Jessica's blog

MovingFor me this course came as kind of a culmination of my time spent at Gallatin, especially as I begin prepare for graduation. Throughout the past four years, I have delved into the design and history of places, urban planning, the sociology of urbanites, and even ethnographic studies of place. My studies in the past have always personal in a sense, as could always relate what I learned to my own life, yet it was this course that allowed me to reflect, through the medium of a blog, on all of my collected knowledge through my own experiences of place, tying in my education and travel experience. In looking back over my past blogs, I realized how many verying places I have grown to identify with throughout my college experience, and this has been especially nostalgiac for me to reflect on as am about to begin making a new place for myself, moving from the dorm I have lived in for the past three years, at that intersection of Broome and Center, up to 10th Street and Avenue C, close by to the garden I wrote about. The process of making place is both exciting and stressful for me, as I pack up all my belongings only to bring them 15 blocks away to be rearranged in a new space with new people. I think what sticks most in my mind, however, is that in this class we seem to have always gravitated towards the idea that it is the people and our belongings that make the places we identify with. Each thing I pack up brings back memories, from the blanket I always take with me to central park that used to be my table cloth, to the beer glass I brought back from my study abroad time in Berlin, to the picture of my family and I in Paris that I have brought with me everywhere I have lived since. As we have all moved around, traveled, etc. it seems that we have most connected with the things and individuals that we have shared experiences with, and that have shaped our memories. So as I move forward that is what I will take will me in order to build this new sense of place, with new roommates and new experiences to come, merging both as I create a new identify for myself, no longer a student.

Note: Image from http://blogs.townonline.com/campolitics/wp-content/uploads/2008/12/movin... (could not get link to work on image...)

How did I come up with the project? How did the project change/evolve?

I knew I wanted to do a project on urban gardening in New York City as I think gardens are an essential element to the fabric of neighborhoods and communities and information about the history of urban gardens and the struggle to sustain these gardens is scarce. The project started as a research paper on land rights policy of gardening in New York, but as I began to speak to people and do research, the piece evolved into a personal essay about one garden in particular—the 6th Street and Avenue B Garden.

What was I trying to say with the project?

I was trying to paint a picture of the importance of this particular garden to its community through my own relationship to it, my friends’ knowledge and experiences, and through its history. I also wanted the story to act as an example of the greater gardening movement to help shed light on why community gardens are vital to sustaining the health of a neighborhood, from forming childhood place memories to contributing to the beauty of the streets. I wanted to paint a picture of a garden as a work of art and as a product of people’s care and attention. I also thought it was important to make people aware of the stories behind this garden as we often take these spaces for granted and don’t ask questions about how they are operated and why they exist.

How long did I work on the piece?

The final written portion of the piece only took me a few days, however the process of getting there took much longer as my drafts progressed from factual research to a personalized and anecdotal account. I went to the garden three times while writing the piece.

What artistic works influenced me? How does the project relate to specifics in the readings?

Crowded day at Central ParkLast weekend, my friend and I decided to take an adventure up to Central Park, the annual trek up on the 6 train us downtowners take at the very first sign of spring. As we approached the park, I could feel the anticipation and anxiety growing, every block closer the sidewalks seemed to get a little more crowded, until the greenery emerged in our view and what we already knew became obvious—it was on. Our pace quickened as we entered the park around 68th street, and we danced and skirted through the crowds, half running through the family’s with strollers while frantically searching the hills for the perfect spot. Up and around, over and under, trial and error, we finally saw it emerge, that perfect tuff of grass at the highest spot on a hill, perfectly space so as not to be too close to anyone else, especially out of range of those kids throwing the Frisbee. Ironically, after we spread our blankets and nestled in, I opened Whitehead’s book Colossus of New York. In his short chapter on Central Park describes the chaos of our quest for a peaceful afternoon almost exactly. “Where to sit, where to sit. Our whole future depends on it” (38), he chants. Whitehead’s take on the unique experience of sitting in a park in New York rang very true to me. He lyrically describes the hunt for the best spot, the bombarding sights and sounds our brain must process as we seek the solace of the trees, and even the overly apparent scarcity of this green, with over half the parks green hills sectioned off with fences—no trespassing. We are so starved for peaceful greenery and nature in New York that even going to the park is a stressful and competitive experience. And a great deal of it we aren’t even allowed to make us of. This became even more evident to me after my trip to San Francisco this weekend, where we stumbled through the green lawns of public parks every ten minutes to get to the street on the other side. Yet there, there was no fenced off space or overly manicured areas, it was just simple lawns like our back yard, where people sat barbequing, playing games, singing and playing music, even dancing or simply sun bathing, with at least a twenty foot radius of open space around them if they wanted! For us New Yorkers, this is unheard of. Yet for some reason, I couldn’t wait to get home and find that perfect spot again in the park…

