because we browbeat them a little more to insure their wonder. Fewer actually played. Why bother? You could never win. The Chicken is of course gone, likely the result of diligent pro-animal sorts. That definitely did in the Dancing Chicken, wherein you put a quarter in a machine and a pen covered in chicken wire was electrified, causing the chicken to, um, dance. But the Tic Tac Toe chicken was robust fella. It’s not like it had less space than a commercially-raised peer. Hell, did they think it went to some free-range farm after the game was removed? It was eaten the next day. Maybe each only spent a few weeks in the booth getting fattened up before moving down the street to become a nice fried rice dish. That’s not some racist slur — it was a healthy looking bird; I wouldn’t have minded eating it. Maybe that was the gimmick in the way back — you win, you eat the chicken. That would have really gotten Ricki Lake exercised.