A city so nice they had to name it twice
On the street – the walks of two street nomads in New York City
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South view of the Lower
Manhattan skyline
No other name of a city in the world has had the alluring
promise of that of New York City. The long period of being the world's
biggest and leading city in terms of population and commerce as well as
arts and entertainment will forever make New York City a must for
tourists who want to experience first-hand the wonders of the
industrialized world.
The statue on Liberty Island in
the morning mist
However, in New York City extremes meet, in architecture and design,
work and leisure: from the tallest and greatest to the lowest and
meanest; from the sophisticated and refined to the kitsch and vulgar;
from the most expensive lifestyle to the barest of existences - as if
every phenomenon is shadowed by its antithesis
. New York, New York - Gotham
City, indeed.
From a previous, albeit short, visit of six hours when stopping over in
1994 we already knew some of the sights of Midtown Manhattan, and the
initial
awe at the skyline had thus settled. This time, the week before Easter
2001,
instead of looking up (at) the architectural highlights, we focused on
the
more modest tenement buildings, e.g. in the (literally) Lower East Side
of
Manhattan, following in the footsteps of our renowned countryman Jacob
A.
Riis.
A doll's house among
giants in Lower Manhattan
Apart from marveling at New York's architectural wonders
(which can't be helped even if you try to be blasé), the
thought that has always
tickled our imagination is the one of the many immigrants who settled
in
New York City and never moved farther. Danes mostly went on to Chicago
(or Racine, WI) and settled in the Midwest, but the bulk of often
illiterate
and skilled or unskilled immigrants alike who settled next to New
York's
harbor in newly built or redesigned tenement houses have always
attracted
our interest. These immigrants were not all persecuted in their home
countries,
but came out of economic necessity or lured by promises of a life of
prosperity
that never came to be. Where exactly did these immigrants live? What
were
their housing conditions? Just how many were they? Did they ever regret
they came?
New York City may never sleep, but its citizens still need a place to
stay although they don't seem to cook at home, but eat out even at
rather exorbitant prices, at least compared to the rest of the US.
To eat out means more than just going to a nice restaurant. The many delis and coffee shops speak of busy people grabbing a bite in between work. Or they may buy a meal "to go" and eat it either on their (long) way home or when they get home but don't bother to cook, especially if they are single.
Do they serve anything
besides caviar, I wonder?
The location of our hotel on Chambers and West Broadway just
north of the World Trade Center turned out to be a
perfect starting point for
an exploration of Lower Manhattan including TriBeCa, SoHo, Greenwich
Village,
Chinatown, Little Italy, East Village, and the Lower East Side tenement
buildings.
Picture right: Outside
our hotel - West Broadway
- the World Trade Center almost vanishing into the air
In addition to these districts we made excursions to Midtown
Manhattan, Central Park, Riverside, Harlem, Upper East Side
(Yorkville), and Brooklyn, plus, of course, Staten Island to see the
New York skyline, Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty (if only at a
distance).
The tourist's New York is probably mainly concentrated between Midtown (34th St.) and Central Park (59th St.) with a few excursions south to the Financial District. We decided, however, that our angle was to be the differences between the various districts in terms of housing, population, businesses, and general street life.
However,
the people tourists see in the street are for the most part either
other tourists, peddlers, or recent
immigrants working in storefronts. Statistically, New
Yorkers either live in the
suburb boroughs (the Bronx, Queens, Brooklyn, Long Island, Staten
Island,
etc.) or in New Jersey – not in Manhattan. And when in
Manhattan many of
them work in the high-rise office silos and only come out to smoke in
designated areas.
Smoker's Station - a butt receptacle
But from the mid-1800s and some 80 years on things were different. Three in four New Yorkers lived in the Manhattan residential areas, most notably in what was called the Lower East Side. Around 1850 the tenements in this district alone housed half a million souls packed to a rate of 290,000 to a square mile. In comparison, the greatest crowding of Old London (in England) was at the rate of 175,816 per square mile.
(The New York 1880 census tells of a Manhattan population of 1,164,673. Thus, in 1888, in the single block between Park and Bayard Streets, there lived in Baxter and Mulberry Streets a total of 5,650 people, among them 944 children under five years.)
The first immigrants were mostly Irish and German, the latter in such great numbers that the district was known as Kleindeutschland (Little Germany), but in later years many more nationalities joined them: Italians, Greeks, Poles, Russians, etc., etc. – many of them Jews. As is the situation today the Chinese constituted a state within the state, and they lived separately, but under similar conditions.
