When GPS Becomes Gee…BS

March 13th, 2009 · Beyond Gotham

The headline at least – “Blazing a Trail With a Smartphone, Visual Signposts Included” – promised a wondrous experience. The New York Times column on Wednesday, March 11 focused on some software that can turn your GPS-enabled cellphone into a dynamo that allows you to navigate a route and post photos, audio clips, and descriptive and helpful points of interest. My mind started leaping: Perhaps it was a way to share the sights and sounds of walking experiences with the Mindful Walker audience.

Mind you, I’m only just planning to soon post photos and images with the Mindfulwalker.com content, so I reminded myself to walk before I fly. And, a confession: I don’t use any Global Positioning System device yet. I love maps, all kinds, from the well-worn, folded ones in my car to Google Maps to raised-relief topographic maps. One of the most interesting “mappings” is how we travel from site to site online, seeking out maps, photos, and videos of places near and far. I’m enchanted that, through photos and an online diary, I can enjoy and study the hikes of a fellow in the Lake District, England, where my partner and I plan to travel later this year.

Also, some family and friends swear by their GPS receivers. But perhaps I was burned by my first GPS experience when a cabbie using one drove me to a dead-end construction site on East 70th Street and insisted it was the right location of the office I had requested. He pointed to it like I was supposed to find the doctor’s office amid the construction crew and trailers: That’s what the GPS shows!

Loaded on a GPS-capable cellphone or GPS receiver and through accounts with wireless carriers or vendors, the Trimble Outdoors mobile application lets hikers, bikers, and walkers get access to many user-generated route maps and other navigational help, track their activities for fitness, create maps, share their trips, keep personal libraries, and explore online caches of points of interest, photos, and audio clips that others upload. That includes thousands of maps the editorial staff of Backpacker Magazine has uploaded, according to the Times. Wow!

Yet judging by the hiking experience columnist Bob Tedeschi described in the Times, I’d need a very large backpack of patience to use the GPS-enabled smartphone program. Moreover, it makes me question what the use of these devices and software does to the experience of walking.

Foul Weather Fear

Reading Tedeschi’s chronicle of the smartphone with this app was almost painful. He told in much detail how he found a treasure trove of one hiker’s maps of a location he wanted to hike that turned out to be fairly useless, how confusing he found the phone’s prompts to be, how at times overlapping text on the screen made it hard to tell where he was, and other glitches. “I yearned for a signal of some kind – a vibration, say – as I got closer to an important point, so I wouldn’t have to keep glancing at the phone,” Tedeschi wrote. I wasn’t sure if the key issues were with the software, how he used it, or with what he expected. [Read more →]

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Coney Island’s Off-Season Vibe

March 8th, 2009 · Explore New York

Scrawled on the cornice of a dilapidated building on Coney Island’s Surf Avenue is “Shore Hotel. Nature’s Paradise By the Sea.” But paradise this isn’t. On Coney Island’s main thoroughfare, it sits in the midst of a mish-mash of garish-colored patches of buildings, “Stores for Lease” signs, boarded-up windows, and neon that heralds “Eldorado Auto Skooter,” “Clam Bar,” and “Nathan’s Famous.”

On an off-season walk in Coney Island, New York City’s legendary beach spot is a mix of the timeless and the left-behind-by-time. The beach and boardwalk along the Atlantic Ocean have a wintry peacefulness unattached to events and man’s whimsies about favorite resorts. On the other hand, empty spaces, vacant storefronts, and graffiti speak of a resort long neglected since its heyday in the early 20th century and pre-World War II.

Coney Island’s central neighborhood is perched between a glorious past, recent decades when activity and abuse teeter-tottered, and an unknown future. Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s Administration wants to rezone this segment of Coney Island and make it into a newly resurgent year-round destination with amusement park rides, new housing, hotels, entertainment, and shops, while the Municipal Art Society and a developer have their own plans, and the public seeks to shape what kind of Coney Island will evolve (see “Whose Dreams Will Revive Coney Island?”). Perhaps curiously, in the midst of experiencing not only the emptiness of this beach neighborhood on a late-winter day but some of its dreariness and decay, I feel optimistic that a resurrected Coney Island will emerge.

When I first got off the Q train, which loops through several neighborhoods of Brooklyn before arriving in Coney Island, I headed right toward the beach. The late-afternoon sun gleamed on the sand. Fewer than a dozen people strolled the long and peaceful beach, easily outnumbered by the seagulls. This is one of the spots where New York City touches the Atlantic Ocean. Those walking had plenty of a partially snow-covered beach to themselves to feel the wind and listen to the waves. [Read more →]

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Whose Dreams Will Revive Coney Island?

February 27th, 2009 · Be a Mindful Activist, Explore New York

Say the words “Coney Island” to New Yorkers, especially of a certain age, and you may well get a dreamy kind of pause and a vivid memory: feeling the sensation of a drop on the Cyclone roller coaster, seeing the steel top on the gigantic Parachute Jump from the distance, riding the fast Steeplechase horses, eating a corn dog for the first time. At one time, it seemed, everybody went there, if at least once.

