ScottyD's blog

I have always loved the city as long as I could remember. I grew up either in cities or suburbs, though while in the suburbs I would escape into the city as much as possible. Obviously, New York seemed like the best place to go to college for a person who liked cities so much, thus why I am here. Yet, as interesting as the city is, and as many activities as there are to do in New York, I find myself needing to escape every-so-often. The same things that make New York wonderful (the masses of people, beautiful buildings, and countless things to do) also tend to wear a person down over a time. The over stimulation and constant interaction with people tends to become overwhelming.
Given the workload during the semesters, I have always used winter and summer breaks as a chance to flee the city for a couple of weeks to refresh myself. The past few years I have been on a good run of enjoyable trips over my breaks; this past winter I traveled around most of Western India with my brother for three weeks, the previous winter I made it to Chile for a 2 week hiking trip in Patagonia, and a year or so before that I got around some of Southern Europe. So looking forward to this summer I couldn’t help but feel a bit discouraged given my seemingly less exciting travel. Between moving into an apartment, working full time, and having to take a summer class there was just not the time or money to do much.
However, just because I cannot make it to an exotic locale this summer does not mean I cannot take pleasure in many of the smaller aspects of the places I do go, conversely this class has shown me that in many cases those are even more exciting than the more obvious things. I will be able to escape the city for about a week after finals to go to Seattle and Vancouver, and probably fit in some hiking. I have never been to that part of the country (or Canada), so even though it is not Patagonia it should hold a great deal of surprises and enjoyment. I will have to make a trip to San Diego (the city I have spent more time in than any place other than New York and Atlanta because of Family) for my closest cousin’s wedding in July. I have avoided that city like a plague, I had always viewed it as the ultimate no place if you will: sprawling suburbs, large cars, and tons of retired people. Not to mention the fact that my staunchly conservative family will undoubtedly prevent me from having a single sip of alcohol since I will be months shy of my twenty-first birthday and that I will probably spend more time in an airplane than in California. However, it is a city I have really never explored outside of the context of my family, and with an open mind I am sure I can make it a pleasant experience.
With a bit of effort, a few extra excursions (possibly to Maine or Colorado), and an open mind I am sure that I can use this summer as always to get both the break I need from New York, and enjoy many more of the “small things” about places without having to spend a huge sum of money to travel to an exotic location.

What inspired you to do this project?
Well, I am very interested in buildings, architecture, design, etc. So I spend a lot of time looking at buildings, which in New York can unfortunately be quite painful given the number of bad buildings here. I always end up finding myself looking at the small, somewhat out of site, often-utilitarian aspects of the buildings such as the water towers and these signs. Given that these signs are always around, no matter where in the city I go, I figured they were an interesting and often overlooked subject to pursue.

How did you choose the path you took?
Well it was pretty simple, I was just at a friend’s place to get their camera since I don’t own one, and then just started wandering back to Union Square because I was hungry. On the way back I just drifted down any side streets that looked promising or went towards anything that stood out, such as the giant terminator sign. After eating I went into the West Village because I figured with all the old, small buildings there were bound to be lots of signs.

Which was your favorite sign?
Well the Terminator sign definitely stands out the most, but I also really liked the one on 6th Avenue and 16th Street for the old bike shop and the artistic one on further down 6th Avenue on 4th Street.

Did anything interesting happen on the walk?
Nothing particularly out of the ordinary for New York, except I think most people who saw me thought I was completely out of my mind. I got a lot of strange looks as I was running up and down streets and stopping in the middle of sidewalks to take pictures of the sides of walls.

Does your project relate to the readings, and if so which ones and how?

Old Fur Company Sign

Of all the small, everyday happenings, events, and objects that a New Yorker confronts everyday, which in many ways shape the life of those living in this city, the one that has always fascinated me the most are the seemingly ancient, faded signs painted on the sides of old buildings. These seemingly insignificant relics of a forgotten form of advertising no longer serve any purpose, and in many cases are so badly faded that they can hardly be seen. Yet, their allure is undoubtedly powerful, constantly pulling my gaze towards the sky in search of a new one, and whatever insight to the past it may yield upon further inspection.

