Tag: manhattan

Some Like It Hot

Summer’s here and the time is right… for freezing indoors?

I knew summer was officially upon us as soon as I arrived at work last Monday morning. Two colleagues were perched awkwardly halfway up a stepladder. One was holding a drill, the other a raw piece of lumber, while each used his free hand to grip the large air-conditioner which teetered precariously between the window frame and the sidewalk six floors below. Beads of sweat sprung off both men, as if time was against them and their jobs (or very lives) hung in the balance. Before I knew it the large sash windows around me were slid shut — sssshhhhhhh-clunk! — and with that went my last breath of fresh air until late September. The bulky machine was plugged in and stirred into life, immediately releasing a wheezy drone. Their makeshift installation job having apparently taken hold, my colleagues slumped back in their chairs and purposely mopped their brows, as if by the skins of their teeth they had narrowly averted a minor local disaster.

By all accounts, it got pretty hot in New York this week. I wouldn’t know, since I now spend my days holed up in an air-tight chamber where the temperature hovers at a permanently tolerable sixty-eight degrees. On the other hand, the noise level is now akin to that on a construction site, though the rickety jackhammers cutting up Sixth Avenue are a far lesser disturbance. The aging AC unit’s grating, incessant din is so obtrusive that even on the occasions when I hear the telephone ring, answering it is pointless.

While I understand the importance of feeling comfortable in the workplace, I consider the air-conditioner a far from essential appliance. My office has no direct sunlight and seven windows which, when opened, create a pleasant through-breeze. On an especially hot day we might require, at most, a fan. In the AC’s defense, it is fair to say that I have not broken a sweat in over a week. Instead I now have to bring a sweater to work, an item of clothing that most would agree should no longer be a necessity come July. On occasions when I pick up the AC remote the whole office leaps up to monitor my actions lest I adjust the temperature or — gasp! — switch the thing off entirely. Maybe I’d have a greater degree of tolerance for the air conditioner if this wasn’t the fourth successive summer I’ve had to put up with the decrepit device, which each year is dragged out of hibernation rather than being put out to pasture.

For many of the city’s inhabitants, it seems no sooner has the depressing winter melted away than the sticky summer ahead becomes the target of their seasonal discontent. Most temper this sweat-related stress by cranking up the AC, which of course is designed to help suffering city dwellers beat the heat. Yet while air-conditioning may be a quick fix for this problem, to what extent does it also encourage it?

New Yorkers survived decades of hot summers with just loose clothing and Coca-Cola for comfort. But images of neighborhood kids frolicking under the gushing spray of the fire hydrant down the block are rooted in the middle of the last century, long before the air-conditioner came along to turn living spaces into temperature-controlled unnatural environments. Perhaps people defer to the AC simply because they can’t remember things any other way. Over the last fifty years this oversize, low-tech, energy-inefficient apparatus has become — along with the baseball cap and dip — something that America as a society has convinced itself it cannot live without.

I’m British, therefore hardly in a position to complain about warm weather. In England, the two days out of the year where temperatures might warrant air-conditioning hardly justify the purchase and installation of such an appliance. Elsewhere in Europe it gets scorching hot, but our continental cousins have come up with their own devices — such as wooden shutters and leisurely lunches — to combat the soaring afternoon heat. I’d never actually laid eyes on an air-conditioner until I arrived in New York. My wife and I had one at our old apartment which we took with us to our current place, where it has remained wrapped up in the closet ever since. As a foreigner living in a foreign land, I don’t wish to tell people how to live, but there are several advantages to enjoying your summer AC-free.

Not taking into account the needs of small children and the elderly, the air-conditioner actually presents more health problems than it alleviates. Exposure to temperature extremes can encourage allergies while doing no good whatsoever to skin, eyes or throat. More significantly, habitual AC use prevents any possibility of a natural acclimatization to warm weather, perpetuating the very problem it is intended to relieve. Precisely for this reason people feel the effect of the heat all the more as soon as they step outside — where the air-conditioner continues to make its presence felt in the form of that irritating drip that has a habit of landing on your shoulder instead of the sidewalk.