Coney Island isn’t just a place of yesteryear, of Astroland and Luna Park. As anyone can attest who goes to the Mermaid Parade, the Fourth of July hot dog eating contest, or a Brooklyn Cyclones baseball game, sees the sideshow, or rides the bumper cars, Coney Island is alive today. It remains not only a legend but a draw for many tourists and local beach lovers. (Also check out “Coney Island’s Off-Season Vibe” on Mindfulwalker.com.)

No one would argue, however, that this is the Coney Island of its heyday in the early 20th century and before World War II. It has vacant spaces on the waterfront and parking lots where amusement rides used to be. Many New Yorkers never venture out on the subway to it today. The owners of Astroland recently took down and packed up Dante’s Inferno and other rides, with their lease expiring at the end of January. They packed up the stuff but apparently hope they’ll be back, as part of a resurrected Coney Island, according to NY1.

And that’s where the fun and the dreams are taking shape right now, albeit with some tough, hard-to-sort-out battles that are becoming their own Coney Island sideshow: What might arise near the boardwalk and sand along the Atlantic Ocean? This is the question that the Municipal Art Society of New York (MAS) has asked the public and is considering itself as part of its ImagineConey initiative. Hundreds of ideas have poured in to the MAS. If Coney Island’s future were a Nathan’s Famous hot dog, it’d come with everything.

Luna Park: Coming Around Again?

A bit of background: New York City, in the face of the Bloomberg Administration, wants to rezone and revitalize Coney Island into a year-round destination with amusement rides, indoor and outdoor entertainment, and new housing. A developer has his own ideas. Plus, the Municipal Art Society is advocating its own bigger plan and gathering the public’s creative ideas and input through ImagineConey. [Read more →]

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Lists: Ten Actions for Sustainable Cities

February 20th, 2009 · Be a Mindful Activist, Beyond Gotham

Gas prices are at an average of $1.96 per gallon, far below the $4-plus they hit last year. The price of oil amid a global recession that has sharply curtailed demand declines to $35 per barrel on Feb. 20. People are fearful as many lose jobs and others go through foreclosures. In such an environment, many don’t have “peak oil” or climate change foremost on their minds. But the concerns about the world having a finite reserve of oil and worries about climate change haven’t gone away.

Peter Newman is one of those thinking and speaking about these topics constantly. In a newly released book, Resilient Cities: Responding to Peak Oil and Climate Change, the author and professor from Australia and co-authors Timothy Beatley and Heather Boyer warn that cities must adapt in the face of these two major challenges or they will collapse. The book discusses four possible outcomes for cities: “collapse,” “ruralized,” “divided,” and “resilient.”

Rather than dwelling on doomsday predictions, the authors choose hope, saying that we as humans can, in Newman’s words, “begin to change our cities towards resilience.” Such cities will innovate so that they become based on renewable energy, not oil; are eco-efficient and carbon-neutral; will produce energy and grow food locally; and will take other measures to reduce consumption and become sustainable. They will be transit-based (especially rail), not car-dependent, and far more in tune with nature, and they’ll create much more viable and pleasant walking and cycling spaces.

Does this sound pie-in-the-sky? No. As the authors show in their book and others are documenting each day with practical examples, many cities are overhauling their urban planning for these 21st century realities and pursuing actions to become resilient and sustainable. Here are 10 examples, cited by the authors of Resilient Cities and from other places:

  1. Some cities in Australia have set up “walking school buses,” in which two volunteer guides act as “drivers” and pick up children from their doorsteps and walk them, along a set route, to school. The programs lessen vehicle congestion around schools, encourage children to get exercise, and help increase kids’ familiarity with their communities.
  2. In Vancouver, the city mandates that 5 percent of the value of a new development goes into funding “social infrastructure,” the space in between buildings. The local community decides what to do with the funds, which can be used for landscaping, art, bicycle paths, better or additional pedestrian areas, community meeting spaces, schools, etc.
  3. The city of Seoul in South Korea tore down an elevated highway that had covered what was considered a sacred small river, restoring the river and creating public pathways on both sides of it. The city now offers walking tours, led by a cultural heritage guide, of a natural place that has been restored after decades of congestion and pollution. [Read more →]

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A Winter Walk at the Ashokan Reservoir

February 9th, 2009 · Beyond Gotham

Seasons come to our bodies much like they do to trees and mountains, lakes and bays. Each individually has its own rhythm and signs of changing, adapting, and flowing from one season to the next, until the momentum of so many heralds the new season en masse.

Beckoned by the brilliant sunshine, predictions of temperatures in the high 40s, and the lengthening daylight, I went walking over the weekend at the Ashokan Reservoir to look for signs of spring, and I ran smack-dab into winter. Each of us has places where we go to seek out the seasons, and the Ashokan Reservoir is one of mine. The reservoir, in Ulster County, is a magnificent place unto itself, 13 square miles ringed by forested shoreline and a backdrop of beautiful Catskill Mountain peaks. (This is not to discount its controversial history, since New York City acquired the area and displaced a large number of communities in the early 20th century in order to create the reservoir as one of its sources for drinking water.)