While a few of the signs are still gloriously bright, the majority are chipped, flaking, faded, and mostly indistinguishable. However, their rustic appearance is “like washed denim, their faded quality is their very essence” (Goldberger). They provide a glimpse into the past of New York City, not only in the a literal way by describing the types of goods available from the late nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century and how they were advertised, but by evoking thoughts of what the city must have been like fifty or even one-hundred years ago. In the time of their creation they were merely advertisements, little different than the imposing, gaudy billboards lining the interstates today or TV commercials. With the passage of time and the collapse of most of the companies they advertise, “today they stand, like so much early advertising, as folk art, earnest and determined” (Goldberger). Sign Under the Empire State Building

Rain Rain: the one thing that makes me hate New York. I used to love rain before I moved to New York. It meant a nice day inside to watch TV, relax, play board games, do work, or anything else to waste time. It provided a great opportunity to ignore all of the responsibilities I had and just relax for a while. If I had to leave the house it just meant a ride in my car like any other day. Of course the roads were more treacherous, with a chance of hydroplaning always close at hand, and most drivers seem to drive even worse, yet these things only added a thrill to driving.
However, rain now is something that cannot be avoided, something that can easily ruin a day. It only seems to happen when I have to be somewhere. With no car, there is no way to avoid it. Citizens must venture into the rain to go everywhere and do their best effort to keep dry. Sadly, staying dry is a near impossibility. The wind tunnel effects between buildings seems to blow the rain under your umbrella so that even the 60 inch golf umbrellas only keep a person dry from the waste up, and what is worse than soggy wet shoes? Too frequently people must suffer the indignity of having their umbrella collapse at the might of the wind anyways.
Whitehead truly captures the essence of New York City during a rainstorm in his essay Rain. I have read this book before, and truly admire the way that Whitehead can perfectly describe so many aspects of New York, even the seemingly banal events such as this. Yet, his work demonstrates how even the most seemingly minor events such as a rainstorm play such a huge role in the life of a New Yorker. I also couldn’t help but laugh to myself as he describes all of the futile attempts of people to avoid getting wet. It is hard to resist the urge to sprint between tiny covers, jump puddles, or try covering your head in newspaper, yet he makes you realize how comical and idiotic these attempts really are.
Besides the mere annoyance of getting wet or having clothes ruined, I realized that rain can have a really dramatic impact on how the city functions, and thus how truly powerful of a force it can be. http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/08/08/why-do-the-subways-flood/ Here is an old article from the Times describing how devastating rainstorms in the city can be and why they happen; I thought it was interesting.

Beautiful Street in Park Slope We have read throughout the year a great deal about no-places. We have read how modern cities are no-places with no historical references and not designed for human well being. Much of the architecture of New York has been harshly criticized as dehumanizing, too large, detached, and oppressive. In many ways New York could be considered the capital of no-places, the greatest of all nowheres where each person is lost in the concrete canyons, subterranean tunnels, and herds of people.
Yet Frazier, one morning stands watching the sun go through the tail feathers of a feasting peregrine falcon with his neighbors and remarks, “Like many Americans, I fear living in a nowhere, in a place that is a no-place; in Brooklyn that doesn’t’ trouble me at all” (p. 94). He then goes on to describe his neighborhood of Park Slope, describing how he loves the many different kinds of people there, Grand Army Plaza, the beautiful Prospect Park, and many other aspects of the neighborhood. Park Slope is unequivocally my favorite neighborhood in New York, and my soon to be home, thus I love hearing his poetic descriptions of the area.
I was recently in the Dominican Republic doing service work and met a woman who had moved there to teach English for 2 years, but had lived in Park Slope for multiple years before. Her description of why she loved it so much was not as eloquent as Frazier’s, but in my opinion just as telling. All she said was that from the very first time she got of the subway there a calm came over her.
But this is there too But how has this neighborhood won over Frazier, myself, the aforementioned woman, and countless others? I have no answer. Indeed the scale is much more reasonable than areas of Manhattan, the buildings being on more of a human scale, yet there are still plenty of high rises, and the majority of the buildings are no smaller than many in the East and West Villages. No cute curving streets either, the grid has a firm hold over the neighborhood. Most of the Avenues and Streets are numbered as well, so no endearing names. Prospect Park is a wonderful park, if not the best in all of New York, yet it only lines one edge of the neighborhood; furthermore there are far fewer small parks than in Manhattan, and I could not feel more unwelcome on the Upper East Side, which is in a similar position to one of Olmstead’s masterpieces. There are plenty of family owned shops (sure to please Kunstler), yet the neighborhood is not lacking its fair share of corporate giants either. Sure there are plenty of old buildings, but there are a fair share of modernist creations too, not to mention many of low cost abominations (plus I like modernist architecture better anyways).
Despite my inability to put a finger on it, there is some quality there that has caught both mine and Frazier’s attention, a special sense of place perhaps. Park Slope is definitely not a place where one must worry about being in a no-place.