My Bottle TreeIn his short stories “Bags in Trees” and “Bags in Trees II”, Ian Frazier writes about the phenomenon of plastic bags stuck in trees around Brooklyn. He describes the way in which their color changes over time, and lists in detail the balloons and other “stuff” that gets stuck up in the trees. In “Bags in Trees II”, he describes his attempts with a friend to take down the bags with an 8 food aluminum rod, only to find new bags stuck up there the next day, stating, “I did not mention one fact: I don’t like plastic bags stuck in trees” (69). While musing on the common sight of bags stuck in trees on windy days in New York, recalling the romanticized video in the film “American Beauty”, of an artsy bag blowing in the wind, I remembered an art piece I once helped a friend with called a bottle tree. The bottle tree is still a common sight in the South, though this ancient folk tradition is practiced less frequently now. The tradition originated in the Congo region of Africa, where glass was hung on huts and trees to ward off evil spirits. The process involved removing all of the foliage from the tree and placing it in the yard outside of one’s living space; then, the bare branches were covered in colorful glass to attract any evil spirits that tried to enter. another angle...According to the tradition, the spirits become so captivated by the beauty of the sunlight against the glass that they become trapped in the bottles and thus can no longer harm the inhabitants of the house. In our own version of this bottle tree, we collected colorful beer and wine bottle from the recycle and arranged them on the branches of a barren tree on the sidewalk outside our dorm on 5th Avenue, taking pictures of the light catching on them. I remember people walking by looking at us like we were crazy, and neighbors checking in to make sure we would remove the bottles immediately as soon as we were done. The process of making a bottle tree in New York City struck me as similar to Frazier’s experience with bags in trees, as it was such an unappealing and intrusive sight to him, seemingly destructing his sense of place and the conditions of his environment, just as it was to the people walking by us on 5th Avenue and 10th Street. The idea of putting bottles or “stuff” in trees however was once essential to people’s sense of place and place-making in this ancient folk tradition, a welcome sight used to protect one from intruders, not as an intrusion itself.

Babelplatz, Berlin, Book Burning MemorialWhat struck me most about Paul Auster’s “City of Glass” was how absent the “city” seemed to be from the narrative itself. Especially for a book titled as Volume One of “The New York Trilogy”, an anthology that based on the title would seemingly be very rooted in place, Auster story could really take place in any city. Perhaps this is where the title comes from, a city of glass implying a see-through city, one without distinctive character or feeling. It isn’t until addresses and street names are included that you gain a sense of where the book is located, yet the romantic and nostalgic descriptions of New York that are found so commonly in literature about the city are missing here. As a resident of the city, I got excited during the chapter where Quinn, the protagonist, takes a long walk down Manhattan, making his way down to Washington Square and Canal Street and back up through Union Square. Though it is only because I myself can evoke an image of these places in my mind that I was able to conjure up a sense of the backdrop for the mystery, but for most readers this would not be possible. Even during Quinn’s walks where he is hired to follow Mr. Stillman, Auster does not give us much rich description of the surrounding, he instead deals more with Quinn’s inner experience of how to keep his mind focused, with the occasional drop of the name of a restaurant or coffee place or park (96). Auster’s narrative in fact is pervaded with themes of the “nowhere” and a lacking of a sense of place, or displacement. After camping out on the street for months watching the Stillman’s apartment, Quinn comes back to find his furniture and belongings gone and somebody else moved into his place, any signs of his own life once made there had disappeared. He then goes to the Stillman house to find it completely bare and empty, devoid of any signs of inhabitants. Taking refuge in a back windowless cubicle, he begins to shut himself off from all sense of place, with night and day merging, the darkness eventually taking over as he fades away. He becomes consumed in this nothingness and in himself and his writing, and it is presumed he eventually dies there, though his fate is unclear.

