The building is a four-story walk-up with green shingle siding.  It sways noticeably in the wind.  One time the front window in the living room fell out – it got pretty chilly in there for awhile.  One time the gas line to the stove broke and was too expensive for the landlord to repair.  We used a hot plate for at least six months, but we took money off rent, and there were three of us living in the place at that point so the price was good.  But weren’t there always at least three of us living in the place, if you factor in the long-term guests?  I was sleeping on the living room floor then: we were still in disarray because of the bed bugs.  Someone would place a pink urinal puck by the radiator in the first floor hallway as an air freshener and they would replace it too when it fell apart.  It couldn’t have been the landlord – that was more work than he was capable of.  He would call us begging for rent in advance, in cash.  His hands were covered in scabs or scales or some kind of skin disease and he would say mamma mia when he got desperate, which I really enjoyed.  I enjoyed so many things there.
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(please listen to the symphony below while reading)
Weather!  What a time to be alive, eh friends?  Would you really rather be living anywhere else, or any time else?  Here’s the nice thing about the present: the whole of the past is laid out to set the image of your mood too.  Who would actually want to be alive in 1600?  Let’s just think about it instead – the dimly torch-lit palazzo courtyard; Romeo climbing up the balcony – and then take that feeling into the next minute of 2010.  Go ride a bicycle, or I don’t know, touch an iPad.  They didn’t have that shit back then.  Possibly, most things that exist can be a new way to express our happiness.  Possibly not, it might depend on your internal fortitude.  Fortitude it up folks!  Aren’t words fun?  Stand outside and yell, homina homina homina.
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In my last post I mentioned the Fifth Avenue mansion of department store impresario A.T. Stewart, erected on the corner of 34th Street.  Completed in 1870, the three-story French Second Empire style home stood just opposite Caroline Astor’s residence – basically ground-zero for New York’s high society.  Thirty years later that social center had moved about twenty blocks north, chased out by encroaching commerce.  In 1896 Caroline Astor, refusing to retire from public life, moved into her new mansion on Fifth Avenue and 65th Street.  The northern limit of fashionable society seemed to hold at about the  East 70s.
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In which we discuss one of the prettiest intersections in New York.

I wanted to step away from skyscrapers (for a minute at least) and look for something just the opposite: small, quiet and about a hundred years older.  Maybe even something that doesn’t involve millions and millions of dollars.  Although I don’t know about that one – this is a tough town to get away from money.

Commerce Street runs parallel to Barrow Street for one block, starting at Seventh Avenue, before it turns 90 degrees to intersect it.  It’s an exemplar of West Village topography, totally divorced in appearance from the majority of Manhattan.  Just look at this place!  What emotions are you going to feel standing here?  What’s the opposite of a bad mood?  What’s a synonym for peaceful?  How do you spell, “meditative certainty of the universe’s correctness”?
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On October 17, 1975 Abe Beame, the mayor of New York, was prepared to declare the city bankrupt.  He had a statement drafted and ready for release, claiming, “I have been advised by the comptroller that the City of New York has insufficient cash on hand to meet debt obligations due today. This constitutes the default that we have struggled to avoid.”  It was a serious low point for the city.  Beame didn’t have to release it though: the president of the teacher’s union, Albert Shankar, provided $150 million that morning, from the union’s pension fund, to buy municipal bonds and ensure the government would stay afloat, at least for one more day.  It was a move the mayor had been hoping for; and he had his sights set on a federal bailout as well.  President Ford had other ideas, declaring two weeks later that he would refuse any outright grant to the city, and prompting the pretty awesome and famous New York Daily News headline seen here.
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All right, so let’s wait another week before we get into the modern: I’ve got some good skyscrapers in mind.  But for now I’d rather go way back here, as far back as we’ve ever been.  Because there’s something about the onset of spring that really makes me feel like time’s beginning – like inside all of us we carry something of the sentiment of ancient Egypt, Greece and Rome; like you can wake up each and any given morning and say, “Shit, today I’m going to create the world.”  Water lapping slowly towards the shoreline, helped by the breeze, the mountains uplifting.  It’s gorgeous out.  You know all my talk during the winter, about trying to enjoy it and everything, finding the beauty of the season specific moment – well you know that was all bullshit right?  I mean, I had to say something!  But the good weather is why we really stay alive I think, to draw our names upon reality.