The reservoir’s two long walkways, one an actual promenade and the other a closed road the public now uses, provide a panorama of each season, from the appearance of the water to the plants and grasses along the slopes to the palette of the trees and the soft, rounded mountain ridges. Because the walkways are elevated, one feels at times as if you can almost touch the huge open sky or become bedazzled by the cloud show rolling in front of you and above.

Punxsutawney Who?

It’s about this time every year that I start to feel spring will be here soon, no matter what Punxsutawney Phil says. Each person has her or his own sense of the early hints that spring is on its way. “The snowdrops will pop up Feb. 14 or so,” said a friend and colleague recently. I eagerly track the lengthening daylight, for one. On Feb. 8, New York City saw an hour and 15 minutes more daylight than on Dec. 21, the Winter Solstice. I also feel it in any spate of sunny days we get in late January and February. A meteorologist may not agree with this, but as I say, seasons come to our bodies individually. [Read more →]

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Vertical Cities: Hong Kong and New York

January 29th, 2009 · Explore New York

Sometimes in a sea of numbers, it takes just one stat to astound you into getting the picture: In one of the New Towns of Hong Kong, Tseung Kwan O, some 350,000 people live within four square miles. They live in towers that vary from 57 to 62 stories. Here’s another stat: 80 percent of them live within five minutes of a rail station. How about that for a mass transit success story?

Such numbers tell a lot about Hong Kong in 2009. It’s the most densely occupied major city in the world, it’s constantly growing upward, and it possesses key similarities as well some stark differences with New York City.

A skyscraper race to the sky is taking place across parts of the globe right now – epitomized best, perhaps, by the building of Burj Dubai in the United Arab Emirates. It’s not an easy race to grasp. For decades the construction of such a tall tower in this country, like the Empire State Building or the World Trade Center, was very momentous. Now and with the focus shifting to Asia and the Middle East, a huge new “tallest in the world” is popping up every several years, many cities are building supertall structures that tower ever higher, and sometimes even veteran skyscraper aficionados feel like it’s all a jumble.

The current exhibit at The Skyscraper Museum in New York, “Vertical Cities: Hong Kong, New York,” allows one to understand the skyscraper mania by exploring two iconic “vertical metropolises.” It examines the needs, societal forces, designs, and scale of building taller and taller. It wasn’t quite like walking around Hong Kong, but through the exhibit’s photographs, architectural drawings, film, computer animations, maps, brochures, and large-scale models, it was enough to get a real picture – and maybe even to feel blown away by it all.

The exhibit calls Hong Kong and New York the world’s “most similar skyscraper societies.” Both feature island cities with excellent and busy harbors, and both evolved into dominant centers of finance and commerce. New York and Hong Kong have had defining moments of development that propelled the building of many skyscrapers through which entrepreneurs and designers channeled economic growth and became super-competitive: New York in the 1920s and 1960s, and Hong Kong in the mid-1980s through 1990s to today. [Read more →]

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Obama and Thoughts at the National Mall

January 20th, 2009 · Beyond Gotham

On the November night that the United States elected Barack Obama as its new President, NBC News anchorman Brian Williams called it “a seismic shift in American politics.” Yes, it is. Yet seismic shifts are, ultimately, created by many forces and actions that culminate in a particular moment. This seemed particularly poignant while walking along the National Mall in Washington, D.C. on Saturday and Sunday and exploring the nation’s capital.

Washington, D.C. has felt electric in the days leading up to the January 20 inauguration of Obama as President and Joe Biden as Vice-President of the United States. Dozens of major events are happening on Inauguration Day, from the Inaugural Parade to the balls, and many of them are sure to be festive, moving, and full of pageantry.

But during these several days many people looked happy just to come down to the National Mall in Washington and view the flag-draped U.S. Capitol, the grounds, and the stage where our 44th President will take the oath of office. They were, like me, drinking in the atmosphere and relishing this time of gathering together. Joy was in the air as sure as the tingly cold January weather. If you needed a gauge of it, you could see it in the smiling faces all around.

We saw hundreds of people who walked up as close as they could get to the Capitol area where the swearing-in ceremony is taking place or around the National Mall, gazed toward the stage, and took pictures of the scene. It was as if we each wanted our own freeze-frame of this historic moment. People chatted with each other, asking where the other was from. African-Americans were numerous among the crowd.

We as a people are crossing a threshold. Today we will see the first African-American President in the history of the U.S. take office. Isn’t this at least one signpost of the Promised Land that Martin Luther King, Jr. talked about? Many will also welcome the end of the administration of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, such a dark, dismal, and infamous chapter in history. Many Americans are savoring this change, like travelers who are tired and beaten up after the long, rough journey of the Bush-Cheney years suddenly seeing a vista from a mountain perch.

