Cab Post #1

Just had a great cab and cabbie experience. I got in, told him where I was going, and we were on our way. Not too long after that, he asked me how I was doing. Asked me if I had a busy day tomorrow. Talked about how bad the traffic had been all night. Then we got on to tomorrow, where I mentioned it could rain, which would of course make driving conditions worse. He then turned on the news to hear a weather report, but instead, they were reporting on the state of the Terri Schiavo case (notice the lack of link: I'm tired of the story and the media).

I wasn't going to say anything about it. I'd just let it pass over, and we'd hear some weather. My parents are in town, and I'd like it to not rain for them.

But he started talking about it. I started talking back. By the time we were a few blocks away from my destination, we were in a full-fledged argument that turned into a Bush bash.
Interesting how two very opposite points of view on such a highly politicized Left v. Right battle can end up both hating on our current President. Just goes to show how he's completely abandoned any coherent policy and just seemingly operates on some sort of whim.

I handed my cabbie the fare, told him I hoped his day tomorrow would not be too busy, and we were on our separate ways. A great city interaction.

The new subway system

Anyone who knows me knows I am borderline obsessed with public transit and various modes of transportation. If you are too, then check out the movie Robots. So damn cool. You'll see what I mean. It's clearly the solution to MTA's woes.

Very cool

Great film that communicates the extremes of architecture, and how everything is really just based off the same miniscule elements:

http://www.michalevy.com/gs_download.html

Good choice of music too- "Giant Steps" is known as having one of the most complex and difficult chord progressions, which you can relate to the internal engineering and construction of a building, yet the melody is so simple, just as the surface of much architecture. As the chorus turns into a solo, and Coltrane begins navigating the chord progression, the building process turns from external structure to more complex, internal workings and additions, until the music returns to the chorus, when the structure is stripped back down to what started everything--that one dot, that one note.

Enjoy.

A few of my favorite things...

In studying for my 20th Century Architecture class, a few things I like a lot:

Double height living rooms with matching windows
Ribbon windows
Vertical emphasis
Sweeping horizontal emphasis

That is all.

The 'Hood Game

If you ever study gentrification in a class, chances are you will read about the Lower East Side of New York City. It is just the quintessential example of gentrification, rent gap theory, and the gentrification of the area is still happening.

The Lower East Side, aka Loisaida, was once considered the area from 14th St. south, east of, oh, let's say 4th Avenue. It was inhabited mainly by low-income ethnic families; the latest dominance being Latino families (hence Loisaida). As early as the seventies, artists started living in the area east of 4th Ave. and north of Houston St. By the late eighties, the newly dubbed East Village was the place for everyone hipsters to young Wall St-ers with a lot of disposable income. The realtors and developers, wanting to get away from the bad associations with the name Lower East Side, started using the name East Village to stand opposite to Greenwich/West Village, sort of the anti hoity-toity of downtown.

So last week, when there was an article in the NYTimes about food delivery by neighborhood, I wasn't surprised that a restaurant on Rivington St. at Orchard St. was thrown into the East Village category. This area, during the first East Village renaming, remained the Lower East Side, and still does in most people's minds. But, if the name East Village represents hipster gentrification south of 14th St, then the area south of Houston on the east side of Manhattan is part of the new East Village. The LES is becoming increasingly "tame", just like Avenue B, and immigrants and low income families are being forced out by ever-raising rents.

So if re-naming a neighborhood could be the key to attracting business and renters, how about the area where I currently live, the Financial District? Unlike Loisaida, that name is just too tame. It conveys anonymous glass skyscrapers, a daytime population greater than its nighttime population, and overall boringness. The neighborhood, in a way, has to be de-gentrified to return to its glory I am told it once had. Rents here are inflated because of its proximity to the downtown Central Business District, but the area offers little else. And every new development I see down here is more housing, with the extreme example being Calatrava's 80 South Street Tower. By just adding the type of person that will pay 30 mil+ for such a place will not add to the character of the neighborhood in any way. What "worked" about the East Village is that middle to middle-upper classes infiltrated the neighborhood, and hence brought with them the requirments of wanting to be right in the middle of a great city, with diverse shopping and food possibilities. All that super luxury developments will do is increase the feeling of the Financial District as the anti-Manhattan, reinforcing the suburban aspects of the neighborhood, such as businesses closing by 7pm and keeping late night pedestrian traffic low.