The Lower East Side Tenement Museum in
Orchard St. offers a look inside these 
tenement buildings including authentic stories
of the people who lived
there (a must for tourists who want a taste of New York history and of
something else besides the usual sights). This picture of a dismal
America supposedly paved with gold is nothing but depressing, but since
almost three in four New Yorkers lived in these tenements, many of
which were in back-alleys,
the facts are too gross to be easily overlooked.
Room in tenement
building in Orchard Street
(from http://www.tenement.org
)
Besides the tour of the sample house the museum offers ample
materials to study immigrant life, including the famous essay from 1890
How The Other Half Lives by Jacob A. Riis, who as
a newspaper police reporter ventured into the tenements at night and
shot some 100 photos with the new invention of the flash light
revealing utter poverty: people dying from tuberculosis or mere
starvation in overcrowded, dark and damp rooms without running water.
No wonder some of them wanted to go home again to sunny Sicily where
the cooking could be done outside under better sanitary conditions.
Several
of the dwellings had been turned into sweatshops in which people worked
for
very low wages. Other rooms served as hostels for single men.
A tenement staircase
in Orchard St. - this corridor was not lit for years
(from http://www.tenement.org
)
Even if they were lucky to find work, the rent was too high
for them to put anything aside and start saving up for better housing.
The tenement buildings so familiar to Europe, but new to the US, were
actually an 1833 "invention" by a savvy landlord who realized that he
could make much more money from letting apartments instead of a whole
house. Since the rent was too high for the immigrant families to pay,
they in turn let part of the
apartment to other immigrants – or the landlord simply let
"space" per person. In 1890 the average number of persons in a New York
dwelling (typically
of three rooms) was 16 persons. The price to stay the night in a hostel
was 5-7 cents, and the landlord would thus make a nice profit. In the
hot
summers some would sleep outside on the fire escapes and accidentally
fall
the many stories to the pavement and kill themselves. Some of the
husbands
would simply leave their families without warning; they may have been
robbed
and killed, or they simply left for the (promised) gold they didn't
find
in New York City.
Living in close contact with one's neighbors develops a close-knit
relationship, so when in the 1930s some of the tenants of the Lower
East Side were rehoused in the Yorkville project
next to the stately private homes on the Upper East Side, the families
of whole tenements moved out and in again together; and since many of
them were German immigrants, the new residential area
came to be known as Sauerkraut Avenue (86thSt.)
- note the fake half-timbered Heidelberg Restaurant on the right
The northern part of the Lower East Side came to be known as Little Italy because of the many Italian immigrants who settled there. Italians were considered "easier" tenants than the contentious Irish tramps or the order-loving Germans. This in turn meant that Italians were treated the worst, living in pig-sties. (In fact, it wasn't until 1867 that owners of swine were prohibited to let them run at large in the city.) Many Italians never learned English and had to rely on middle-men who took advantage of their situation thus keeping them in the slums, even when they were rehoused in Harlem.
Today Little Italy is but a few streets
with a number of restaurants, but few shops. The Italian touch is
almost gone, but during our visit in
Easter the streets were decorated with huge festoons of Easter bunnies
and
eggs. The general picture is rather sedate, a striking contrast to what
it once was, and certainly to its neighbor Chinatown
which seems to
be in the process of taking over its neighboring districts.
Easter festoons in
Little Italy
The
hustle and bustle of a Chinatown is probably the same the world over,
but unlike the Chinese quarters in for instance San Francisco and
London, the atmosphere in the New York Chinatown is rough and tough and
not charming. Noisy, not melodious. Endless rows of huge freighter
trucks carry goods, especially food, into Chinatown, and restaurants
and food stores are the
most conspicuous businesses.
Canal Street -
Chinatown
Luckily for our conscience we didn't eat at any of these restaurants,
for outside the New Silver Palace in Bowery St. a
picket line were distributing leaflets telling the public about the
conditions inside:
"The New Silver Palace tries to set a new low in
working conditions by using threats, violence and blacklisting against
workers who speak up against sweatshop conditions. We are organizing to
fight the growing sweatshop economy which threatens many of our
community. Other sweatshop bosses are watching this struggle very
closely because they know that a victory for the
workers at New Silver Palace, the area's second largest restaurant,
could be a powerful example for the rest of the community." (extract
from leaflet)
Picture left:Anybody
read Chinese?
