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CounterPunch
November
16, 2002
Mannahatta! (A Tale of Two Cities)
by ADAM ENGEL
And Eastward bound was I. Away, away from Riverside
and crossing Central Park to Xanadu did Donald Trump a stately
pleasure dome decree. Away, away from mongrel hordes. Away from
the Museum of Dead Things and Hayden's belly full of stars. Ghosts
of Indians bleat in the wind, chanting, pleading for renewal...
Eh. Fuck 'em.
[Scrivener's Note:
Look away from the "New Yorker"
magazine, where old prose goes to die (the heady days of Cheever,
Salinger, William Maxwell gone as DiMaggio and the Dodgers. Updike
remains to sleep, perchance to dream of getting laid writing
the same old white line)! Why does this "journal" still
exist? Could not someone flush it from our misery? It's an institution,
friend, and institutions stand, relics that they are, to remind
us we're mortal, thank god, this won't go on forever, and anyway,
we're not as boring as we thought we were, just look at that
there institution swaying in the wind, begging, albeit with patient
dignity, for oblivion...]
Mannahatta! Wondrous city of flags! Not
only real Yankee-doodle flapping in the wind flags, but flag
pins, flag mugs, flag shot glasses and condoms and REDWHITEandBLUE
Christmas lights on every tree caught in the great tree Diaspora
outside Holy Central Park where tourists skate in the seventy-degree
November air. Don't whine to me about Global Warming--my environment
was always self-contained, a Greenhouse under strips of cobalt
sky (and airplanes, lots of airplanes overhead, this being the
hub of Modern Civ).
[Scrivener's Note:
This week-end, for our anniversary, my
wife, and I went for a "home vacation" on the UPPER
EAST SIDE. True, we were treated like white trash, because they
could easily tell we were didn't really belong there, but at
least we were admitted entry and saw something interesting, or
rather didn't see it.
There are no black people there. I used
to think Woody Allen was a racist for creating an all white New
York, but he was right, at least about the Upper East Side: a
black person in anything but a servant's role would be as ridiculous
in one of his movies as an Alabama truck-driver would be in one
of William Trevor's Irish or English bergs.
Maybe black people just don't want to
hang out with white people anymore; maybe they're bored with
them. Could be. But there were many people of color in Central
Park. People of all races in the park, but not in the Museums
or Theaters or on the Streets, except to clean up or collect
tickets or--literally--"operate" the elevator in the
Metropolitan Museum of art. One man, in a uniform, spending his
day pushing either "One, Mezzanine, Two, or Three."
No wonder he freaked out when I got on the elevator and pushed
"M."
"Hey. That's my job. I do that.
You just ride the elevator, you don't work it."
"Sorry, I didn't know."
"Well make it your business to know.
I push the buttons. Don't push my buttons."
I mean, this ain't Iowa, this is New
York City. There are easily as many black people as white people.
I'm not talking about some liberal affirmative action friendship
nonsense where I seek out genuine African-Americans, drag them
out for drinks and dinner, and brag that some of my best friends
are black. I'm talking about natural social interaction.
This is unnatural. Apartheid-like. Weird.
To walk for blocks and blocks and stay at a hotel and go to restaurants
and not see a single black person, who was not in some servant's
capacity, outside of Central Park? ]
Mannahatta! greatest City on Earth I
just paid $80 for Stromboli and a pickle it was worth every penny
and espresso too and chocolate on my pillow left by the maid
in my hotel room Mannahatta afoot and light hearted I take to
Fifth avenue and amble to the Met where tourists shell out twelve
dollars a piece for a "suggested" donation though they've
no idea it's optional they worry will they have enough to get
grandpa through the GATES OF ART he's a senior citizen but where's
his ID celebrity is in the air and celebration Richard Avedon
Exhibiting exhibitionists: Marylyn Monroe looks sad; Andy Warhol
looks sad and full of scars and holes; Abbie Hoffman, eyes closed,
is sad; Sam Beckett is sad--so what else is new?--and across
form the Chicago Seven are the men in suits and uniform who ran
the War oh glorious, glorious dramas for the ages and everyone
is sad!
[Scrivener's Note:
Any artistic/political/literary/social
whatever movement of any importance began with lower class whites
and blacks and immigrant Irish, Italian, Jews, Russian, and more
recently Latino, Arabic, Indian, Asian etc. Let's not forget
that the Beatnik movement fed on the forbidden fruits of the
Harlem Renaissance and Jazz culture...and the last mass movement
to have any affect on "Fashion and the Arts" were Punk
and Rap in all their permutations from style of dress to poetry...
