jamesmith

There’s lovely things about the city, of course. I don’t spend anywhere near as much time as I should in Prospect Park, for instance. Married woman at the bar was telling me about the city zoos, how she’s a member of all of them. And it hit me: I’ve never been to the Prospect Park Zoo, and that seems like a mistake to be corrected.

So there’s that and there’s the bridge and there’s Fort Greene, which reminds me of D.C. somehow. I don’t miss D.C. at all, come to think. But that is an objectively pretty city, and where I am is not. Parts of NYC are gorgeous, no doubt; but some of the things I think are beautiful are… debatable. Maybe I do miss trees that look like trees and not 70’s-era public art, yeah. Still, when I walk around with my crap camphone I’m most likely to take pictures like this:

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There’s this thing that happens when you move to Brooklyn– I don’t think the natives have it. But people who come here, to live, we get kind of obsessed with things like the bridges, the park. I have this thing for brownstones. I’m no expert on architecture, even though I read about it a lot. I’m too lazy to be academic about it. I don’t know much about architects, historical periods. But I can’t stop thinking about how the shape of a building pushes people around, informs our behaviors. We hide history all over the place. In our language, for instance. And in our buildings. It’s a sad thing to lose even the bad ones, because they’re signposts of where we were, and what we were thinking about when we were there.

Did you know Brooklyn was called the “borough of churches?” See, there, I’m obsessing again.


Broken Angel copyright ma66iema66
DAVE CHAPPELLE’S BLOCK PARTY takes place in front of a house called the Broken Angel. The wikipedia entry is embarrassing, but it’s got useful links to articles about the house. It’s a beautiful building. Or, it was. They’re tearing it down now. Firemen wouldn’t risk going up it in a blaze. It was, obviously, always a firetrap. But they’ve only closed it recently, and evicted the Woods, who built a life together turning their home into art. It’s not hard to tie the City’s action to simultaneous gentrification around here. That word’s got Kanye-level baggage hanging off it, but it’s the only one to use. Having used it, though, I’ve got to also admit that I am really not missing the burnt-out cars and the guys shooting up in the stairwell.

That’s the cognitive dissonance of the Brooklyn transplant. And it’s the buildings where this conflict most visibly plays out. The small shop that became a chain store. The storefront church that became a boutique. The tree-lined blocks that remind of Sesame Street or the Cosby Show. Like Chicago does Politics better than your moms, New York does Real Estate.

I wondered about the points of overlap between the sort of community that can live with something like the Broken Angel, and the sort that needs to tear it down. If buildings really do keep our history, and shape the way we live, then “What are you going to build?” is a question you fight for the right to answer.