Divisions are still there, but on this day a strong sense of a common purpose joins us. Where better could one participate in this moment and reflect on it than the National Mall, where hundreds of thousands will attend the Inauguration? It’s a place where so many have expressed their hopes and desires over the years in protests and other gatherings, and it holds those memories. [Read more →]

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Prayers and Peace at St. Francis

January 6th, 2009 · Explore New York

Outside, it was a post-Christmas, rush-hour frenzy, throngs crowding near the revolving doors and the holiday windows of Macy’s or walking speedily to Penn Station. Inside St. Francis of Assisi Roman Catholic Church in New York in the midst of all of this, you’d never know it. Two men were slowly and carefully placing flowers and plant stalks into large arrangements on each side of the altar. A couple of dozen people sat or knelt and prayed silently in the pews.

One could listen to the silence and hear nothing of the cranking, honking, shouting, whirring, and loud talking just beyond the doors on the streets of Midtown Manhattan. In so many ways, this church space felt like the essence of peace. Each person seemed to have his or her own space.

In these spiritual places in the midst of a city of 8 million people, individual souls find moments of serenity and silence. St. Francis of Assisi Church, located on West 31st Street between the Avenue of the Americas and Seventh Avenue, is one such oasis. New Yorkers love their churches, synagogues, mosques, meetinghouses, temples, and other sacred spaces, and the peace they offer is one major reason.

Stopping in St. Francis of Assisi Church for a visit during an afternoon of post-holiday errands, I contemplated its beauty and the larger messages of its peacefulness. I had always wanted to come to this church but had never done so even while passing nearby dozens of times. After all the holiday jostling on Manhattan’s streets, there was an immediate comfort in simply sitting and watching the two men near the altar lovingly placing evergreens among the calla lilies and other flowers in the two large arrangements.

Built in 1892, the church is Romanesque-style with golden-yellow brick and terra cotta trim. It reminds me of some of the churches European immigrants built in my native Western Pennsylvania. Its interior also feels very Old World with highly decorated capitals on its columns, vaulted ceiling, and many shrines and mosaics. The space for worship feels vast in some ways, with an entire dark wood-paneled Lower Church one level below, one that has a separate altar and a crèche displayed throughout the year. Also, the church has an oasis within the oasis – a small, oblong adjacent courtyard filled with hundreds of candles. [Read more →]

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Wal-Mart’s Threat to a Historic Battlefield

December 23rd, 2008 · Beyond Gotham

Recently, a bankruptcy expert told a Bloomberg Radio interviewer that the United States is “over-stored” – it has far too much retail space than is needed to serve American consumers. Amidst the holiday shopping blitz, I thought of this observation as I read this week of the plans by Wal-Mart to construct a new 141,000-square foot store in Virginia very close to the site of one of the most important battlefields of the Civil War. The retail and grocery superstore would be just a quarter-mile from the boundary of the National Park area commemorating the Battle of the Wilderness in the Civil War. Is this a good place for a Wal-Mart? Does it need to be built there?

The National Trust for Historic Preservation, the Civil War Preservation Trust, others in the historic preservation community, and 253 historians don’t think so. In a letter to Wal-Mart, the historians, who include David McCullough, James McPherson, and Edwin Bearss, the historian emeritus of the National Park Service, maintain this new Wal-Mart will do great damage to a landscape that is a tangible piece of America’s history. As they noted in the letter, “The Wilderness is an indelible part of our history, its very ground hallowed by the American blood spilled there, and it cannot be moved. Surely Wal-Mart can identify a site that would meet its needs without changing the very character of the battlefield.”

The coalition is fighting to stop the Wilderness Wal-Mart by urging the giant retailer to move its proposed store farther from the historic site. The proposal is under consideration at the local level now: Wal-Mart recently filed an application for a special-use permit, which governs larger retail uses in the commercial zone, with the Orange County Department of Community Development in Virginia; the Orange County Planning Commission will next review the application. The supercenter proposal is sure to be another pitched battle in the campaign to preserve those now-peaceful and important places that commemorate and teach about the Civil War.

The Wal-Mart superstore would be on 19 acres of a 50-acre parcel on the northern side of Route 3 near Route 20, according to the Culpeper (Va.) Star-Exponent. This is in close proximity to The Wilderness battlefield portion of the Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania National Military Park. The park preserves and memorializes portions of the battlefields of four of the most critical battles fought during the Civil War. [Read more →]

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Manhattan’s Dyckman Farmhouse

December 15th, 2008 · Explore New York

In a world where teens hang out for hours in their bedrooms playing video games and a household may have three or four computers and several TVs, consider the parlor of Jacobus Dyckman. In the early 19th century, Dyckman’s family, servants, and one slave – up to 10 people – would likely have confined many of their activities on a cold winter evening to this parlor, seeking to stay close to the fireplace’s warmth. On a December evening, the only light was candlelight. And with no television blaring, the howl of wintry winds would sound very close indeed.