Unfortunately, this is not the only threat to the well-being of Manhattan’s pedestrians. So prevalent is AC use that it’s not uncommon for store-bought air-conditioners to be installed improperly. A few years ago an upstairs neighbor’s hefty appliance was destroyed after plummeting onto our second floor terrace (which, fortunately, we were not eating dinner on at the time). Last September a 67-year-old man was hospitalized after an AC unit fell six floors before bouncing off a canopy and hitting him in the head as he walked his dog down Second Avenue.

A more long-term concern is the enormous waste generated by continuous and unrestrained air-conditioner use. Studies have proven that the average AC unit wastes 40% of its input energy, while research suggests that air-conditioners use up over 15% of a home’s annual energy consumption. Needless to say, all of this puts a major demand on the electrical power grid. Just today both the AC and my computer abruptly shut down when a colleague attempted to use the office microwave. Luckily I’m not the one paying the Con Edison bill.

When I dared broach this issue with my boss his quipped response (“Go back to f***ing England”) suggested the matter was not open for discussion. It seems air-conditioning has become so deeply embedded in our culture that its necessity cannot even be questioned. Even elevator small-talk has been reduced to an impromptu appreciation of the air-conditioner’s savior-like qualities, and how it has once again rescued us all from an otherwise brutal summer of pure misery. New York’s latest heatwave should come as no surprise to anyone who’s spent a July here before, but if these same people were denied their precious AC I get the feeling they’d collapse not due to heat exhaustion but rather from sheer panic. Just what exactly are they so afraid of?

There are so many elements to the New York summer that make it such a pleasurable experience for the senses: a daily diet of gazpacho and watermelon, intermittent bursts of salsa wafting from an open window, the glistening patina of perspiration on tanned limbs… Like it or not, summer’s here and it’s going to get hot. So what if you sweat a little? It’s nothing a cold beer can’t fix.

Island Life

“One belongs to New York instantly, one belongs to it as much in five minutes as in five years.”
— Thomas Wolfe

Last week, three years after moving to New York, and two and a half years after marrying my lovely American wife, I received my Green Card in the mail. According to the letter which came attached, I am now a Permanent Resident of the United States of America, although to me my new immigrant status still seems excessive. After all, I’ve only ever been to twelve of the fifty states, and generally never leave the island of Manhattan except to return to Europe. As John Lennon once said to an interviewer in reference to his deportation struggle, “Couldn’t they just ban me from Ohio?”

A colleague of mine left me a note which read “Congratulations, official New Yorker!” It was a sweet thought but one which left me confused. I wasn’t a New Yorker, just a Brit who got lucky enough to live here. Naturally, it begged the decidedly abstract question: when does a “New Yorker” become a New Yorker? I’ve heard it said that you’re only a New Yorker after you’ve lived here a certain number of years, but if so, how many? Whatever the answer may be I’m probably a few years away yet, but I’ve certainly feel like I’ve put in enough overtime studying this city to have shaved a few months off my sentence.

I know I have no greater right to be here than anyone else in my boat, but I doubt most new arrivals devote hours to meticulously researching the shooting locations of long-forgotten New York movies. Nor do they embark on a pilgrimage to the Upper West Side to photograph the city’s last remaining phone booths, or spend entire afternoons seeking out Manhattan’s humblest coffee shops on a self-assigned mission in search of the city’s finest egg cream. Nor do they drop $60 on an original 1974 Massimo Vignelli subway map (an exorbitant amount of money for something that was once handed out for free).

While I recognize that not everybody cares about these things (and nor should they), I also believe that a person is obligated to obtain an historical, cultural and social sense of their city, especially their chosen city, because I consider it important to understand where you are and what that means. When I see a group of young people in untucked shirts and trilbies exit a Barbie-pink stretch Hummer on Avenue B, it makes me sad that none of them look up from their iPhones long enough to realize they’re standing feet away from the former home of Charlie Parker. That is, if they know who Charlie Parker is to begin with. Personally I think they should make all would-be New Yorkers take a test. Anyone who fails has to spend six months in New Jersey swotting up on their Newyorkology. That would hopefully weed out all those who consider food trucks to be the height of urban chic.

