The Commercial and the Residential

As I walk along 84^th street, the buildings block the low evening sun. But when I turn the corner onto 5^th Ave, heading downtown, it suddenly bathes me in warm sunlight. I cannot help but let out a small smile as I stroll down the street on this bright April day.

           I notice a little girl, no older than kindergarten, walking in front of me in a pink dress along with her older brother and her nanny. This little girl, seized, perhaps, by the optimism of spring, reaches out for a rather large grey bike leaning against the building. Her nanny is distracted, and, for a moment, I am forced to pause my fleneur-ing, grabbing hold of the bike before it falls on her. I smile at the little girl, place the bike in its proper position, and say a quiet you’re welcome to the nanny as she thanks me.

            Walking down Fifth Ave, I realize how residential it is. I pass green awning after green awning with a doorman at every building. Few people stroll along the street with me, and embrace the cozy

afternoon sun. To my right at 72^nd street, a few young mothers watch with strollers as their children shout gleefully at one of the many Central Park playgrounds.

            Turning left at 58^th street, I officially enter midtown, watching as the residential turns into the commercial. The green awnings and the doormen disappear, replaced by company names written in large letters and attractive items in the windows. A clothing store named Turnbull & Asser catches my eye. The mannequins in the window advertise sleek suits for the well-dressed man, but the seemingly brazen name makes me chuckle. Eyeing the Union Jack at the front of the store, I surmise that this must be an old British company. The original owners clearly didn’t anticipate one of their surnames becoming synonymous with a person’s backside. I pause a moment to pity any modern person with the name Asser before continuing.

            A few blocks later, I look across the street at the huge white steeple of St. Patrick’s Cathedral along with the scaffolding that currently covers the building. Observing Manhattan’s most-famed church, I turn around and instantly recognize the flags of Rockefeller Center. My dad works at Rockefeller Center, yet somehow I have never realized that St. Patrick’s Cathedral lies directly across the street. Weaving in and out of tourists while inevitably obstructing a few photos, I look down to the location of the skating rink in the winter. To my surprise, I discover that the rink is still there. This seems to me an outright rejection of the changing seasons, the final relic of a winter gone.

            Leaving Rockefeller Center, I encounter a Mister Frosty truck parked along the side of the road. I watch one little girl smile while she leaves with her ice cream, but there’s a group of adults waiting behind her. They seem to occupy too much space on the sidewalk. Children, not young professionals taking their lunch breaks, typically surround the Mister Frosty trucks close to my house. However, I decide to join this unconventional crew at the ice cream truck in recapturing childhood memories, jumping on the back of the line for a vanilla cone with sprinkles.

Too Popular to Be Cool

Is being a hipster too
mainstream, now? 

Let's start at the end of my hour-long journey with Dominic. Touring Union Square and other parts of the Lower East Side is an extremely tiring affair as you maneuver the traffic-like crowds of hipsters, tourists, and hipsters. More than tiring, it is altogether confusing when you stray from the main streets in pursuit of a literary adventure. Fortunately, I am not particularly adventurous, and my own deviations from the familiar tourist-trod pavements were limited to two or three streets.

My flaneur-ish imaginary companion and I found ourselves in a cafe that specializes in Colombian coffee, hoping to catch a few moments of rest before our awful thirty minute commute home. In retrospect perhaps a photograph would have been appropriate, as the shop was almost literally a hole in a wall, a space between two buildings that some cheapskate bought out and converted into a center for people to fake conversation and paper-writing.

The concept of making such a particularly ethnic shop struck both of us as strange, because none of the staff were Colombian. Neither is the owner; I doubt Colette is an often considered name during a child's Baptism. What an awfully hipster thing to do. Why not make a French Cafe, Mr/Mrs Colette? There are enough Colombians (and Colombian Cafes) out there that we would not miss your strange cultural experiments.

"...Now you're all gone.
Get your... back"

My decision to start at the Cafe has nothing to do with my irrational hatred of Colette's Colombian Coffee and more to do with a piece of graffiti I found in their bathroom, a space even narrower than the alleway cafe, pictured to the right. I found the line particularly fitting for my discoveries (and fitting with my prior knowledge of the area). There does seem to be an appeal for rebellion amongst the denizens of the Lower East Side, something different from the fresh mainstream.

The scantily clad or rag-covered person is, in the Upper East Side, a homeless person to be ignored, a harlot to be frowned upon. Here, he is stylish, as "not caring" is always stylish. She is expressive, revealing bits and pieces of skin that men do on a daily basis.

The skateboarders who command the view of crowds in front of the central Union Square subway are artists or artists-to-be, dazzling crowds or learning how to do so. In other neighborhoods they are noisy and unwelcome guests, disturbing the piece. Get them out of here, Mr. Officer, lest my kids get the wrong idea.