You can imagine this experience when you see the parlor of the Dyckman house in New York City’s Inwood neighborhood today. Here, near a Rite Aid pharmacy, PJ Wine store, and apartment buildings, the Dyckman home remains, at 4881 Broadway at 204th Street. It is Manhattan’s last Dutch Colonial-style farmhouse. Open to the public as the Dyckman Farmhouse Museum, it offers a rare look at how a farm family lived in then-rural Northern Manhattan in the late 18th and early 19th centuries.

That any dwellings in the United States from that time period survive is precious. In the case of an early farmhouse remaining in the midst of New York City it’s almost miraculous. It’s also a testament to the pluck and devotion of two Dyckman family descendants who decided the house must be preserved when rapid change came to Inwood in the early 20th century. Today it’s a place to witness and ponder the nexus of family life, class, and slavery within one household during the nation’s earliest days.

Walking on New York City’s streets in the midst of thousands and thousands of buildings, one can easily forget that anyone ever farmed in Manhattan – much less on a large farm. The Dyckman farm covered some 250 acres stretching from the Harlem River to the Hudson River. On Manhattan’s modern street grid, that’s roughly from the “190s” to 213th Street. [Read more →]

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Winter Colors in Central Park

December 6th, 2008 · Explore New York

For the eyes that glory in autumn’s rich, awe-inspiring colors or spring’s bright exuberance, winter may feel like the ho-hum season, one big letdown. To many, it’s “dreary” winter, a time to hunker down inside and hang on until the color in the Northern climes “returns” to the trees, bushes, and flowerbeds come spring.

Yet winter has its own full and natural palette if we only look closely. Hal Borland knew this very well, most of all. Borland, a naturalist and author of more than 30 books, crafted sharp-eyed and beautiful writings on nature and the outdoors in editorials for 35 years for The New York Times until his death in 1978. He knew that winter has its way with color, one that could enrich the day and a good walk as surely as spring or summer or fall.

Of winter, Borland once wrote, “The color, we say, is gone, remembering vivid October and verdant May. What we really mean is that the spectacular color has passed and we now have the quiet tones of winter around us….” Borland had the eye and the patience to notice and appreciate winter’s colors around his farm in the lower Berkshires. I’ve remembered his thoughts on color in this dormant season for many years, especially when I’ve seen the red tops of the British soldier lichen, the festive red berries on a holly bush, or the ruddy brown of cattail tops.

So, inspired by Borland, I went on a walk looking for winter’s colors in Central Park. The calendar says that winter officially starts on Dec. 21, but the temperatures and feel of the season in the Northeast and New York, in my view, say it has begun. It’s the time when the autumnal brilliance has given way to the look that sets in for winter. And indeed, Borland’s essay “Winter Color” first appeared on Dec. 4, 1960, in the Times.

As I set out, it didn’t take long to see what Borland meant. Entering from Columbus Circle and gazing out over the southwest corner of Central Park, I immediately spotted the yellow-green of a very large deciduous tree – with many of its leaves still clinging – right next to the deep forest green of a spruce. I walked east and then north in Central Park checking out what winter had to show in its palette on a gray afternoon, and it turned out to be plenty. [Read more →]

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Still Missing McHale’s

November 30th, 2008 · Explore New York

In some ways, buildings are like people. They have a birth and a prime of life. As they age, they either wear well or not. They’re either cherished and well cared for, or neglected. The lives of some buildings are cut short way too soon. Others seem to thrive year upon year upon year. Still others hang on, despite neglect, for a long time. They have roles in our lives, and when some buildings are gone, we remember their specialness.

I reflected on these thoughts while looking at a friend-recommended site called Hudson Valley Ruins. In this site (and also a book published in 2006), Tom Rinaldi and Rob Yasinsac chronicle historic and distinctive architecture “threatened by development, vandals, and time and the exposure to the elements,” as the site notes.

Roaming through HudsonValleyRuins.org, though its ruins lost and ruins brought back, you can read a good deal of the Hudson Valley’s history from Yonkers northward to Troy, looking at old and shuttered factories and mills, schools, train stations, houses, stores, and farms. The site has updates and a photo-illustrated “demo alert,” which warns of impending demolitions and promotes actions to save the structures. On Nov. 17 of this year, the alert told of the soon-to-occur demolition of the 1950s steel-and-glass-enclosed Carvel ice cream stand in Hartsdale, N.Y., on the site where the Carvel retail business was born in 1934. (In 2007, the site first cited the threat to the Carvel stand.)

This all got me thinking about McHale’s tavern on the west side of Midtown Manhattan. Three years ago right around this time, we found out that McHale’s, at West 46th Street and Eighth Avenue, would close in early 2006 to – as Curbed put it – “make way for 42 stories of you-can-probably-guess.” Developers were razing the building containing McHale’s and the Happy Deli in order to erect a sleek residential-condo building called The Platinum, appropriately named since one needs to have a lot of it to afford a condo here. I just couldn’t welcome a condo development with the name “The Platinum” replacing a legendary neighborhood pub. [Read more →]

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How to Stay Merry Before Christmas

November 23rd, 2008 · Explore New York

Ah, the lovely holiday season in New York City is upon us. It means bright, colorful lights, enchanting holiday windows, the Rockefeller Center tree, the smell of pine in front of your corner deli…and gridlock. We’re talking vehicle gridlock and people gridlock.