Edward Hopper once said you get the greatest sense of a place upon arriving or leaving for the first time. I think he was right. To this day I still get a slight twinge the day before I leave New York or when heading to the airport at dawn, as if I begin to appreciate the greatness of the city knowing I’m going to be away from it (if only for a few days). But each time I return to Manhattan after a trip, I get a rush of the same excitement and awe that I felt the first time I got in the back of a yellow cab. Somehow the city looks, smells, even feels different. Streets I walk on every day are seen in a different light. Even the people with whom I jostle for space on the crowded sidewalk suddenly appear exotic and appealing. Could this be the same town I left less than a week earlier? That elusive magical feeling hits me like the first few seconds of “(Love Is Like A) Heatwave” and — at least for the duration of that cab ride — I remember why I always wanted to be here in the first place.

elizabeth lennard 2

Maybe you become a New Yorker the first time New York feels like home. Not long after I moved to the U.S. I took a trip to visit my girlfriend’s family in West Virginia. It was the first time I’d left New York City, and I remember feeling an unexpected sense of blasé familiarity when I landed back at JFK, an airport I had until that moment associated only with extreme excitement and anticipation. Now, it was other places gave me that feeling; New York had become “normal”. The slightly bittersweet compromise but inevitable consequence of living somewhere you’d always dreamed of living is that that very special feeling — that urgent, frantic desire you once felt, perhaps even years before you got here — is lost. Of course, it’s replaced with something arguably much better: the real and more rewarding experiences that come with actually living somewhere.

Colson Whitehead says “You are a New Yorker when what was there before is more real and solid than what is here now.” I can definitely relate to that, and I’m always surprised just to what extent the New York in my head differs from the city I experience everyday in 2010. I confess to occasionally standing on street corners and squinting, trying desperately to recapture the sensation of walking down Broadway for the very first time, or even attempting to recall how I’d imagined New York all those years before I ever arrived. But whenever I start to wonder if this is a city best enjoyed through books and movies or my own imagination, something will jerk my senses suddenly and it all comes flooding back: early evening light on the side of a building, the sudden sight of one of the last Checker cabs bouncing down Seventh Avenue, or the inviting mix of pizza and Martha & The Vandellas floating out onto the sidewalk on a July afternoon. It’s all here, and it’s all real.

My daily commute is punctuated by the clatter of storefronts opening, a siren’s intermittent wail, hosed sidewalks, and, as I stand waiting for lights to change, the urban morning aromas of coffee, perfume and garbage. My heart lifts as I turn onto Irving Place and glimpse the Chrysler Building, half-hidden by summer’s haze or gleaming in the crisp winter sun. On the walk home I always remember to turn and look the wrong way up Lexington Avenue, to glance at all that steel and chrome rendered golden by dusk. Just in case I ever forget what I’m doing here.

In his 1949 essay “Here is New York”, E.B. White eloquently suggests there are three New Yorks, that of the native, the commuter, and the immigrant, claiming “the greatest is the last — the city of final destination, the city that is a goal.” He says the immigrants give the city “passion”, which accounts for its “high-strung disposition, its poetical deportment, its dedication to the arts, and its incomparable achievements.” Certainly New York, more than any other city in the world, owes its very existence — social, cultural, political, even physical — to the steady influx of people who have dared to dream that this could be their home.

Jeremiah Moss says “a New Yorker is someone who longs for New York.” While it’s true that not everybody who lives in New York automatically becomes a New Yorker, by the same token he implies you can be a New Yorker without actually living here. New Yorkers are a unique breed unto themselves, and maybe it’s enough to be one in thought and spirit. Maybe New York really is a state of mind. Maybe you’re a New Yorker when you can’t imagine living anywhere else. In which case, though my adjustment of status was only recently made official, maybe I’ve been a New Yorker all along.
 
 
All artwork by Elizabeth Lennard.

I’ll Take Manhattan

The other day I came across a tatty copy of New York magazine dated June 15, 1987. The cover story was entitled “The Buildings New Yorkers Love to Hate”, a list of the city’s most unpopular architectural landmarks which included the World Trade Center and the former PAN-AM Building. Most remarkable however, were the local listings towards the back of the magazine. The Restaurants section included just three eateries for the whole of Brooklyn. If you’ve been to Brooklyn lately this may seem hard to imagine, though if you were around in the late-eighties probably not quite so much. Indeed, the first time I visited New York eleven years ago it never even occurred to me that I might even venture across the East River.