The picketing has been going on since August 1997, and apart
from sweatshop conditions
and blacklisting, the workers complain about having to pay kick back
compensation to the proprietor; about managers stealing tips from
waiters and busboys; and about organized violent attacks on the
picketers.
So, the
overall picture of this overcrowded part of New York is that some
things never change. Whenever and wherever supply exceeds demand, only
the fittest survive. Whereas other immigrants such as the Germans
started
learning English from the very first day as a matter of duty or
investment,
the Chinese tended to keep to themselves in closed communities with
their
own banks, own suppliers, own everything. As long as the going is good
it
works, but the instant Chinese workers claim citizen's rights in
American
terms, the inbred system has to fight to survive on its preferred
terms.
Picture right: Bowery
St.
Across
from the New Silver Palace is the monumental marble
arch
to Manhattan Bridge like a frontispiece of a
classical building,
and right next to it a typically sloping Chinese pagoda roof top, and
next
to that a dilapidated, half burned out tenement building. A strange
juxtaposition like numerous others in New York City.
Entrance to Manhattan
Bridge
Just a brisk walk south of Chinatown is the oldest part of New York,
which also holds the impressive skyline of the Financial District
facing south
toward Liberty Island's Statue of Liberty. The
narrow crooked streets, some of them cobblestone; the mix of old and
new houses and buildings, private and official (including City
Hall and the first churches of the city); people walking
instead of driving (some streets are even car free) - all
of this reminds the visitor of the European beginnings of the city.
What is American are not so much the buildings as it is the people in
the street. The conservative uniform of the American business man (or
–woman, sometimes the difference is hard to tell) in the
financial district isn't exactly elegant. Wearing a suit of any kind
seems to be the thing and a
must, preferred to other, but perhaps nicer looking clothing.
An oasis in the oldest
part of town
(Lower Manhattan) - a mix of
old and new
Today the former US Custom House holds the Museum of the American Indian, an impressive and comprehensive exhibition of native crafts and archeology. Among other things we saw two special exhibits of Native American shirts and cradle boards. The building itself is an architectural gem with a kiva-like, oval interior under a magnificently decorated roof; a fine place to exhibit previously discarded native art.
Across the East River is the borough of Brooklyn,
which with its
3.5 million inhabitants is the primary residential area today. From
Wall St. we took the subway to Prospect Park
in Brooklyn and walked
back via Flatbush Avenue and Atlantic
Avenue to Brooklyn Heights.
Brooklyn (from the Dutch: Breukelen) is a city in
its own right
with its share of high rises and residential brownstones in a good mix.
We enjoyed our walk through the streets of Brooklyn with trees lining
the
pavements, children playing ball, or people shooting the breeze on the
front
stairs – exactly the way we've seen New York so often in the
movies.
A typical Brooklyn street
Near the river is the affluent part of Brooklyn with some
very fine houses
where several eminent writers used to live. If we are ever to come back
to New York, I think that we'd like to explore Brooklyn some more. The
borough
has also got one of the finest museums in the world (with exhibits
ranging
from Egyptian mummies and Native American crafts to modern design in
artifacts).
Atlantic
Avenue is populated by a strange mix of immigrants from many
countries, especially the Middle East. Among the shops are several
neglected businesses, or they have simply been closed down.
Brooklyn shop on
Atlantic Avenue
In between the stores are several churches of South American or Eastern denominations:
Templo Christiano de Brooklyn
&All Good Things (now closed)
Any house may be turned into a church:
Iglesia de Dios Pentecosta
Heaven Way Buddha Church
In contrast, the walk back on Brooklyn Bridge was a
sheer joy, not only because of the fine view of the Manhattan skyline
from the Financial District to Midtown, but also because of the fine
weather which reached a
high of 89 F (30+ C) on that particular day. Later that night we
experienced one of the famous thunderstorms with lightnings and pouring
rain.
On Brooklyn Bridge -
my proof of having been to New York City - Manhattan Bridge in the back
The famous view of Lower
Manhattan from Brooklyn Heights
Our walks north from our hotel took us through TriBeCa
and SoHo, busy districts which exhibit a great
number of houses from the 1800s, most of them adorned with the typical
New York outward fire escape. In SoHo (i.e. South
of Houston St.) are several cast iron buildings.
The fronts of the buildings are not brick but cast iron, a cheaper
material and an innovative method which was quite popular in the last
half of the 1800s (cp. the Eiffel Tower in Paris).
Apparently, the often neatly painted iron surfaces of the buildings
have withstood time as well as brick would have done.