That’s exactly what happens in New York as Thanksgiving rounds into the crazed, shopper-stomping weeks of December. One can love the holiday season and winter, as I do, but deplore the crowded, over-the-top feel of New York at this time, especially Midtown Manhattan. Picture 30 people carrying massive shopping bags and jostling to move through the same 12 square feet on the corner of West 46th Street and Seventh Avenue, or Fifth Avenue and 49th Street, on a dark, cold, rainy evening. Just a few are cranky.

This New Yorker always greets the time between Thanksgiving and December 24, consumerism’s high holidays of shopping, with a mixture of excitement – I love winter, snow, Macy’s and Lord & Taylor’s windows, Greenwich Village streets with white twinkle lights, etc. – and loathing. So, how does one not only stay sane but enjoy New York in these weeks?

For those of like mind, here are seven things to do to get peaceful and keep merry during the pre-holiday rush in New York. These are places of tranquility and fresh air, activities, and small tricks when the crowdedness and mania feel like too much. In a year of economic turmoil and no matter which holiday you mark – Christmas, Hanukkah, or Kwanzaa – it’s good to remind ourselves about what is free or at least nearly free.

Walk downtown. While Midtown, the Upper East Side, the West Village, and SoHo are often crowded, take a break and walk many of those crooked, angular 17th– and 18th– century-feeling streets in the Financial District. This far downtown can feel very open, and it’s made more so by winter’s brisk wind blowing across the slender part of Manhattan. (At times it feels like being in the middle of Mark Helprin’s novel Winter’s Tale.) Especially walk along Stone Street, Bridge Street, and South William Street in that area, but many places will do.

Go to the Hudson River and see the sunset. Sure, New York is crowded, but its rivers, harbor, and oceanfront literally give the compact, congested physical space breathing room. These are the times of shortest daylight of the year, but the sunsets are a treat of light. As a West Sider, I love watching the sunsets over the Hudson River. Try a walk or park bench seat on the Battery Park City Esplanade, the piers and esplanade of the Hudson River Park, or Riverside Park. It’s good to bundle up, feel the wind off the river, and watch the sun slip behind the New Jersey hillsides. The sky goes from azure to midnight blue, with mixed-in pinkish, violet, and golden clouds, as the first stars twinkle and the silhouettes deepen. [Read more →]

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A Walk: The Purple Heart Hall of Honor

November 17th, 2008 · Beyond Gotham

Frank Emberson was wounded on Dec. 21, 1944, while fighting in Luxembourg during World War II. But when the bullet passed through his arm, a packet of family photos in Emberson’s breast pocket deflected it from hitting the Army soldier’s chest, thus saving his life. The story itself is moving, but seeing the small envelope with its frayed edges made me shudder.

You can see the torn envelope and Emberson’s story at the National Purple Heart Hall of Honor, in New Windsor, N.Y., just outside of Newburgh. This is one of those historic sites that makes one feel and think about just what it must be like to fight in a war day after day, to see one’s close comrades killed or injured, to know the razor-thin difference separating life and death, and to be your best self at a moment when your life is most in jeopardy.

The hall is tucked up on a hill away from the highway. I’ve driven by its sign dozens of times on Route 300, just at a place where the edge of Newburgh’s suburbs meets the leafy mountains in the Hudson River Valley. This unobtrusive museum, opened in late 2006, honors those who have received the Purple Heart, which is the United States’ oldest military decoration still in use and was the first to honor the common soldier.

What drew me to the museum? I hate war, as many do, but I believe that at certain, infrequent times it must be fought. I’ve studied and read about it for a very long time, though I aim for my thoughts, words, and actions to be about peace. I’ve never had to fight in a war, though my uncles fought in World War II. Primarily, as I go on in life my feelings for those our nation is sending to wars become even deeper and more acute. I protested against the decision for the United States to go into Iraq in 2003, and I ask more questions about how my ways of living might influence the choices that the country makes about whether to go to war.

In the U.S., we witness men and women currently sent off to two different wars, in Afghanistan and Iraq, going on many years – seemingly endless wars. I see the pain of the families who have lost someone, the returning soldiers fitted with prostheses, those suffering traumatic brain injury or PTSD. So I was especially drawn to a place that honors and documents the lives and experiences of soldiers who have sacrificed their lives or been wounded.

