Clyde Haberman's recent NYT piece on her serves as sort of a victory lap on foot around the city. It's nice to see Mr. Haberman back from possible banishment as strictly an online columnist after having a print byline for so many years. Now he's back on the paper page, still with a byline, and writing a
bi-weekly column called 'Breaking Bread.'
This definitely has to be a plum assignment for a senior reporter: getting to interview people over a casual meal on the paper's dime. From what I know of Mr. Haberman is that he's a native New Yorker who remembers, like I do, when wakes weren't turned into photo galleries by well-meaning relatives. He and I remember the same presidents as well.
For anyone's interest, I marvel at what Ms. S-K (as she's often referred to, like she's a brand, or something kinky) has been able to do. You can't walk through Union, Madison, Herald or Times Squares and not be taking advantage of her ideas put into reality. It's more than difficult to get anything accomplished in New York, particularly with streets and sidewalks.
I'm a hard-wired New Yorker who, when working, spent nearly 50 years coming in and out of Manhattan. I reflexively look both ways before setting a foot off the curb, one way street, or not. It's paid off, because I haven't been whacked, but have had some close calls with messengers going the wrong way on one way streets, and an unforgettable incident with a Sabrett cart being pushed the wrong way on a one way street. It's unthinkable that I might have been laid out by a Sabrett cart. They move slower than a cross-town bus. Think of the photos in the funeral home for that one.
The creation of plazas at the aforementioned busy intersections is a testament to getting something done in the city. The only prior reworking of traffic was sometime in the early 60s when Henry Barnes, a traffic commissioner from Boston came to New York, stuck a screw driver in a traffic control box and stopped traffic in all directions at the 42nd Street, Vanderbilt Avenue intersection, hard by Grand Central Terminal. The multi-directional pedestrian parade was dubbed 'The Barnes Dance.' It still exists today.
Seeing cafe, bistro tables in the middle of the street and parking in a traffic lane (metered, still) is something I'll never get used to seeing in New York. But, it is a commissioner's legacy. I would no more plop down at one on of those tables and listen to someone play the piano in the middle of what used to be a street than I would make eye contact in the subway. But, perhaps that's my loss.
Ms. S-K has had an obvious European desire to graft onto NYC aspects of foreign cities. She's had an extremely tough time with the bike program, but probably had to settle for that versus putting New Yorkers on Vespas and having mating rituals consist of chasing females up the stairs of the New York Public Library and Metropolitan Museum of Art staircases. That wouldn't do.
'The Breaking Bread' piece is a nice sendoff to an accomplished commissioner, without being a pure valentine. The fact that Mr. Haberman meets Ms. S-K in a desirable restaurant hotel on 29th Street speaks silent volumes about how the city has changed. That area would have once been great for encountering welfare people in single room occupancy hotels, drug addicts, or hookers. The fact that 'steel-cut' oatmeal was served is another testament to the prices.
Perhaps hard to see in the above photo, but Janette is wearing a five ring necklace, perhaps as a conscious bow to the failed city bid to get the Olympics, or a clue as to what she's going to organize next.
No plans for the future are revealed. But no matter what: I'm still going to look both ways whenever a toe steps down, and I'm always going to be alert for a Sabrett cart set in motion.
I can't help it.
http://www.onofframp.blosgpot.com
No comments:
Post a Comment