Just
north of SoHo is Greenwich Village,
the east corner
of which district is Washington Square Park with an
arc of triumph
facing north, another example of Roman inspiration in national
monuments
or when national heroes are to be honored.
The park is peaceful and spacious with doves and squirrels galore, but
what attracted our imagination the most was the old hangmen's tree in
the northwest corner.
Hangings have always been a popular event, and it gave us a creepy
feeling to stand beside the hangmen's tree thinking of past times.
Washington Square Park
The Village
was probably one of the districts we'd been looking
forward to the most, and we weren't disappointed even if it's no longer
the home of artists and hippies. But we were taken aback when faced
with
a sign in a window saying: "ecstasy cigarettes available here". It
could
be a joke, however, as ecstasy may not be smoked (we're not that
worldly.)
Ecstasy - spelled
"ecstacy" (could be a joke, though)
In the
district's many small and quiet streets were some very fine houses
which reminded us of the British TV-serial
"Upstairs–Downstairs", complete with railings and downstairs
kitchen entrances. Today the neighborhood is
definitely far too affluent to house experimenting artists.
The narrowest house in
New York City - Greenwich
Village
East of
Greenwich Village is the East Village, a
dilapidated area (north of the Lower East Side) with open spaces where
burned out or knocked down houses have been. The unimaginative naming
of the avenues (A, B, C, and D) corresponds to the drab appearance of
the neighborhood which still holds a good many old Jewish shops near 8th
St.
To commemorate the work of Jacob A. Riis a new East Village
neighborhood project was named after him: the Jacob A. Riis
Houses; the project mainly houses immigrants from the Third
World. But there are brighter spots in the drab district:
Picture left:
Fantasy tower in East Village -
a rare display of imagination in this part of town
One other thing was of particular interest: Tompkins
Park, another of the many small parks in New York. The park
was where the Tompkins Square Riot took place on 13 January 1874: as
unemployed workers demonstrated in the park, a detachment of mounted
police charged into the crowd, beating
men, women and children indiscriminately with billy clubs and leaving
hundreds of casualties in their wake. Commented Abram Duryee, the
Commissioner of
Police: "It was the most glorious sight I ever saw..." - the American
equivalent
to the Danish "Slaget på fælleden" in 1872.
Most of the parks in New York City have a sheltered playground to which
are admitted only parents and guardians of the children at play. An
unmistakable sign of what might happen to the children if high railings
didn't surround the playground.
At the
southern end of the park is Charlie Parker Place. The
fact that the great and innovative jazz (bop) musician Charlie Parker
has a place named after him is a comforting thought if only it had been
next to W.C.
Handy and Gershwin Streets in Midtown Manhattan. The East Village
hardly
does justice to his sensitive and modern art, and the name of the place
seems
to be have been put up as a token, not as a tribute.
Corner of Charlie
Parker Place and Avenue
D
From GreenwichVillage we took the subway north to first Columbia University and Morningside Park, then farther north to Riverside Park (125th St., northwest of Central Park). Like so many other official American buildings the university is classical in style, an impressive campus, but without the huge lawns that in other American universities may inspire students to quiet and deep discussions. From the outer looks of it with its symmetrical layout Columbia might as well be a garrison, but a closer look revealed that the atmosphere is much more relaxed. We enjoyed our coffee in one of the coffee shops that serve as an oasis and waterhole between classes.
A little north of Columbia University is the Ulysses
E. Grant Memorial Tomb, another strange mix of styles. After
winning the Civil War as Commander in Chief for the Union side Grant
was elected president (1869-77);
and although his administration was tainted with accusations of
negligence
and fraud, he was still a popular president, so when he died, public
funding
was raised to build him a tomb modeled after one of the Seven Wonders
of
the Ancient World: the mausoleum in Halicarnassus, no less. In the
shrine
he rests in a vault alongside his wife in the manner of Napoleon in the
Eglise d’Invalides in Paris. That
should square the score between the
two generals (the whole setup seems to say).
Grant's Tomb
However, all the way around this exceptional monument in white marble are placed a circle of concrete benches all covered in predominantly pastel blue mosaics picturing birds and animals in between portraits of the generals of the Civil War in the most naive fashion. A strange mix, indeed, which strongly contradicts the sought magnitude of the mausoleum.
Benches around Grant's Tomb -
presidents on the left
One may wonder why so many 18th and 19th-century American
public buildings are classical, and the obvious, but not necessarily
true answer would be that the young America wanted to emulate ancient
Greece and especially Rome in its public buildings such as government
houses (the capitols in each state) and court
houses.