When I thought of this empty room within which Quinn gradually deteriorated, the first image that came to mind was the Book Burning Memorial in Bebelplatz off the Unter den Linden in Berlin. Intended to memorialize the first Nazi book burning on May 10, 1933, it is an empty underground space lined with shelves, intended to look like a library, a sealed white room that can be viewed from a glass plate in the ground. For me, the memorial always conjured up an eerie feeling of nothingness and emptiness, of isolation independent of the outside world and devoid of any identity to where it seems Quinn has disappeared into.

Charles Street on Beacon HillIn his essay entitled “Visibility: The Creation of Place”, Yi-Fu Tuan defines place as whatever stable object catches our attention. He talks about place in terms of the scale of our awareness of it, as well as the meaning that is ascribed to it. Tuan looks at the sentimental concept of a neighborhood, which acquires its “visibility” through the mind (171). He argues that our perception of the “realness” of a neighborhood, such as through a sense of the intimate experience of a street within it, or its local flavor and visual distinctive character, helps develop a larger place consciousness and visibility. Tuan looks at Beacon Hill neighborhood in Boston as an example of this visibility through perception that makes a place. It is a neighborhood that I am very familiar with as my family lives a few blocks away, on Beacon Street, and I spent several summers working in a gift shop on Beacon Hill’s main street, Charles Street. Tuan argues that Beacon Hills visibility and rich sense of place results from factors such a its architectural distinction, notable events and persons, strong ties of kin and neighborhood, place traditions, and public rites and formal organizations (172). In many ways Tuan hits the nail on the head with his take on Beacon Hill. With a personal connection to the neighborhood, I can reminisce about the connections between shop owners and residents on the street, with the guys at the local hardware store and family owned pharmacy knowing my name. Countless times walking to work did I trip on the uneven brick sidewalk which gave the area character, and walk by the plaques that distinguish a historic event that took place there, or dating a building or shop back to Boston’s post-Independence history. The visibility of the history not just of the city but of our country embedded within the sidewalk bricks, building facades and storefront signage certainly adds to its rich sense of place. The shop I worked at, Blackstone's of Beacon Hill on Charles StreetBlackstone’s of Beacon Hill, contributed to neighborhood traditions as well, as we participated in the yearly neighborhood caroling and sold a different unique Beacon Hill ornament each year that residents collect, and even. The shop sells books detailing the great history of the area, further contributing to its visibility and perception as a place, and its old-fashioned signage outside reinforces this imagery. They boast a local flair, selling all locally handmade gifts and food items, and both of the owners are longtime neighborhood residents and members of the Beacon Hill Association that Tuan refers to, made up of mainly residents and business owners. I think what Tuan is trying to get at is the idea of authenticity that gives neighborhoods a sense of place, which has elements of realness, history, intimacy, and tradition embedded within its meaning. Digging a little deeper, however, the visibility of the neighborhood, perceived through its authenticity, is also very much constructed. For example, the Beacon Hill Association, which also hosts annual social events and works on neighborhood municipal concerns ie. maintenance, zoning, and licensing, also mandates the front façade and signage used by shops in the neighborhood. They spent years battling against the 7 Eleven store, not wanting to allow it to buy a spot on Charles Street, and when the lost they forced the shop to conform to its historic and small business local feel, with a carved wooden 7 Eleven sign over the door instead of the chain’s recognizable green and orange logo7 Eleven Sign in Beacon Hill. The same is true of the two Starbucks that line the street. These visual elements that the Beacon Hill Association strives to preserve, the neighborhood characteristics that visibly lend its “authenticity”, are what brings tourism to the area and keeps its wealthy residents content with the sense of locality rooted in history that is unique to Beacon Hill and contributes to its prestige.