Dirty Alley A great deal of City of Glass is devoted to talking about places, yet very little is said about any of these places. The area that Stillman wanders is described merely as a place bound by certain streets, and his paths spell out letters, but the actual area is hardly described besides references to Riverside Park or a bench. At one point, Quinn walks almost the entire city from North to South, and then North again in a zigzagging fashion, and yet this whole section is shortened into a brief, half page description of the street numbers and basic landmarks. This utter lack of description and a sense of the places Quinn goes, along with the distant narrator, helps paint the city as a place that is no place, or a nowhere.
Yet, there is one exception to Auster’s lack of description in reference to the city and its many locales: the alley in which Quinn watches the Stillmans’ apartment. While Quinn sits outside the apartment, almost an entire chapter is devoted to describing the alley and his actions within the alley. The brick wall, the location of trash cans, and even the movements of the building owner are all noted. Even the smell of the trash and the slight bend in the lid of the trashcan that Quinn hides in during storms are described in thorough detail. Every intimate detail of his actions down to his precise sleep times, shopping times, and bodily functions are described, as if to add a more human feel to the place than all of the previously passed through no places. Two pages are passionately devoted to the limited view of the sky he gets from the alley, as the narrator even notes that he likes the reds and pinks of the sky particularly (p.179-180).
This entire passage perplexed and interested me. It seemed strange for a book that dedicates all of its early pages to describing the city as a nowhere, do devote so much time and detail to describing an alley. And furthermore it is described in a fairly positive light. Possibly he is trying to make a social statement about the homeless, which seems possible given the time he devotes to describing the earlier, but this does not really fit in with the rest of the book. Could his intent thus be to further emphasize how much of a no place the city is by making an alley of garbage the only seemingly positive place? And yet even it is the place where Quinn seems to finally lose his mind.

It may be a little strange, but I spend a lot of time contemplating the homeless, or I guess individual ones I see a lot and their plight. Thus I was of course interested when Tuan, in his chapter about homeland states that “Modern society has its nomads—hobos, migrant workers, and merchant seamen, among others. What are the consequences of rootlessness? Do they long for a permanent place, and if so, how is this longing expressed” (Tuan 158)? He then goes on to explain that migrant workers only have no home out of necessity and that fishermen like to establish a home port, so they at least have a place they can think about and return to a warm welcome. However, he strangely fails to elaborate on the hoboes, except his aforementioned claim that they have no “root.”
Happy Hobo Firstly, I find myself disagreeing with his claim of hoboes having no root. Yes, they are sadly stuck on the street, and in most cases would undoubtedly like to have a more traditional home, yet I find that they tend to establish a home base, or a spot they call their own. On my walk to campus, for instance I pass a great number of the same homeless people every day. My first encounter tends to wander more than most, but nonetheless is almost always on the west side of union screaming profanities at passerbies; apparently this is his way of trying to get money. With a slight diversion down 14th street I pass a man, quite like a statue, that seems to never move from his seat to the left of the door to Duane Reade, constantly flashing multiple cardboard signs, but never talking. Next, between 12th and 11th streets I pass the man sitting on his crate with a jar. Further down, near Gristedes, I pass my favorite; he always has a smile on his face and wishes me a good day. On the off chance I have money it goes to him, though he seems just as happy when I wish him good day back. The coffee and cigarette woman dwells less than a block further down. Some days, I happen upon the man who always has tissue in his nose and a blanket around him no matter the temperature; his home base appears to be more amorphously just the general area around Silver Center. If I wander closer to my freshman dorm, on the west side of Washington Square I encounter the fairly unpleasant, but incredibly impressive Bucketman as I call him. He somewhere claimed a large plastic dumpster (which he has perpetually tethered to a phone pole with a bike lock), a bike for recreation, and a shopping cart for foraging expeditions. Inside his magic living bucket are plenty of blankets, pipe weed, and a great number of random things such as umbrellas that he sells for exorbitant prices during storms.
These people whom I pass everyday, seem to demonstrate not that homeless people have no root, but rather they enforce Tuan’s earlier claims that all people seemingly seek rootedness.