When they hear the words “New York”, most outsiders think of Manhattan, and who can blame them? After all, when Frank Sinatra sang, “If I can make it there I’ll make it anywhere,” he wasn’t talking about Red Hook. Many visitors mistakenly consider Brooklyn another neighborhood, when it is actually New York’s most populous borough and existed as an independent city until 1898 (today it would still rank as America’s fourth largest). But no-one ever crossed the Atlantic with aspirations of making live hummus in Carroll Gardens.

But suddenly it seems Manhattan is no longer where it’s at. Indeed, if you believe everything you read, you’ll be told that Brooklyn is now everything Manhattan once was: cool, exciting, edgy. In short, the place to be. Before we go on I should make one thing clear: I’m not talking about the Brooklyn of Coney Island or the Dodgers or even Spike Lee; I’m talking about New Brooklyn. New Brooklyn looks a lot like old Brooklyn, except it’s a bit prettier and a lot more expensive. Though New Brooklyn garners plenty of media press attention, nobody does a greater job at promoting New Brooklyn than the New Brooklynites. The New Brooklynites are easy to spot. They are usually white, might have a beard, and definitely don’t speak with a Brooklyn accent. If you meet a New Brooklynite there’s a good chance they will soon tell you how glad they are to be living in Brooklyn, and how you really should be living there too.

manhattan 2

Call me a contrarian, but when someone strongly urges me to do something, my natural inclination is to not do it, even if my original instinct might have told me otherwise. Maybe I’d have moved to Brooklyn by now if it weren’t for all those Brooklyn dwellers recommending I do so as soon as possible. Even my boss (who lives in Brooklyn) will regularly bring up the question as to why I’ve yet to move there, imploring me to “get off the grid”. I sometimes imagine he would enjoy enormous satisfaction were I to transfer out to Ditmas Park, so I too can endure an hour-long commute on the Q train at the cost of $89 a month. Many people who live in Brooklyn still work in the city; by living in Manhattan I currently use the subway only once a week at most, so I’m already saving money plus two hours out of every workday.

Much of the problem regarding the Manhattan-Brooklyn divide is definitely psychological, a syndrome by which I am affected as much as anyone else. I can be in Park Slope almost as quickly as it takes me to reach upper Broadway, yet I wouldn’t think twice about hopping on the 1 train up to Zabar’s for a cinnamon babka. Ask me to schlep out to Brooklyn and I’ll pull out a list of excuses.

Certainly Brooklyn’s rapid, ongoing transformation and continuing cultural divergence from Manhattan is arguably one of New York’s most significant changes of the last twenty years. There are several factors which New Brooklynites will always cite when discussing the advantages to their borough. The first usually concerns the lower overall cost of living. Yet while a railroad apartment in Bushwick may be considerably cheaper than a two-bedroom in the West Village, as New Brooklyn continues to generate hype so its rents in the more desirable (and exclusive) neighborhoods become comparable to those in Manhattan.

Such areas are also epicenters of Hipsterdom, an alarmingly unimaginative subculture whose primary concern is appropriating aspects of bygone eras and passing them off as its own. Skinny jeans, horn-rimmed glasses, plaid shirts and ironic facial hair: these are the cornerstones of the young New Brooklynite’s carefully cultivated wardrobe, items which must be worn at all times with the nonchalant attitude of someone who isn’t really trying. It also helps if you have some tattoos (you can almost guarantee that most of these people had very dull parents). Most hipsters look like they haven’t seen a gym — or the sun for that matter — since they left their altogether drearier hometowns (which to be fair probably wasn’t all that long ago).