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In writing about the Metropolitan Life Tower last week I briefly mentioned their skyscraper next door: the Metropolitan Life North Building.  But I was so caught up in the political winds of the moment that I didn’t go into any further detail.  So let’s stick around these parts a little longer – in the foothills, if you will, of Manhattan’s high-rise range, getting acclimated – before we head off elsewhere.  I don’t know, maybe after this we’ll be ready to scale the vertiginous heights of Midtown.  Yikes!

For four years, starting in 1909, Met Life had the tallest building in the world – their tower on 24th Street – until the 57 story, 792 ft. Woolworth Building displaced it.  The Woolworth Building would hold that title for 17 years, through World War I and the 1920s, until a whole new crop of even higher buildings popped up towards the end of that decade.  In a matter of months (in 1930-31) the title of tallest building would be transferred from the Woolworth Building to 40 Wall Street to the Chrysler Building to the Empire State (which at 1,250 ft. ended all discussion for 40 years).  It was the intention of Met Life to get in on the competition.  The original plan for their Met Life North Building called for a skyscraper of 100 stories, topping out at around 1,300 ft. and stealing back the title of tallest building in the world.
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Man, I don’t even know what corner to write about.  All I’ve been interested in this week is health care reform passing.  It’s amazing!  It’s all I’ve wanted to think about – it’s all I’ve wanted to read about.  Have you ever heard of blogs?  Apparently there are a lot of them, and a lot of them have an opinion on current events.  I’ve been delving deep.  My favorite articles are the ones along the line of exposing the Republican’s tactics, slash, reveling in their stupidity.  They lost in 2006, and they lost in 2008.  The lesson they took from that: we’re not going to work with the majority at all.  So guess what?  They locked themselves out of the biggest social legislation in 40 years.  They could have been in on this!  They could have had a say in creating it.  Instead they tried to make the bill the apocalypse – whipping their base into a frenzy by pumping out one hundred percent disinformation.  They bet their entire strategy on stopping it.  And they lost!  And now what’s their plan?  To repeal it!  Forget the fact that it’s logistically impossible (until at least 2013), they say, let’s double down on this strategy that screwed us in the first place.  I love it!
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I was up in the country last weekend and as often happens when driving back into the city, I found myself imagining the process by which that became this.  I’ll pass by a marshy field someplace with a stand of bare-limbed trees in the background and I’ll think: Manhattan had that too once.  It’s a long time gone, though not that long really, in the scheme of things.  I’m reading a book about Ancient Egypt right now and it will say things like, “Then for 400 years it was the Dark Ages, and shit was crazy.”  That’s 400 years.  That’s 400 years that passed over 4000 years ago.  People were alive back then!  Probably some days they woke up and said, “Man, what a beautiful morning,” even if it was the Dark Ages.
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Who knew the fifties were so amazing?  I mean Fahrenheit-wise, not the decade (although also worth some contemplation – get high and think about it).  This past week has been a revelation; it’s already warm enough in the sun to wander aimlessly around outdoors, and the ability to wander aimlessly around outdoors exponentially increases your ability to pass the time with meaning, humor and consideration.  Sorry, I just liked the way those words sounded.  But the fifties rock!
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Riding into the city over the Williamsburg Bridge I’ll often glance at the clock tower that rises above Union Square, just to see how I’m doing on time. (I’m almost always early – curse you mama for the way you raised me!)  But what is this clock tower I stare at?  I realized the other day that I had no idea.  That’s one of the funny things about living. I was going to say: “about living in the city,” but I think it’s true everywhere; the city just points it out more.  We can have these daily relationships with various structures we don’t know anything about.  It’s why ideally I would like to learn the history of every building that I walk by, just as I’d like to know the types of trees I pass on every block (a good guess is that they’re London Plane, or maybe Ginkgo).  For now I suppose I’ll settle for trying to get down the larger buildings, the signposts, the ones that you can’t help but see at various points and angles throughout your day.