Tuan’s analysis of a person’s sense of place is incredibly thought provoking, as well as strange to say the least. The part of his odd analysis of place that most caught my attention in the early readings was his conclusion that all of the senses are used to determine a sense of place or space, and not purely the most obvious: sight. When I think of a sense of place, as a phrase, not as any particular place I always think about what a place looks like and how the physical makeup of it affects the viewer. But as soon as I begin to think about my feelings, memories, or “sense” of any particular place or space I realize that I subconsciously take in all of the senses. When I think of the Village for instance, I undoubtedly think about the curving streets, the sparkle to some of the sidewalks, the many beautiful buildings (and plenty of not so beautiful ones as well); but I also consider the sounds of children at play, the scent of the Greenmarket outside my door, and even the taste of the food in the many restaurants I like here. In some cases I realize I even think of a place more by the “other senses” than by sight. For instance, the desk I sit in now, when thinking of it I do not contemplate the rather uninteresting shape, size, or other visual aspects, but rather the feel of the computer keys I am typing on or how uncomfortable the chair I am sitting on is; essentially, almost my entire sense of this place is determined by feel, not sight.

The most interesting quote of Tuan’s from the second chapter is when he states: “A blind man whose knowledge of space derives from auditory and tactile cues cannot, for some time, appreciate the visual world when he gains sight. The vaulted interior of a cathedral and the sensation of slipping into a warm bath both signify volume or spaciousness, although the experiences are hardly comparable” (Tuan 15). I find this relation so fascinating because he demonstrates two objects, that a person could describe using the same word: “spaciousness.” This word means entirely different things depending on the sense it represents, yet nonetheless in both cases it undoubtedly is used to describe a sense of place. Furthermore, it would be foolish to say that a blind man has no sense of place when he feels, smells, hears, and tastes it. However, I at least would not have considered any of the other senses when considering how one defined a sense of a place.

The PierI remember my first trip to Hudson River Park quite well; I was a freshman, new to the big city. The person that I had been interested in since arriving at school had asked if I wanted to go on a walk, and of course I obliged, although I was incredibly nervous. I guess I am biased towards the park since that walk is the event that I could point to as the beginning of a relationship, yet I still feel like there is more to that place than just special memories. My walk started with me being led through the charming curving streets of the labyrinthine West Village. My utter confusion to my whereabouts added a pleasant mysteriousness to the journey. While I did not know I was growing close to the West Side Highway or the River, I did note the growing hum of many cars moving at high speeds and the deterioration of the neighborhood as we grew near. Yet, I was still surprised when we suddenly broke free of the narrow streets of the Village and were on the edge of Manhattan, with only the highway separating me from the Hudson River. However, with the massive highway on one side of it and the river on the other I hardly even noticed the slender park until after I had crossed the protective highway, shielding the park from the hustle of Manhattan.

Rock CenterJackson concludes his chapter, The Vernacular City, with the sad, but unfortunately true phrase, “the street and its traffic call for all of our attention” (p.247). He is stating that the contemporary city is very interesting since almost every building, whether it be an independent house with a yard, a massive sports complex, or a business center, attempts to protect itself from the stream of traffic and “declare its independence” from the street. I cannot tell whether or not Jackson feels that this interesting separation of things is a good or bad thing, but he does not deny that it has caused all types of buildings, whether they be residential, industrial, or commercial to be separated and entirely self contained. He also does not try to ignore the fact that buildings and streets are no longer designed to support humans, but rather to support the transportation of cars. How he does not see this as ruinous to cities, unsustainable, and even dehumanizing is beyond me, yet this is aside from the point. I feel that it must be possible to create a great place that is integrated with the city, easy to access, and not based around the street and the car. While New York City is obviously the exception rather than the rule when it comes to most American cities, I find inspiration in Rockefeller center. The center is just like the many business, sports, or any other type of center that Jackson describes, yet it is not held captive by the road, nor is it limited to one function. Rather, it beautifully integrates business, commercial, entertainment, and personal facilities into one complex, where the union of all the parts benefits each of the individual parts by bringing in more climates. Furthermore, the subway is designed to come right into it, specifically into its underground shopping area, so that people can be brought right into it without a car.