Art never comes to the Upper East Side
or the Museums until at least a quarter century after it's happened...but
even so, now that everyone's becoming a REDWHITEandBLUE American,
where's all this art and music gonna come from? Not rich white
folks, or even "honorary" whites made up of "success
stories" of the aforementioned groups.
Who can afford to live in the "dignified
poverty" necessary to (I'm not gonna say "make art"
that's so corny), do stuff? Not that you have to be poor. It's
always better if you have money to do stuff, and lots of people
who do stuff do it best once they're free of financial burdens
and can focus on other things... Knut Hamsun not-with-standing,
that hungry artist crap is crap...you don't have to be hungry,
just alive...but most people don't have money...once, you could
devote a minimum of time to making money and the rest to doing
whatever it is you do...then, if folks liked what you did, you
could make some money selling it, or teach or get a sponsor or
win an award or something, whatever...you were choosing to live
in poverty in the Lower East side, Chelsea and other areas (except
Harlem, where you had no choice) and do that whole waiter/artist
thing "immortalized" in RENT.
Well, I took a look at some East Village
one-bedrooms and studios, where not even seven years ago, my
wife and I were paying $650/month...same studio now for $1800...same
one-bedrooms "renovated"--they put in a dishwasher
or something--now starting at $2100...that means, in order to
live in a shit-hole, you need a full-time job, and a well-paying
one too. You're not choosing to live in a shit-hole because you'd
rather devote yourself to playing the kazoo or writing the great
Sanskrit comic book; it's literally the cheapest place you can
afford to come "home" to after you ten plus hour day
of working/commuting being insane...that, my friends, is fucked.
Gated communities for the upper-middle class--you have to be
"up there" in order to afford to live in a shit-hole
and pay first and last month's rent and get your security cleared...]
Mannahatta! Heed not the provocateur,
the conscience, imprisoned in brackets now and forever, a footnote
fussbudget, but revel in my dream Art and Fashion Capital of
the World the glossy 'zines proclaim so buy a piece of New York
and take it back to the farm or wherever the hell you're from
show them thar cynics in Town Square what yer made of... Oh yes
we've Statue of Liberty statuettes and WTC souvenir autographed
photos of the dead and pricey stuff too you have to pay our experts
to appraise--well, you have your objets d'art, go forth fulfilled...go,
go. Shoo.
[Scrivener's Note:
This place is gone. The Big Guys have
taken it all. You have no life if you work all day in an office
cubicle for "big bucks" to live on Avenue D.--no mind
at any rate...and what about the people who work all day in less
glamorous pursuits, cleaning the cubicles, say, who don't make
big bucks, like...the working class people who used to be my
neighbors around Tenth street and Avenue C? Some of them were
even students of mine when I ran the Writing Center at Touro
College on 23rd street and taught freshman composition for a
grand total of: $25,000 per year before taxes--and I was the
rich "professor;" what about those folks? Where did
they go? Westchester? Great Neck? I mean, they can't just vanish,
but how do you make room for whoever's making the 50-100K needed
to live in their fine neighborhoods (refurbished, of course)?
I smell a rat. I smell many big fat corporate/real estate/political
rats...]
Mannahatta spires rise above your hip
hop happy cuchifrito no tickee no shirtee Kim chi teriyaki why
you always Russian Jew York Yankee sauerkraut in turban and sub
turban hashish hookah herbal tea pink-oh, oh, oh and violet pussy
belly-button girl drumbeat Madonna in the park with Cardinal
Sin the real McCoy Ciao fun 24 dollars and 43 pesos fer yer pot
melting to boiling point perverse show bum open to all players
from Hellish kitchens and the lock-step faces of diversity...
[ Scrivener's note:
Gotta take off for a while. Travel. Kinda
cowardly to jump ship, agreed: but the Apple is rotting to the
core. Big world out there. Lotta languages to learn. People to
meet (and not kill, or want to kill just cause the New York Times
etc. tells us to). Not everyone bleeds REDWHITEandBLUE -- do
they?]
Oh Mannahatta, rise above your ancient
ethnic dark, dark-minded, outrageous self-centered self and become
America at last!
Adam Engel
lives and writes in NYC. He can be reached at asengel@attglobal.net
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November 14,
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