But at the time of the emergence of these buildings the whole world
was inspired by the ancient world (cp. the contemporary excavations in
Asia
Minor, Greece, and Italy), and architects borrowed selectively from
their
Greek and Roman colleagues. Thus Grant's Tomb is as much a time piece
as
it is a mausoleum trying to rival it's predecessor, but it still seems
a
bit pompous to emulate one of the wonders of the ancient world.
From Grant's Tomb it's only a few steps across the
street to Riverside Church which is much more
serene in its dignified design
with beautiful leaded lights:
Altar - Riverside Church
Harlem is only a stone's throw away from Riverside Park, and we ventured on along the Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard (125 th St.) toward the heart of Harlem. Although the policing in New York City have improved considerably during the reign of Mayor Giuliani, the neighborhood still looked a little too shabby for comfort, so we didn't continue for long. The fact that Giuliani put 366,288 New Yorkers in jail in 1999 isn't really encouraging; for whatever might have been the reason for their arrest, the number is still far too high for comfort. But we did stay on MLK Blvd. long enough to feel "alone" being the only whites in sight, and we did pass a soup line. The ghetto is still there (see Urbanism below).
Harlem soup line outside
mission center
(On our way to the airport our (black) driver told us that in his opinion Black people were responsible for about 80% of the world's technical progress in the sense that Blacks were the ones that had made most of the great inventions, only they hadn't been credited for them. He also explained to us how Martin Luther King Jr. had formed the UN out of a wish for co-operation between the peoples of the earth. I mention this without any prejudice or patronization; it's just another example of how ethnic prejudice works – both ways.)
In the subway going south towards Central Park
a woman from a New York welfare organization asked if there were any
homeless people in the car. One person came forward, and he was given
an improvised packed meal. She also asked for donations to the
committee, but besides us, the hobo
was the only one to contribute. Thus he paid for his own meal.
Although the subway is swift, people may ride it for so long that they
feel they need to eat on their way. As a result odors from spicy foods
were often filling the cars, at least in some of the cars we rode. Most
people kept to themselves unless they were in a group, but only a few
were
reading (the usual alibi for averting one's eyes - see
Urbanism below).
The contrast between the incident described above and the architectural wonders on 8th Ave. - the western border line of Central Park - is quite striking. Some of the most impressive apartment buildings are situated across from the park with a wonderful view of the park. The park itself is more than a huge lawn. Elaborately planned it offers lakes and botanical areas as well as paths for strollers (i.e. walkers, not prams which are forbidden on the pathways), horse back riders, and joggers. Occasional pieces of rock and old settlement houses remind the visitor of what Manhattan used to look like before the city began to grow. We walked a good third of the park until the Dakota Building on 8th Ave. (where John Lennon was killed in 1980 and where Rosemary's Baby was conceived) before taking the subway once again to Midtown.
The subway is a swift system of transport in a city whose
streets are full of cars, but unlike for instance London, Paris, or
Moscow, the New York
subway doesn't post the stops on the line before you enter. You have to
know your bearings and the direction you want to go as the only thing
posted
is the number or name (color) of the line and the direction
(downtown/south or uptown/north). Furthermore, the street entrance to
the subway is often a very small and modest staircase, which may be
hard to find as the subway is not marked very conspicuously. But once
you're on the right train the service is swift and unproblematic.
Getting off the train, however, is
not always easy as New Yorkers (or tourists?) crowd in front of the
doors
and obstruct passengers from getting off the train, perhaps for fear of
not catching the train themselves.
We had
hoped to see New York from above from the viewing platform in the
Empire State Building, but unfortunately for us several
thousand other tourists had come upon the very same idea; so when we
heard that there was more than two hours of waiting before we could get
to the platform, we decided to stay on the ground.
Picture left: 42nd
Street - looking east
Instead we went to see the Grand Central Station and the New York Public Library, two very fine classical buildings that are exemplary of the care put into public buildings, which besides serving the public also signal the city's means and prowess on a very grand scale. In the library we asked to be shown to the Declaration of Independence, but were told that it's kept in cool stores. Instead we sent an e-mail home from one of the many computers that are installed in a former reading room. Today the Internet has taken a permanent place alongside books, even in libraries, and that's also the way it should be to ensure equal opportunity.
Many of the people working the counters in the museums and other public buildings are seniors, especially women who see an opportunity to work part time and still be active. And because their work is often mixed with interest and care for the visiting clients, the service is always given in the most hospitable and friendly way.