Revolutionary War Roots

The hall’s location is intentional for it has an important link to the recognition of the common soldier and the birth of the Purple Heart. As commander-in-chief of the Continental Army, George Washington decided to reward acts of bravery and merit by granting a promotion in rank or a commission to deserving individuals under his command. The Continental Congress, however, ordered Washington to cease this recognition for soldiers because funds were lacking. Washington wasn’t deterred. In 1782, he stipulated that a soldier who committed a singular act of meritorious action, so recognized, shall receive a Badge of Military Merit, “a heart in purple cloth or silk edged with narrow lace or binding” to be worn over the left breast. [Read more →]

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Bowery Savings: The World in a Building

November 11th, 2008 · Explore New York

Tinos green marble is a vivid green-blue with wide white veins, mined from the quarries of a small mountainous Greek island in the Aegean Sea. Briar Hill sandstone is an earthy stone of warm red, rust, brown, and buff-colored tones taken from quarries in Glenmont, Ohio. Missouri is the source of Napoleon gray marble, while Rouge Royal is a stone from Belgium of reddish-pink hues with gray and white veins.

These materials with intriguing names come from places hundreds, even thousands of miles apart. You may not get to all of these places and tramp upon their lands. But you can see them all, and more, in one place: the Bowery Savings Bank building on East 42nd Street in New York. We know the phrase “a world in a grain of sand,” but the phrase “a world in a single building” is equally true. Many parts of the earth come together in a single one of our most wondrous buildings.

It’s difficult to grasp how many different kinds of stone and marble and other fine materials those who planned and built the Bowery Savings Bank brought together. Both the exterior and the interior of the bank building, at 110-120 East 42nd Street in Manhattan, are designated as New York City landmarks.

The building doesn’t call as much attention to itself as other beautiful, eye-catching landmarks in the city. Still, it looks like a piece of an Old Europe city tucked across from Grand Central Station, with its grand rounded arches, detailed stone carving, and a rock-solidness that feels centuries old though it was constructed in the early 20th century.

The building contains all of the materials cited above – the Tinos marble, Ohio sandstone, Napoleon gray marble, and Rouge Royal marble – and much, much more variety. The word “rich” doesn’t so it justice, though it’s not flashy like casinos and other temples of today. Those who designed and built the bank and created the stonework let their dreams come true, it seems. Just consider that in the main banking hall, those responsible for this great place brought materials for the floor from the marble quarries of more than a half-dozen countries. For the six thick, gorgeous columns on the main banking room’s east wall, for instance, the marble for each column is from a quarry in six different places, from the south of France and the Italian Alps to Belgium.

Ghosts of Bank Lines Past

Where part of the old Grand Union Hotel stood, Bowery Savings constructed a proud new bank in the early 1920s. It came at a time when it was important, in the bank’s view, to encourage the masses not only to save but to have faith in saving. (“A mutual institution chartered 1834 to serve those who save” is carved in stone above the arch of the main entrance.) “The Bowery” was one of New York’s oldest and most venerable banks. [Read more →]

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A President Of the City and For the City

November 6th, 2008 · Beyond Gotham

On the balmy night of Nov. 4, a jubilant crowd gathered at New York’s Times Square, arms uplifted, flags waving, many shouting “Obama! Obama!” They poured into the crossroads of the world to celebrate the election of Barack Obama as President of the United States.

How fitting that such an outpouring for Obama’s victory happened at one of America’s main city spaces. Revelers also took to the streets in Harlem and Washington, D.C., among other places around the globe caught up in the night’s elation.

For the site of their own post-election gathering, Obama and his campaign chose not a suburban hotel ballroom but a great city park, Chicago’s Grant Park, the scene of open-air concerts, festivals, and major civic events. The very place where police and demonstrators clashed in bloody confrontations during the Democratic Party’s national convention in 1968 became the scene of a glittering night where thousands wept tears of joy upon hearing the news that Obama had defeated John McCain and became our first African-American President. The healing of a public space reflects the continuing healing of a country.

It’s wonderful that cities took center-stage on this night. For Barack Obama is a man of the city in ways beyond what many of our recent Presidents have been. And that – fortified by his sense that thriving cities and towns are important to the health of America – portends good possibilities for urban policy, historic preservation, smart growth, sustainable development, anti-sprawl efforts, energy conservation, and intelligent transportation priorities.

This hope – and it is a hope, not a conclusion – is grounded in Obama’s biography, his values, and his policy proposals. Obama and his family live in Chicago’s Hyde Park, a racially diverse neighborhood that is home to the University of Chicago (where Obama taught Constitutional law for 12 years) and many other cultural and educational institutions. In his mid-20s, Obama worked for a church-based community organization on Chicago’s South Side in areas such as tenants’ rights, job training, and college-prep tutoring. When he later graduated from Harvard Law School, Obama turned aside high-paying job offers from New York firms and instead headed back to Chicago to join a law firm there.

In my view, our incoming President is a refined kind of street guy. He plays hoops and enjoys going to his favorite city restaurants with his wife, Michelle. One can sense Obama’s comfort with and pride in Chicago. Does this matter? I think so. City life shapes a consciousness of community, neighborhood, and the interconnectedness of city and suburb in metropolitan regions. Though it may seem paradoxical to some, it means supporting rural communities and farms in a comprehensive approach as strongly as cities. [Read more →]

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Pecks and the City: My Sparrow Friends

November 2nd, 2008 · Explore New York

Birders glory in having spotted a Tennessee warbler in Central Park, and I would, too, if I was fortunate and plucky enough to see one. But day-to-day, this New Yorker exults in the sparrows of Hell’s Kitchen.