Unicorn meat is unfortunately
too high in trans-fat for most
of the health-conscious.

Even the street-art is different. In Bushwick they were hand drawn and handpainted, art in the traditional sense of the word. In Midtown Manhattan all the way up to the border of the Upper East Side we are treated to a largely clean neighborhood. The hooligans' marks are erased and replaced are left with billboards and posters of new shops and concerts and art exhibits. These are supposed to be better. The LES, however, seems to take a different approach. It mixes the peculiarity and personality of Bushwick's street artists with the consumerism and organization of the rest of Manhattan's "art." The result is something in between art and advertisement. "Unicorn Meat" is a warehouse club. The advertisement isn't particularly exciting when assessing the pure aesthetic value. But, add in the peculiarity of the name, the mystery of its lack of information, and the strangeness of its position behind a stoplight, and you have an advertisement that is also somewhat thought provoking. This makes it more tolerable than the mind-numbing, in-your-face posters all across Manhattan. Perhaps even welcome?

The Alamo's fame is also its downfall

What are not welcome, however, are the many tourists in the neighborhood. Indeed, the popularity of the area seems to contradict its rebellious and hipster and bohemian mantras. In some strange epoch, the sons of the over-worked and underpaid proletariat living in Lower East Side tenements may have discovered, in their flight from their home factories, the mystery of The Alamo. Curious they would have stared and told stories, poked and prodded, formed two Ls with their hands and pretended to take pictures. Perhaps they've began to exchange fisticuffs (a practice long-lost at Regis - perhaps we should reintroduce it for Regis Retro Day?) and in the process, a particularly violent shove pushes a boy against the cube. It moves, and the crowd goes wild. Can it be pushed again, or was that a fleeting moment of magic? Rinse and repeat, as a new set of explorers discovers the cube.

Now the piece has become more of an uncomfortable obstruction on the way to work or school. Everyone has heard of the cube and knows that it can be moved. And so the men in suits walks past The Alamo. Rinse and repeat for every other landmark in the Lower East Side.

How many would have died
if this building was made in
Qatar? 

Something that rhymes
with "citi"-bikes

I fear that slowly this place is losing its flavor. When I first discovered the area in my first year or two in the United States, it was one of the strangest, least New York areas I had experienced. This place was not in the travel guides. When I discovered it again as an adventurous slash rebellious high school Freshman, it was the most New York I area I frequented. Everyone is so quirky. Now, things have gone full circle. Not so much because I am a changed person, which explained the difference in my earlier two perceptions, but perhaps because of the changes in the place and attitude of people.

There does not seem so much to be a conscious attempt to be different so much as there is a conscious attempt to conform to the different. The Citi-bikes, for example, seem to be a push in the direction of a green/organic hipster movement. But they are still branded "Citbank." Are these corporations not antithetical to the LES ethos? The construction sheets and walls are gone now, as most of the buildings in recent memory have been finished. Yet they do not strike me or anyone I know as particularly interesting because once more they are conforming to what is different, as opposed to being different. The strange, impractical curves and glasses are frankly stupid, not artistic. Perhaps a century ago they would have been groundbreaking, but when every new building is in that design...

Even St. Mark's is less a cultural experiment for NYU students than a place for desperate teenagers to drink inside karaoke bars. Note again the new and the old. The strange Japanese and Korean eatieries and bars have been replaced by chain food and drink stores that are modestly Japanese or Korean. Good bye to true ethnic foods and say hello to bento boxes.

I am venting, at this point. Perhaps, as I mentioned, it is due to the confusing nature of the Lower East Side - each street is a microcosm of every different and unique nook and cranny of New York, but each street is the same in that way. Perhaps it is because the neighborhood is changing as we speak. A neighborhood I spent my very first years in. Perhaps I am merely resistant in having my New York become somebody else's.

Long Walk to Understanding

It’s too early on a Saturday morning. Baseball practice has just ended, and all I want to do is jump back in bed. Unfortunately, I’ve already promised myself I would make the walk from Regis to Grand Central down Park Avenue. After reading how E.B. White felt about commuters in New York City, I felt motivated to get off my suburban rear end, pick up my head, and take in the wonders of this great city.

            I take a long look down Park, still feeling hesitant about making the walk. I need to do it. I have to show E.B. White that his claim about suburbanites was completely inaccurate. However, I don’t even reach the 70’s yet before I start counting down the streets until Grand Central at 42^nd. Man, White could not have been more right. Over the past four years, I had grown so accustomed to putting my head down and making it to my destination as quickly as humanly possible. This walk was going to take a long time, but it would be good for me.