Manifesting itself through music, fashion, even food, New Brooklyn has in recent years developed its own brand of taste and style that often appears a deliberate antithesis to Manhattan’s urban brashness and cutting-edge commercialism. Small businesses label their products as hand-crafted, home-made, organic or artisanal, in an attempt to differentiate themselves from the giant, soulless corporations which proliferate across the river. Yet the sheer number of like businesses which have cropped up over the last couple of years only diminishes their collective value. Suddenly it seems, every kid in Williamsburg is making Prohibition-style soda while attempting to grow a moustache. The appropriation of this down-home folksiness is clearly an attempt to lend weight to fleeting projects by referencing something real. In this sense Brooklyn is the crafts to Manhattan’s Arts. But as it continues to bemoan Manhattan’s so-called superficiality New Brooklyn has unwittingly created its own culture which is no less manufactured. At least Manhattan isn’t bullshitting anybody, and I’ll take an egg cream and a tuna melt any day over a gluten-free vegan cupcake.

I don’t wish to suggest for a minute that most of those who love Brooklyn aren’t genuinely happy living there, or that everyone should want to live in Manhattan or feel unhappy if they are not. Manhattan is definitely not for everyone, and of course, there is nothing inherently wrong with eating local or buying homemade, except for the holier-than-thou attitude that too often accompanies these ideas and lifestyle. Like the vegetarian who pulls a face when you order steak, the worst kind of New Brooklynite takes on an air of tremendous self-righteousness when you confess to enjoying the simplest of pleasures, as if drinking non-microbrewery beer could jeopardize your friendship. New Brooklynites’ constant praising of their borough can sometimes come off as obsessive, and in extreme cases it seems like an inverse reaction to not living in Manhattan, as if they are grappling with some trauma. Maybe they’re irked by Manhattan’s history of condescension towards the “outer boroughs”. Or maybe the very act of living in Prospect Heights gives them a warm fuzzy feeling of satisfaction akin to donating money to Africa or buying a T-shirt to benefit Haitian earthquake victims.

* * *

Of course, these phenomena are by no means exclusive to New Brooklyn’s population, but rather representative of the white, middle-class youth of America. Indeed, we are already witnessing the commodification of “New Brooklyn” as it enters the corporate mainstream. Take for instance the common brand of twee, faux-naïve songs which now permeate movie trailers and national television commercials for some of America’s biggest companies. In this week’s New York magazine (which incidentally lists nine restaurants in Williamsburg alone), Adam Sternbergh identifies every large city in the Western world as having its own Brooklyn, specifically a neighborhood with “nice blocks, good restaurants, and beards.” That the new Brooklyn can be defined so succinctly conveys everything about its limitations and its arch self-awareness. New Brooklyn, its look and sound, is now being used to sell everything from Japanese hybrids to portable e-book readers. Perhaps the most significant event in this trend was the launch of a “Brooklyn-themed” bar/restaurant set to open this autumn in — you guessed it — Manhattan.

manhattan 3

That there are people who feel the need to define “New Brooklyn” — through its cuisine of all things, and on Manhattan turf — says a lot about the borough’s pervading complex of inferiority. It’s also in complete contrasts to the island’s greatest strength of total defiance and utter indifference. Manhattan cannot be tamed, and somehow manages to resist the waves of social or economic change. Sternbergh argues that it’s Brooklyn’s supposed positive qualities which make it so obnoxious, and that the same phenomenon could never happen with Manhattan because “they only ever made one Chrysler Building.” Manhattan could never become a brand because its brand is too vast, too diverse and far-reaching, Movies, art, jazz, tourism: these are things that are too beloved and universal to be considered “cool” anymore.

Though separated by a small body of water called the East River, Manhattan and Brooklyn can at times appear like two worlds in the same city, of which their inhabitants are two very different species. From its breathtaking verticality to its teeming street life, Manhattan, more so than any other major city, is a direct result of its geography. While Brooklyn and Queens are still home to some of New York’s largest ethnic communities, Manhattan’s cosmopolitan population is forced to exist on a narrow twelve-by-two-mile island. This tremendous concentration of people, their different cultures and languages, is what gives the city its unique, relentless energy, and in extreme cases can breed bouts of aggression or creativity, sometimes in the same breath. It’s these immovable confines which have helped make self-absorption and ambition two of the most common traits among Manhattanites — without space to move outwards, the city can only look inwards and upwards.