A Mythical CityIn his chapter on Mythical Space and Place, from the book "Space and Place", Yi-Fu Tuan deals with the idea of mythical space, that hazy knowledge of the unknown, "dyed in phantasms" yet embedded with a sense of reality. He locates the origins of myth in the early explorers and the seeking out of a terrestrial paradise in the Northwest Passage, essential to a complex system of belief that these places existed. Tuan’s concept of myth that is so inherent to our perception of space led me to think more about how myth and urban space and particular relate. There is often a mythical element associated with the urban realm, an intangible essence that draws people to the city in a pilgrimage sort of way. In all its grandeur and visibility the city holds within it the fantasy that it is a place where one’s dreams can come true, though this idea is often disassociated from its harsher realities. Take New York City for example, the Big Apple. Heightened from well known romanticized narratives, New York has always been illusive, projecting an image of a place where the small-town boy can come to make it big and find fame and fortune. From a distance even, the touring skyscrapers of the island with clouds hovering over hold a sort of magical or mystical quality of alluring greatness. The ideology of the Wizard of Oz often plays out, in which we journey to an idea of a city that exists mainly on our imagination. The idea of the urban dream has seemingly resurged, and despite our more recent American history of the suburban dream, we are now finding a mass influx of Americans coming back to the city, especially the “empty nester” generation. It seems there is “something about the city” that draws people to its dense chaotic streets. A collective memory of stories has also helped build up the fantastical city, with authors like Jane Jacobs romanticizing about urban diversity and the possibilities of the urban frontier, to movies like All About Eve in which a young actress comes to the big city to follow her dreams. The fantastical image of King Kong atop the Empire State Building is synonymous with New York City, and in fact gives us the impression that it is only in the city where this myth could play out. Thus the urban environment is linked with a mythical essence that exists in a just graspable realm, which brings people to it for reasons beyond ideas of practical opportunities, but also those just hoping to be a part of the fantasy.

View of intersection looking south on Cleveland PlaceIn The Geography of Nowhere, James Howard Kunstler criticizes the “deadening uniformity” of gridded Manhattan, arguing that every block is interchangeable. For the past three years, however, I have become intimately familiar with one small section of this greater grid, one of the many right-angled intersections on the island, and have found this space in particular to be highly in contrast to Kunstler’s take on the city. The intersection of Broome and Centre Street and Cleveland Place in Lower Manhattan is bordered at its corners by a 24-hour deli, the restaurant where I work, the old Police Headquarters building, which is now one of the highest priced luxury co-ops in Manhattan, and a residential building with a small street level store and a gym on the third floor. I can see this intersection and the blocks to the south and west of it from my bedroom window on the third floor of NYU’s Broome Street dorm. Furthermore, as a hostess Bar Martignetti, a restaurant located at Broome and Centre Street, I spend a 7 hour shift, 3 days a week, staring out from the hostess stand both subconsciously and at times consciously at this particular intersection. Though this space and its surrounding blocks may not seem unique to the urban wanderer, I have found it to hold its own very particular complexities and opportunities for distinction.

mobile livingIn his essay “The Movable Dwelling”, J.B. Jackson asserts the trailer to be the low-cost dwelling of the future despite its lacking in solidity permanence, and charm. He argues that these form of mobile dwellings are almost always seen as temporary by their occupants, with something better and more lasting coming for the next step. Jackson romanticizes the mobile home as offering a kind of freedom, freedom from “burdensome emotional ties with the environment, from communal responsibilities, and freedom from belonging to a tight knit social order”. While Jackson’s take on the phenomenon of the trailer home seems obvious in its truth, I have to disagree with his take on it. When I was young, my grandparents bought a mobile home and moved to a trailer park in Yuma, Arizona, where they kept a home base for many years until an unfortunate fire in their trailer forced them to make a fresh start and buy and new home another desert Arizona town, having lost all their belongings, including a vast recorded family history of photos, documents, and handed down heirlooms. Their intention in moving to the trailer park in Yuma, however, was to find an inexpensive permanence, a home base from which they could easily travel from yet always return to. They bought the mobile home expecting to use it or years to come, not waiting for something better but as in fact the “something better” they had been waiting for. Instead of looking at their mobile home as temporary and associated with societal and environmental freedoms, they in fact found a very tight knit community in the trailer park.