They chirp and call locally outside our apartment window every morning. Happily, it seems. Sparrows are to 6 a.m. in the summer what the after-hours club people are to 4 a.m. on the streets: They do not care how loud they are.

But unlike when I hear the after-hours crowd, I rejoice in the sparrows’ lack of concern for their decibel level. One can be surrounded by concrete and many tall buildings and hear the clatter-bang-clatter-bang of construction, but the sparrows’ constant cheep-cheep-cheep from the bushes, trees, and overhangs along my street is a sweet, calming call that brings peace. Some call this type of sparrow a nuisance, and I understand that, but for me it’s an unsung hero – no pun intended – of my little corner of nature, darting from tree to wire to fence to roof overhang in Midtown Manhattan.

The sparrows’ call is a natural-world backbeat as I walk along the street. On a sweltering New York day, when the buildings seem to drip sweat, I’m walking slowly. But the sparrows have energy to spare, arcing from bush to tree to wrought iron railing and chirping madly in Ramon Aponte Park. This close to them, I notice how striking their gray-white breasts are and how their heads dart about.

Immigrant Tails

These are house sparrows, passer domesticus, also known as English sparrows. This species is not native to North America. As with so many things in America, New York figures prominently in how they got here, though there are differing stories. One account generally agreed upon, according to the New York City Department of Parks: In the mid-19th century, large tracts of land were cleared to make way for industry, housing, stores, and the like. This upset the ecological balance; native species of birds declined and insect populations grew. A number of New Yorkers affiliated with the Brooklyn Institute imported the house sparrows in the 1850s, hoping this would help to control the insects. Other cities followed suit. [Read more →]

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Pittsburgh’s Streets and Burbs

October 29th, 2008 · Beyond Gotham

Talk about a starkly different experience of walking. I love to take walks wherever I go – to explore, relax, exercise, and take in the surroundings. While visiting my family in Western Pennsylvania this year — or “Western PA” as we natives call it — I could hardly have had a more different experience of walking during the weekend there. If I compare and juxtapose the two walks, one through downtown Pittsburgh and another in a city suburb, they tell me a lot about how we plan – or perhaps more accurately, don’t plan – and build places these days and just how much the car remains king, to our detriment.

I took the Greyhound bus to Pittsburgh, where I was going to walk in the Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure of breast cancer in Schenley Park. Yes, a lot of people sniff at the thought of going Greyhound and mostly I prefer the train. But you can’t beat the price of the bus, and I love the ease of walking down Eighth Avenue from our Manhattan apartment to the Port Authority terminal, a small suitcase and backpack in tow, choosing from a bunch of daily trip times to Pittsburgh, and hopping on a bus. Easy!

And the people-watching is never dull. So I “landed” on that day in Pittsburgh at a bus station on Second Avenue that was temporary, while a new one was under construction. (The new bus station opened in September.) If Pittsburgh’s downtown is a triangle where three rivers come together, this was at the extreme upper-right corner, off the Parkway East and Monongahela River.

What do you notice about a city when you arrive? For me, it’s what’s alike, what’s different from places where I have been. When I ride into Pittsburgh, I always look at its large hills filled with the frame houses that once were home to so many steelworkers and their families. The neighborhoods cascade over the hillsides like human-built waterfalls. [Read more →]

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Architects With the Right Touch

October 28th, 2008 · Explore New York

H. Douglas Ives once placed swarms of bees in the midst of midtown Manhattan, but to inspire, not to sting.

High above the thousands who scurry and stroll along Fifth Avenue sit two beehives surrounded by buzzing bees. But they’re not live – they’re part of the dazzling decoration atop the Fred F. French Building at the northeast corner of Fifth Avenue and 45th Street. Ives, one of the building’s architects, felt that symbols could tell much about a building’s purpose and who worked or lived inside. The golden bees, he said, were placed there to symbolize the traits of industry and thrift. But are many of those walking in midtown Manhattan too busy and industrious to stop and take a good look at the building and its intensely colorful, beautiful panels?

To take a moment or two to gaze at the French Building feels like being warmed by sunshine breaking out in the midst of gray clouds. First there is the building’s color – a rich golden orange with setbacks trimmed by geometric and zigzag patterns of deep red and black, gold and lime green, in the midst of a sea of many huge boxes, in beiges, grays, and browns. And then, at 38 stories tall, it’s topped by multicolored glazed panels with those symbols Ives spoke of – a fiery rust-orange and gold rising sun over cobalt-blue waves, griffins with golden wings, and the head of the god Mercury. Paraphrasing from Ives’ description of the style, I’d call it Mesopotamia meets midtown. [Read more →]

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