Thursday, May 18, 2006
Keeping eyes and ears open – 16th Street, Subway, Raymond Jacobs’s book
LOOKING AHEAD by Wally Dobelis
It was 9:15 AM, and the second-period kids on corner of 3rd Avenue and 16th Street were doing their tribal greeting rites – knocking fists, pulling on the baggy pants and leaping – to the shrieks and street language comments from their mates, about as fierce as heard in the Threepenny Opera’s current production (new translation by Wallace Shawn) at the Roundabout. Washington Irving High School has some rules that keep their students off the school’s sidewalk at certain times, to the groans of the neighborhood. The street is crowded – with social service clients from the Human Resource building across Irving Place, with the 800 polite blue-gowned students from the Sanford-Brown Institute (est.1977), where you can learn to be a medical technician (dark blue) or ultra-sound person (light blue). To add to the color scheme, there are the red-uniformed Union Square partnership workers pushing carts and clearing sidewalks of refuse.
Walking by WIHS is always interesting, one sees school administration at work. One or two years ago there were cartons of discarded CRT screens, more than a hundred, and last Spring they were dumping dozens of copies of a modern poetry anthology by John Malcolm Brinin (d. 1998) late founder and coordinator of the 92nd St Y poetry sessions. 1970s work, excellent reading.
Along the route, I picked up two freebee papers, but the Lexington Avenue train was packed, people were unable to read, except for a young woman, holding up the Four Trials by John Edwards, the 2004 Presidential candidate, and a tall student, doomed to staring at the Letters to the Editor page of his folded-to-quarters NYTimes copy. NYPost and Daily News were also noted, unread.
I had positioned myself in the train with an exit strategy to leave at the rotating gate leading to Wall Street – the other alternative is through the turnstiles, leading to Exchange Place. The travelers’ strategy depends on weather; in winter, when the Wall Street slope might be icy, one goes to Exchange Place, with its steps. New Yorkers could teach Rumsfeld something about exit planning.
Walking down Exchange Place, the hazard is at crossing Broad Street, with the 15 Broad Building, 42-story former JPMorgan headquarters, on the NE corner. Bedecked in huge ribbons proclaiming Downtownbystarck (Philippe Starck, the architect of Ian Schrager’s hotels), this Al Leviev –Boymelgreen structure has been a neighborhood sore for three years, first because the Lathers Union put on huge demonstrations, with a 10-ft grey rat sculpture shipped in every morning, and people with flyers and loudspeakers accusing the builder pair of union-busting, profiteering, shameful landlord activities and worse. On some days the picket line, easily 20+ strong (eventually confined behind barricades) brought in shrill whistles.
The cacophony was unbearable, though not hazardous to one’s health, unlike the blue haze and building odors emanated during the long months of demolition. Exchange Place was never closed as hazardous, despite the notices, advising local people to call 311 who would connect the complainant to Environmental people, who took the complaints and never called back, I’m told. On many occasions, for months, we had to take a circuitous route via Beaver St to get to Hanover Square.
Today the haze was away – it still continues, sporadically, due to the Diesel fumes from delivery trucks. Both cops and private security people, when asked, express health concerns – but a job is a job, that’s the hazards we take.
Reaching Hanover Square, there was a leggy blonde in modest shorts walking a dog, probably from 45 Wall, the yuppie residence building amid the monstrous
towers. The pooch looked vaguely familiar, reminding me of the dog chronicled in T&V for the past several weeks, but I did not ask any questions. And so to work.
The New York of Raymond Jacobs. A note in the Paper of Record reminded me of a new book of photographs by the late Ray Jacobs, who brought to East 17th Street and the US a phenomenon called Earth Shoe. He was also a noted photographer, featured in Edward Steichen’s seminal MOMA exhibit, The Family of Man. His widow Eleanor has assembled an oversize book of photographs, Raymond Jacobs; My New York (Pointed Leaf, $75), with 95 black-and-white pictures stemming back to the Eisenhower years, scenes of the Lower East Side, Coney Island, Harlem, jazz, and the art world, a strong reminder, in their deceptive artlessness, of who we once were. Taken with simple equipment and blown up beyond the expectations of the camera and film, they have a Cartier –Bresson quality that transcends the mundane subjects. This is an inspired book.
Always an artist although supplementing his freelance income as a fur cutter, Raymond Jacobs turned shoe impresario when the family discovered Kalso Minus-Heel shoes in Denmark in 1969, and became their distributors in the US, expanding the 17th Street facility into 135 stores nation-wide, and leaving it in 1977, to devote full time to art.