All of this has enabled Manhattan’s inhabitants to consistently defy categorization and stereotype as they go about their daily lives. They rarely question their presence on the island — many seem to live in a self-imposed exile of sorts, and are often unable to imagine themselves anywhere else. Though often perceived as neurotic or narcissistic, the truest Manhattanite is a model of fierce independence, flagrant individuality and unwavering positivity. To stroll the city streets is to experience a warm, unspoken understanding — a camaraderie among strangers, an unlikely mutual respect between all those who share a sidewalk.

Yet for many Manhattanites, moving to Brooklyn is seen almost as an urban rite of passage, an inevitable step in the life of a New Yorker as young adulthood gives way to parenthood, and that Chelsea studio suddenly becomes untenable. But for now, my favorite reason to visit Brooklyn is the ride home as the N train trundles over the Brooklyn Bridge. Downtown skyscrapers soar into view, my pulse quickens and I am thrilled at the thought of my apartment nestled hidden somewhere within all of that brick and concrete. Why would I want to be anywhere else? Perhaps Tom Waits put it best when he was asked to describe New York. “Well, it’s like a big ship,” he said. “And the water’s on fire.” I’m not quite ready to jump ship just yet.
 
 
 
Film stills from “Manhattan”, 1979 (United Artists).

Empire State of Mind

New York said goodbye to an icon this weekend. On May 14 the Empire Diner closed its doors for the last time — or rather, the first time, since this Chelsea landmark had until last Saturday night been serving locals and tourists, artists and cops, partygoers and insomniacs 24 hours a day since it opened in its current incarnation thirty-four years ago. In 1976, the diner lay closed and abandoned when it was purchased by three young New Yorkers — Jack Doenias, Carl Laanes, and Richard Ruskay — who transformed the Tenth Avenue eatery into the self-proclaimed “Hippest Diner on Earth.” The Empire Diner’s success was a prime example of the neighborhood’s renaissance, as galleries, hotels and restaurants began to pop up between the gas stations and auto parts stores which had until then dominated the landscape.

As a child growing up in the UK, I probably first caught glimpse of the Empire Diner during the opening shots of Woody Allen’s Manhattan. Later, it also made an appearance in Home Alone 2: Lost In New York, but by that time I was already all-too familiar, having gazed many times at the cover of the Tom Waits LP Asylum Years. Released in 1986, this double-album compilation featured John Baeder’s painting of the Empire Diner on its front cover. It was an appropriate choice of artwork for a Tom Waits record: the man had made a career of verbalizing bittersweet tales of urban folly to anyone who’d listen, like some down-and-out character permanently slumped at the end of the counter. Whether it was the image of the diner glistening in the Manhattan night, or Waits’ midnight rambles, I knew I had to check this place out for myself.

Years later, after moving to New York, I finally got my chance. It was a cold, November evening, and I’d arrived from the Theater District where I’d been volunteering at a contemporary dance performance. Instantly recognizable from the outside by its chrome exterior and giant “EAT” sign, inside the diner was altogether less familiar. On entering I was surprised to be greeted by a calm hush, and certainly not the usual hustle-bustle which characterizes many open-all-hours places. Instead, people spoke in soft voices and on the piano someone was playing “Song For You” by Leon Russell, making the Empire Diner the first and so far only diner I’ve ever seen with a live pianist. I sat down at the polished black counter, ordered, and gazed at the yellow cabs silently gliding up Tenth Avenue. I immediately wrote about my experience on my blog (now defunct), soon after which a certain Eileen Levinson wrote to me thanking me for my kind words. I returned with my wife the night of my twenty-ninth birthday: the overtly camp staff was hilarious and delightful. I left with a t-shirt with the “EAT” mantra emblazoned across the back. When my parents came to visit, they insisted we go to the Empire Diner for burgers.

The Empire Diner’s iconic status continued to be maintained: in March a digital image of the restaurant — drawn using an iPhone app by Portuguese artist Jorge Colombo — appeared on the cover of The New Yorker. So it was with much surprise that I learned of the imminent closure less than a month later. As soon as I heard the news I wrote to the owners, Renate Gonzalez and Mitchell Woo, expressing my shock and sadness. Renate immediately responded inviting me to the official closing party on Sunday afternoon. Arriving for the last time, I found a relaxed crowd settled on patio furniture clustered outside the restaurant, whose famous chrome glistened in the late-afternoon sun. Inside the diner, the atmosphere was decidedly more raucous, as the diner’s most flamboyant followers got down to a soundtrack of eighties club hits. There was something quite sad about seeing the last remaining survivors of a city’s much-flaunted party scene enjoying a final dance on a Sunday afternoon. This may have only been the closing of a restaurant, but what does it say about New York?