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It seems like a good week for staying indoors, ideally somewhere with a lot of windows offering a multitude of views of the windy, wet and slush filled street. I’m picturing a giant wooden dining room table covered with hardcover books and the only light that gray and muted color that is the sun diffused through layers and layers of cloud. It’s like a boat on the North Sea, dark and lonely in the daytime, though maybe not lonely so much as just outside the flood. The flood being time. And although snow and rain might feed the flood, as they’re falling they’re something else entirely: they’re the moment, “this life’s howling gale.” Or to quote W.G. Sebald, “Why does time stand eternally still and motionless in one place, and rush headlong by in another? In what way do objects immersed in time differ from those left untouched by it?” I’m picturing a room that’s still and motionless; I’m picturing a room that floats.
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It’s still winter, and for the first time this year it’s starting to drag a bit. Sure I’m still looking for the season-specific beautiful moments, the things you aren’t going to find any other time of year, but I’m also starting to really look forward to all those other times of year as well. But oh no, just yesterday I was thinking of how it would be October again before you know it, and I was thinking: how can anybody really enjoy October knowing that November comes after it and then months and months of winter after that; and it made me feel like: what’s the point of looking forward at all? What?! Did I just ask that? That’s when I know winter’s starting to get to me. Maybe I can flip the approach and say that feeling this way is the whole point of February – so let’s really get down into it. Let’s embrace the moment disliking the moment, and still giving it up begrudgingly. I think that’s the best way to pass the time till spring.
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I kind of want to start a column about the weather. Not a weather forecast but a weather “aft” cast – looking back (of course, the past!) on what the weather was on any given day or week. A sort of summary of highs and lows and sunlight. The ultimate idea being to see if one can find the weather “mood” of any certain stretch of time. What did a week of this type of weather feel like? And when we imagine that feeling, do the days themselves, as they actually were, suffice to stand in as the image of that feeling, or can we think of something else that’s better? It’s fairly easy with the extremes: a string of 95 degree days can more or less represent themselves, as their own image, but what about a string of 39 degree days? Especially as compared to, let’s say, a few days of 34 degrees?
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Let’s get back to churches. And back downtown. I know we were gonna wait until summertime to really (drunkenly) enjoy these tiny streets, but I haven’t been able to stay away from them. And here’s one nice accomplishment: January is already over. Congratulations everybody! Looks like that whole time-keeps-passing thing is still going on. Awesome. Let’s learn some facts.
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For every building standing in New York, there’s been a dozen that have been torn down. Is that exactly right? It’s tough to get a hard number on “extinct” buildings. But between 1625 and 2010 let’s just say a lot of them have gone the way of old age, progress or development. The city isn’t too shy about building over and on top of its past, especially when there’s money to be made. And there’s always money to be made. This is America! Don’t let anyone stand in your way. Isn’t that why Republicans are for less governmental regulation? Because they’re greedy, selfish bastards? If you want to make an obscene amount of money, that’s a choice – and I think the very reason that it is a choice is why you should suffer for it. I mean, you intentionally tried to make an obscene amount of money? What a dick!
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All right so raise your hand if you haven’t spent some time here in your life – late nights hanging out, partying, dancing, or I don’t know, maybe even seeing some performance art. It’s pretty much everyone I’ve ever met, right? I’m not really sure how I can even write about this corner. But then again, how could I not write about this corner. I’ve spent enough time here the last few weeks (or did I mean to say, years?) that I can’t imagine writing on anything else. Are we too old to have a clubhouse? Probably. But whatever, this place is pretty much my clubhouse.
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If I’ve ever given the impression that I’d like to travel back in time I just want to clarify that I meant I’d like to travel back in time during the summer months only. Good god! You know what I’m talking about? What the f did people do before central heating? Yeah, I know I know, they probably had a lot of fires to keep them warm. Well bullshit! These people must have been freezing! I’m freezing now and it’s 2010.
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If you had a choice to enjoy something or not enjoy something, which would it be?

I don’t know, but that might be the only choice we really have. The most frequent choice at least. Right friends?
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I thought I’d stick with my current trend here and finish off this year of 2009 with a church (I’m not writing next Friday cause it’s Christmas. Sorry! Hope that doesn’t change your family’s plans! It looks like Avatar‘s playing at 3:15, if you wanna go see that). And if I’m going to write on a church I might as well go all the way back and write on Saint Paul’s Chapel. This is the oldest existing church building in NYC, and the oldest public building in general that’s still in use. Everything I’ve read seems pretty clear on that. So here we go, sounds like a good way to end a year. Maybe I’ll start 2010 with something new. But probably not. If you’re broke, why fix things, right?
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