New York City is indeed an interesting city of contrasts, outside as well as inside, for good or for worse, even with a touch of relaxation in the many parks and definitely worth a visit.
Times Square from an unusual
angle - note the old water tower
April 2001
Erik Moldrup
Supplementary Notes
Urbanism
In his famous pioneer essay Urbanism as a Way of Life
(1938) Louis Wirth classifies the societal characteristics that
urbanites develop. Not surprisingly, his conclusion is that contacts in
the city are mostly impersonal, superficial, transitory, and segmental.
Because of the density of the urban milieu physical contacts are close,
but social contacts are distant. Visual recognition is important, hence
the "uniforms" which denote the role of
the functionaries, and a world of artifacts remove the city dweller
from
the world of nature. All of this and more leads to a "life in the fast
lane"
and develops a glib smartness to help immunize urbanites against
personal
claims such as bonds of kinship. Competition replaces participation.
The
clock and the traffic signal are symbolic of the basis of the city's
social
order.
The reason why immigrants tend to stay in ghettos may thus be that they
consciously select an area in which they hope to feel part of a
homogenous society. A metropolis like New York City is thus many
different cities.
No talking in the streets
New Yorkers are used to being accosted by beggars, and that's probably
why they walk briskly past you as if in deep thought. To avoid eye
contact
is the thing, especially in the subway, and the result is that the
famous
saying of being lonely in a crowd has all the more meaning in New York
City. The few times we asked people for directions they reacted by
stepping vehemently aside without answering us, so we adapted a style
of notifying people in
advance from a distance by the slight waving of a hand. This way we
thought
that they would have a chance of "taking us in" at a distance and be
ready
for our question when we passed. The system worked.
When we did make contact, people were often extremely helpful, nice,
and good-humored, including the guards and other people working the
desks in public places. Nobody seemed to be in the usual hurry, at
least not so busy that they couldn't take time out for a joking remark.
Our being unaccustomed with the practice of distinguishing beggars and
freaks from the regular people also cut us off from a few interesting
conversations. On our walks I was wearing a red beret, and one of the
first times we were accosted on the street, I didn't answer and walked
away the way we'd been taught by previous incidents. A few paces later
I realized that the person had just said, "I like your beret". Later
another man called after me,
"Were you a beret, Sir?" which I didn't realize until after we had
passed.
I wonder what the rest of the comments may have been; my wife tells
me that whenever she was alone, for instance when waiting for me
outside
a shop, several passers-by would accost her, often in a disrespectful
way.
Sweat
Shops
For centuries the garment business has been important to New York City.
One wave of unemployed immigrants gave way to the next thus furnishing
the human capital for badly paid work in overcrowded sewing factories
called "sweat
shops".
On Saturday 25 March 1911 a fire broke on the 8th, 9th and 10th floors
of a building in Lower Manhattan. Hundreds of workers stormed towards
the stairs only to find the doors locked - the employers had wanted to
make
sure that nobody was loafing on the job. One hundred and forty-six
people
were killed on that Saturday, several of them from jumping out the
windows.
The incident put public focus on the conditions in sweat shops, and
new laws were implemented to ensure workers' safety and minimum wages.
But
the general conditions weren't changed until the 1970s when the last of
the sweat shops were closed down.
But now they seem to be back, only the general spread is not limited to
the garment industry, but encompasses many more businesses. In 1992 New
York inspectors estimated that 4,500 out of 5,000 garment factories
were
sweat shops; to this number must be added thousands of other businesses
employing illegal Chinese immigrants who work 14 hours a day at wages
of just $1-$1.50 per hour.
The wages can barely cover the immigrants' needs for bread and board,
and most of them work up a debt to the Chinatown mob (the Snake Heads)
who thus rule this enclave as a sovereign state.
Immigrant
Hairdresser
I fancied a New York haircut and went to a hairdresser's on West
Broadway. At home my hairdresser is an Iraqi man working in a salon
owned by an Egyptian, and although he does a fine job, I'm always a
little anxious as to how the result will be as he doesn't understand
much Danish (the little he speaks actually accentuates the danger: in
his ears "not too much" is reduced to "much").
In other words, I was looking forward to having a proper haircut by
a sophisticated New York hairdresser, but what did I get? It turned out
that he had recently immigrated from Tashkent, Uzbekistan, and didn't
speak
any English. Used to avoiding scalpings by being alert I managed to
keep
as much hair as I wanted; if not, my boys would probably have been
cheering
a skinhead when I returned to Denmark. In the middle of his work he
paused
to say, "Stalin". I guess he meant to say that I look a lot like
Stalin,
which I've often noticed myself, only nobody has said so before.