* * *

It seems not a week goes by that New York City doesn’t say goodbye to another family-run business or cherished establishment. Most of these closures go unnoticed by many, although certain blogs, such as EV Grieve and Jeremiah’s Vanishing New York, manage to meticulously document these aspects of the city’s transformation. While I strongly sympathize with the aforementioned bloggers common stance, I personally think nostalgia can be a dangerous thing, and I’m always cautious about extolling “the good old days”. After all, a lot of people were glad to see the back of them. As one commentator pointed out, “People who hate the new Times Square probably were never mugged in the old one in 1989.”

A city must always keep evolving, and nowhere is reinvention more possible than in New York. But what about when your favorite coffee shop is converted into a Starbucks? Or when the corner deli where you’ve been buying milk for twenty years is suddenly shuttered, only to reopen serving only something the kids are calling Fro-Yo? Or when an entire historic block is razed and an eco-indulgent glass condo is built in its place? I’m not alone in feeling that New York, once just a trendy, rebellious cousin to the conservative USA, is becoming victim to the steady encroachment of corporate America. Of course, this phenomenon exists the world over and is evident elsewhere — look at the state of popular music or sports — but what’s most alarming is the rapidity with which such changes occur in this millennium, particularly in a fast-paced commercial capital like New York.

New York is a city of immigrants, one which has always been driven by the arrival of new people. But in recent years, New York, in presenting itself as a desirable place to live, has gone out of its way to invite the wrong kind of transplant: a sort of suburban-urbanite, one who associates the city not with history or culture, or even crime, but with luxury and status. These are exactly the kind of people who not too long ago would have turned up their noses at Manhattan: too dirty, too dangerous, too cold. They’re the kind of people who don’t know what an egg cream is and aren’t about to try one. Sadly it seems the latest generation of adults has scant concept of a New York, or a world, pre-internet, pre-Carrie Bradshaw. I’ve met people not much younger than myself who didn’t know what the Twin Towers were until they watched them fall on TV on 9/11. If these people are the future of New York it’s not hard to understand why certain long-standing businesses are failing.

Ms. Gonzalez and Mr. Woo, while clearly saddened to be leaving what has been their place of work for the over three decades, remain philosophical. They plan to bring the Empire experience abroad and are currently looking for a future site for the diner. It wouldn’t be the first time a landmark eatery has up and left town, silently in the dead of night. The Moondance Diner closed in 2006 and reappeared somewhere in Wyoming. Last year, the Cheyenne Diner was closed, dismantled and rebuilt down in Alabama. So look out for the Empire Diner in a town near you. As for New York, like the day they decided to plant deckchairs in the middle of Times Square, it’s just another small step towards suburbia. The hippest city on earth just got a little less hip.

Still Making Sense

When David Byrne took to the stage to greet the crowd in Brooklyn last night, he was accompanied by an unusual accessory. Not a guitar, nor even a tape recorder containing a drum machine backing track of “Psycho Killer”. Instead, the former Talking Head wheeled out a white bicycle, which had apparently been designed to match his outfit (and hair). While many of the 27,000 who’d crammed into Prospect Park had taken the subway to attend the free concert, Byrne, now 57, explained how he’d simply ridden his bike across the river. It was a typically quirky introduction to the evening from a man who in recent years has become as active in his advocacy of two-wheel travel as in making music. He even designed a series of bike racks which are dotted around New York City.

Things didn’t get any less predictably unexpected once the music started. The set was billed as focusing solely on Byrne’s long-term, on-off-on again collaborations with Brian Eno, who produced a trio of early Talking Heads albums: More Songs About Buildings and Food (1978), Fear of Music (1979) and Remain In Light (1980). In 1981 Byrne and Eno made the experimental record My Life in The Bush of Ghosts, their last project until last year’s Everything That Happens Will Happen Today, from which the evening’s opening number was plucked. Unfortunately, the song, “Strange Overtures”, is lost amid a half-baked sound which struggles to generate much interest. Initially disturbed, I can only assume that this was a technical hitch, as shortly afterwards the pulsating Afro-beats and Dadaist chants of “I Zimbra” float effortlessly into the warm air, setting the tone for the rest of the evening.