            Aside from Central Park, it is difficult to find a nice patch of grass on the island of Manhattan. Unless, of course, you are walking down Park Avenue. I had never noticed how beautiful the isle in the middle of the avenue was. It was oddly juxtaposed to all of the speeding, horn-honking, and fumes of the myriad of cars. Then I remembered why that isle existed in the first place. My dad once told me that Metro-North trains used to run above ground right down Park Avenue into Grand Central Terminal. To be honest, I wish the trains still ran that way so I could hop on and be at Grand Central already. My legs, and the rest of my body for that matter, were so tired. But seriously, it must have been such an incredible view of the city, I thought to myself. It certainly beats the dark tunnels of the modern day subway system.

            I eventually stopped counting down the streets and began to really take in the city and enjoy the experience. What I realized was that people who live in the city really are not that different from people who reside in the suburbs. This was made clear to me when I saw this little girl and her father. She was riding a little pink scooter, just like the one my sister used to ride up and down the driveway at my house. This girl didn’t need a fancy driveway to enjoy the experience of riding a scooter. She already had everything she needed. The same was true for the next person I encountered. It was an older Asian fellow who happened to be riding his bicycle as I made my way down Park. With the number of cars packing the streets in Manhattan, I was shocked to see a guy casually riding a bike in the street. “What a badass,” I muttered to myself in awe, half-hoping he would hear me and acknowledge my presence. Overall, the city really is not that different from my hometown in the suburbs. People enjoy the same sorts of activities. In fact, the scenery might even make those activities more fun in such an exciting city.

            I finally looked to see how far away Grand Central was. It was so close I could have hit one of the windows with the toss of a ball. I could not believe how quickly the trip went. I took a final look back up Park Avenue, reflecting on my journey. Although E.B. White may have been correct in his description of commuters, I had this newfound appreciation for the kinds of New Yorkers who live differently than I do. After all, I’m only a small piece of this great city.

First Day of Spring

Perfection.  Utter perfection.  I’m still entranced by the sheer beauty and warmth of the “real” first day of spring by the time I reach the corner of 84^th and Park Avenue.  Budding flowers along street side flowerbeds seem almost alien to my eyes; a winter as harsh as this past one, I suppose, can force the beauty of spring into a realm of near imagination. 

No matter, I think, as I step into pace walking down Park, targeting the MetLife building as my destination.  It used to be the Panam building, which my grandfather constantly reminded me.  He was a proud pilot for Panam through the middle of the twentieth century, and an even prouder father of two daughters.  One daughter, I remember, once begged him for an autograph from the Beatles as they arrived at JFK in February, 1964.  My grandfather, the witty man he was, happily obliged and had his own Fab Four – or four of his fellow pilots – sign respectively for the members of the British band.  To this day, my aunt, his daughter still has—

Suddenly a speeding minivan screeches to a stop as I hurry across the crosswalk on 77^th.  I jump out of the way in time to hear the equally flustered driver shout, “Don’t shake your head, kid,” as he resumes his speeding.  Thoughts run through my head, wishing I could have that moment back to conduct myself better and return fire with a better retort than silence.  In fairness, the walk signal was in my favor and he was definitely speeding.  Pushing the thought aside, I continue my walk down Park past some of the wealthiest apartments building New York has to offer.

Around 72^nd I pass a small construction site.  No workers are around, which I suppose is typical of most construction locations at this time.  There is, however, one of those orange manhole covers which spews steam into the air.  What are they called?  They are like geysers for urbanites.  Except most New Yorkers have never seen a real geyser.  It’s a shame, really, because the geysers of Yellowstone are incredible. Ah, now that is perfection.  Yellowstone: God’s second Eden.  That is where I wish I was more than anywhere else.  Where the waterfalls are skyscrapers, where Yellowstone River is the FDR Highway, and where the bison or wolves or moose are the native-born New Yorkers or commuters or tourists.  What a city Yellowstone is.

Again, I find myself captivated by the beauty of nature, no strange thing on such a spring day.  Perhaps I am being an idealistic April fool, but I hope more days like this are to come.

The Italian embassy, between 68^th and 69^th street, shortly comes into view.  A smile comes across my face.  But why should it?  My family boasts a rich Italian culture and heritage, yet I hardly know anything about the mother nation.  Then again, I am the third generation to have been born here so I’m overwhelmingly more American than Italian.  Is there even an argument to be made that I am Italian?

The famous Christ Church waits for me a few blocks later.  I specifically remember my cousin had her wedding at this location because I had to act as an usher and walk my grandmother down the aisle.  My family jokes that I am that grandmother’s least favorite grandchild.  That doesn’t matter to me anyway, but the running gag forces me to chuckle. 

Suddenly, the rush of midtown hits me.  One block ago, I walked casually and nearly alone.  Here, as the looming MetLife Building seems ever closer, crowds walk with you, forcing you into the same pace.  Thinking becomes mechanical, sauntering becomes hurrying, and soon Grand Central Terminal welcomes me and millions others through its golden doors.  Finally inside again, I miss the fresh air of the first day of spring.  Perfection.