Interesting
I had to go to New York to hear the truth.
Gotham
City
New York City is often referred to as "Gotham". First used by
Washington Irving in 1807, the epithet goes further back, to England.
The legend attached to it tells the story of the English King John who
in the 1200s wanted to build himself a nice hunting lodge in the
village of Gotham near Nottingham. The villagers, however, had no
interest in becoming subjects to severe taxation, and when inspected by
the king's emissaries they pretended to be semi-morons, running wildly
around in circles, and the king decided to build elsewhere.
Thus Gotham came to mean a city of wise fools, a
combination
of demented behavior and cunning, a very appropriate moniker for New
York
City.
Quotations
Below are a few of the many other things said and written about New
York City:
A hundred times have I thought New York is a catastrophe . .
. it is a beautiful catastrophe.
Le Corbusier (1887-1965), French architect
Everybody ought to have a Lower East Side in their life.
Irving Berlin (1888-1989), U.S. songwriter (originally Israel Baline).
I like it here in New York. I like the idea of having to
keep eyes in the back of your head all the time.
John Cale (b. 1940), British rock musician
I think that New York is not the cultural center of America,
but the business and administrative center of American culture.
Saul Bellow (b. 1915), U.S. author.
In Africa I had indeed found a sufficiently frightful kind
of loneliness but the isolation of this American ant heap was even more
shattering.
Louis-Ferdinand Céline (1894-1961), French author.
In Manhattan, every flat surface is a potential stage and
every inattentive waiter an unemployed, possibly unemployable, actor.
Quentin Crisp (b. 1908), British author.
It is a world completely rotten with wealth, power,
senility, indifference, puritanism and mental hygiene, poverty and
waste, technological futility and aimless violence, and yet I cannot
help but feel it has about it something of the dawning of the universe.
Jean Baudrillard (b. 1929), French semiologist.
It is often said that New York is a city for only the very
rich and the
very poor. It is less often said that New York is also, at least for
those
of us who came there from somewhere else, a city for only the very
young.
Joan Didion (b. 1934), U.S. essayist.
It was a cruel city, but it was a lovely one, a savage city,
yet it had
such tenderness, a bitter, harsh, and violent catacomb of stone and
steel and tunneled rock, slashed savagely with light, and roaring,
fighting a
constant ceaseless warfare of men and of machinery; and yet it was so
sweetly
and so delicately pulsed, as full of warmth, of passion, and of love,
as
it was full of hate.
Thomas Clayton Wolfe (1900-1938), U.S. author.
New York has a trip-hammer vitality which drives you insane
with restlessness, if you have no inner stabilizer. . . . In New York I
have always felt lonely, the loneliness of the caged animal, which
brings on crime, sex, alcohol and
other madnesses.
Henry Miller (1891-1980), U.S. author.
New York has never learnt the art of growing old by playing
on all its pasts. Its present invents itself, from hour to hour, in the
act of throwing away its previous accomplishments and challenging the
future. A city composed of paroxysmal places in monumental reliefs.
Michel de Certeau (1925-86), French author, critic.
New York is a field of tireless and antagonistic interests -
undoubtedly fascinating but horribly unreal. Everybody is looking at
everybody else - a foolish crowd walking on mirrors.
Wallace Stevens (1879-1955), U.S. poet.
New York is a meeting place for every race in the world, but
the Chinese, Armenians, Russians, and Germans remain foreigners. So
does everyone except the blacks. There is no doubt but that the blacks
exercise great influence in North America, and, no matter what anyone
says, they are the most delicate, spiritual element in that world.
Federico García Lorca (1898-1936), Spanish poet, playwright.
New York is a sucked orange.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-82), U.S. essayist, poet, philosopher.
New York is more now than the sum of its people and
buildings. It makes sense only as a mechanical intelligence, a
transporter system for the daily absorbing and nightly redeploying of
the human multitudes whose services it requires.
Peter Conrad (b. 1948), Australian critic, author.
New York is something awful, something monstrous. I like to
walk the streets, lost, but I recognize that New York is the world's
greatest lie. New York is Senegal with machines.
Federico García Lorca (1898-1936), Spanish poet, playwright.
New York is the biggest mouth in the world. It appears to be
prime example of the herd instinct, leading the universal urban
conspiracy to beguile man
from his birthright (the good ground), to hang him by his eyebrows from
skyhooks
above hard pavement, to crucify him, sell him, or be sold by him.