Though often inaccurately bunched together with punk and post-punk acts due to regular appearances at the same venues, Talking Heads were really a no-wave group, whose interest (in the early days at least) lay firmly in the underground cultures of avant-garde art and New York’s club scene. Combine this with Byrne’s obsessive fascination for foreign rhythms, stream-of-consciousness lyrics and quizzical observations about the rest of the country, and one has arguably the quintessential New York baby-boomer band: wordy, witty, worldly, but not afraid to shut up and get down when the music takes them. The band’s distinctive sound seems to have been spawned by the city’s streets on a hot July day, when Manhattan could be mistaken for Calcutta. No song captures the oppressive rhythm of a New York summer like “Born Under Punches (And The Heat Goes On)”, which always sounds like it was written and recorded in a jungle (made of trees or concrete). Tonight the song hangs in the thick air and seems to drip like dew off sticky humid leaves.

This hypnotic track is immediately followed by “Once in a Lifetime”, perhaps Byrne’s best-known composition. The song has gone a long way in helping seal Talking Heads’ position as the most enduring and influential band of the American New Wave and Byrne as rock’s ultimate everyman anti-hero. Lyrically, both this and the next song, “Life During Wartime”, have long-since seeped into the realms public consciousness: “You may find yourself behind the wheel of a large automobile…”, “This ain’t no party, this ain’t no disco…” Almost thirty years after he wrote it, when Byrne asks, “Well, how did I get here?”, I still wonder if he’s figured out an answer.

When I saw Byrne seven years ago on a similar summer evening in Leicester, he was accompanied by a group of young singers he’d met at a high school. Tonight he’s backed by a troupe of hyperactive dancers and gymnasts, whose back-flips and leapfrogs somehow manage not to distract but to enhance the musical experience. For the most part Byrne remains passive to their performance, as if unaware of their presence.

Things slow down for “Heaven”, which Byrne sings with soaring concentration. The careful choreography (even Byrne’s Stratocaster is off-white) is reminiscent of the Stop Making Sense tour, captured so memorably by filmmaker Jonathan Demme in what is still perhaps the greatest concert movie of that decade. That feature leaned heavily on Speaking In Tongues (1983), Talking Heads’ first record produced without Brian Eno since their debut LP in 1977. Likewise tonight’s curated set-list finds no room for the radio-friendly material from later self-produced albums Little Creatures (1985), True Stories (1986) or Naked (1988).

For the encore Byrne is joined on-stage by percussionist Steve Scales, whose inclusion in the expanded Talking Heads band helped define the funky sound of the live albums The Name Of This Band Is Talking Heads (1981) and Stop Making Sense (1984). There’d be no dusting off of the big suit tonight, but nobody questions Byrne when he reappears sporting a white tutu pulled up over his original outfit. “Take Me To The River” is a rare case of a covered song improving on the original, and it belongs as much to Byrne as it does to Al Green now, while “Burning Down The House” always does exactly that. Both songs demonstrate Byrne’s long-standing interest in gospel music and religion-induced performance.

At show’s end David Byrne disciples young and old (this was the most family-friendly concert I have attended) filtered off into the streets and down into the subway, their bodies still jerking to Byrne’s rare brand of spasmodic rhythms. By all accounts Byrne hopped back over the bridge on his bike. I bet he was home before we were.


David Byrne, Prospect Park Bandshell, Brooklyn — June 8, 2009

Strange Overtones
I Zimbra
One Fine Day
Help Me Somebody
Houses In Motion
My Big Nurse
My Big Hands (Fall Through The Cracks)
Heaven
Moonlight In Glory
Life Is Long
Crosseyed and Painless
Born Under Punches (And The Heat Goes On)
Once In A Lifetime
Life During Wartime
I Feel My Stuff

Encore 1
Take Me To The River
The Great Curve

Encore 2
Air
Burning Down The House

Encore 3
Everything That Happens