Another cheerup suggestion – visit our parks. This week’s special – see the white lilacs in Madison Square Park.
It was 9:15 AM, and the second-period kids on corner of 3rd Avenue and 16th Street were doing their tribal greeting rites – knocking fists, pulling on the baggy pants and leaping – to the shrieks and street language comments from their mates, about as fierce as heard in the Threepenny Opera’s current production (new translation by Wallace Shawn) at the Roundabout. Washington Irving High School has some rules that keep their students off the school’s sidewalk at certain times, to the groans of the neighborhood. The street is crowded – with social service clients from the Human Resource building across Irving Place, with the 800 polite blue-gowned students from the Sanford-Brown Institute (est.1977), where you can learn to be a medical technician (dark blue) or ultra-sound person (light blue). To add to the color scheme, there are the red-uniformed Union Square partnership workers pushing carts and clearing sidewalks of refuse.
Walking by WIHS is always interesting, one sees school administration at work. One or two years ago there were cartons of discarded CRT screens, more than a hundred, and last Spring they were dumping dozens of copies of a modern poetry anthology by John Malcolm Brinin (d. 1998) late founder and coordinator of the 92nd St Y poetry sessions. 1970s work, excellent reading.
Along the route, I picked up two freebee papers, but the Lexington Avenue train was packed, people were unable to read, except for a young woman, holding up the Four Trials by John Edwards, the 2004 Presidential candidate, and a tall student, doomed to staring at the Letters to the Editor page of his folded-to-quarters NYTimes copy. NYPost and Daily News were also noted, unread.
I had positioned myself in the train with an exit strategy to leave at the rotating gate leading to Wall Street – the other alternative is through the turnstiles, leading to Exchange Place. The travelers’ strategy depends on weather; in winter, when the Wall Street slope might be icy, one goes to Exchange Place, with its steps. New Yorkers could teach Rumsfeld something about exit planning.
Walking down Exchange Place, the hazard is at crossing Broad Street, with the 15 Broad Building, 42-story former JPMorgan headquarters, on the NE corner. Bedecked in huge ribbons proclaiming Downtownbystarck (Philippe Starck, the architect of Ian Schrager’s hotels), this Al Leviev –Boymelgreen structure has been a neighborhood sore for three years, first because the Lathers Union put on huge demonstrations, with a 10-ft grey rat sculpture shipped in every morning, and people with flyers and loudspeakers accusing the builder pair of union-busting, profiteering, shameful landlord activities and worse. On some days the picket line, easily 20+ strong (eventually confined behind barricades) brought in shrill whistles.
The cacophony was unbearable, though not hazardous to one’s health, unlike the blue haze and building odors emanated during the long months of demolition. Exchange Place was never closed as hazardous, despite the notices, advising local people to call 311 who would connect the complainant to Environmental people, who took the complaints and never called back, I’m told. On many occasions, for months, we had to take a circuitous route via Beaver St to get to Hanover Square.
Today the haze was away – it still continues, sporadically, due to the Diesel fumes from delivery trucks. Both cops and private security people, when asked, express health concerns – but a job is a job, that’s the hazards we take.
Reaching Hanover Square, there was a leggy blonde in modest shorts walking a dog, probably from 45 Wall, the yuppie residence building amid the monstrous
towers. The pooch looked vaguely familiar, reminding me of the dog chronicled in T&V for the past several weeks, but I did not ask any questions. And so to work.
The New York of Raymond Jacobs. A note in the Paper of Record reminded me of a new book of photographs by the late Ray Jacobs, who brought to East 17th Street and the US a phenomenon called Earth Shoe. He was also a noted photographer, featured in Edward Steichen’s seminal MOMA exhibit, The Family of Man. His widow Eleanor has assembled an oversize book of photographs, Raymond Jacobs; My New York (Pointed Leaf, $75), with 95 black-and-white pictures stemming back to the Eisenhower years, scenes of the Lower East Side, Coney Island, Harlem, jazz, and the art world, a strong reminder, in their deceptive artlessness, of who we once were. Taken with simple equipment and blown up beyond the expectations of the camera and film, they have a Cartier –Bresson quality that transcends the mundane subjects. This is an inspired book.
Always an artist although supplementing his freelance income as a fur cutter, Raymond Jacobs turned shoe impresario when the family discovered Kalso Minus-Heel shoes in Denmark in 1969, and became their distributors in the US, expanding the 17th Street facility into 135 stores nation-wide, and leaving it in 1977, to devote full time to art.
Another cheerup suggestion – visit our parks. This week’s special – see the white lilacs in Madison Square Park.
# posted by Wally Dobelis @ 7:17 PM 