Frank Lloyd Wright (1869-1959), U.S. architect.
New York is the meeting place of the peoples, the only city
where you can hardly find a typical American.
Djuna Barnes (1892-1982), U.S. author, poet, columnist.
New York is what Paris was in the twenties . . . the center
of the art world. And we want to be in the center. It's the greatest
place on earth . . . I've got a lot of friends here and I even brought
my own cash.
John Lennon (1940-80), British rock musician
New York will be a great place when they finish it.
New York Saying.
New York, you are an Egypt! But an Egypt turned inside out.
For she erected pyramids of slavery to death, and you erect pyramids of
democracy with the vertical organ-pipes of your skyscrapers all meeting
at the point of infinity of liberty!
Salvador Dali (1904-89), Spanish painter.
The City of New York is like an enormous citadel, a modern
Carcassonne. Walking between the magnificent skyscrapers one feels the
presence on the fringe of a howling, raging mob, a mob with empty
bellies, a mob unshaven and in rags.
Henry Miller (1891-1980), U.S. author
The City of New York is currently undergoing a grave
experiment that affects the comfort and, on occasion, the safety of
even the most casual visitor. The experiment consists in seeing whether
a city of that size can be operated on a far smaller amount of money
than would make its life tolerable and a still smaller amount than
would make it agreeable. The richer New Yorkers . . . are cooperating
with an enthusiasm that the affluent rarely show for social experiment,
and at great personal expense. They are paying for private security
guards in unprecedented numbers and costly private schooling for their
children . . . and they are accepting numerous other costs and
inconveniences in order to show that private affluence is consistent
with public squalor.
John Kenneth Galbraith (b. 1908), U.S. economist.
There is no human reason to be here, except for the sheer
ecstasy of being crowded together.
Jean Baudrillard (b. 1929), French semiologist.
There was a time when all these things would have passed me
by, like the flitting figures of a theatre, sufficient for the
amusement of an hour. But now, I have lost the power of looking merely
on the surface. Everything seems to me to come from the Infinite, to be
filled with the Infinite, to be tending toward the Infinite. Do I see
crowds of men hastening to extinguish a fire? I see not merely uncouth
garbs, and fantastic, flickering lights, of lurid hue, like a trampling
troop of gnomes - but straightway my mind
is filled with thoughts about mutual helpfulness, human sympathy, the
common bond of brotherhood, and the mysteriously deep foundations on
which society rests; or rather, on which it now reels and totters.
Lydia M. Child (1802-80), U.S. abolitionist, writer, editor (in letter
on street life).
This city is neither a jungle nor the moon. . . . In long
shot: a cosmic smudge, a conglomerate of bleeding energies. Close up,
it is a fairly legible printed circuit, a transistorized labyrinth of
beastly tracks, a data bank for asthmatic voice-prints.
Susan Sontag (b. 1933), U.S. essayist.
Though one can dine in New York, one could not dwell there.
Oscar Wilde (1854-1900), Anglo-Irish playwright, author.
We New Yorkers see more death and violence than most
soldiers do, grow a thick chitin on our backs, grimace like a rat and
learn to do a disappearing act. Long ago we outgrew the need to be
blowhards about our masculinity; we leave that to the Alaskans and
Texans, who have more time for it.
Edward Hoagland (b. 1932), U.S. novelist, essayist.
Airline Service
On the SAS flight to New York and back we couldn't help noticing and
discussing the sometimes antic gestures expressed by the stewards,
which we found totally out of place in a modern society. Their
servitude was probably in its place in the 1950s when flying was a
luxury, but today such measures hardly seem necessary. Today you can
hardly fly for 30 minutes without being offered something to drink and
eat, and the former rather glamorous position as
a steward(ess) with a supposed long training has been degraded to a
hardworking, but extremely polite kitchen hand. If such exaggerated
courtesy is the
distinguishing means to attract customers, the airlines should focus
more
on their meals which are often either tasteless or simply badly cooked,
in fact, I think that on our next trip we'll ask for kosher
to see
if that makes any difference. Anyway, we don't fly because of the meals
and the service - therefore the exaggerated servitude seems all the
more
overdone. What's the use of a distributing a menu if all the food is
bad? And because the staff is so busy serving meals, there's no room
for other
questions, nor room for a glimpse of genuine friendliness, thus the
very
professional smiles end up meaning the opposite.
Revised 3 June 2001
Erik Moldrup