Seeing 'The Gates'

This past Friday I went to Central Park to see ‘The Gates,’ the latest large public art installation by Christ and Jeanne-Claude.

Yes, the color was ugly (I think ‘saffron’ is French for ‘We fucked up and ordered orange drapes’). Yes, it was over-hyped; Manhattan was crowded with the pretentious sporting orange scarves and the telltale Metropolitan Museum of Art pins (take those off when you leave the museum, otherwise they mark you as clueless tourists and easy prey).

But it was fun, interesting, and free of charge. Central Park was abuzz with people enjoying themselves and taking lots of photos. My brother and his girlfriend flew in from San Francisco so they could see the exhibit. Volunteers handed out free pieces of orange fabric and answered people’s questions. It snowed during the week and I took some nice pictures of the Sheep Meadow with the Central Park South skyline highlighted by an orange line of The Gates.

Just the fact that people argue and debate about The Gates make them a worthwhile experience. When was the last time that people argued and debated over a piece of art? The debate over what constitutes art and what makes good art is worth having, don’t shy away from a good debate.

Not a dime of taxpayer’s money went to this. Also, all proceeds from selling the silly Gates merchandise sold goes to preservation groups Nurture New York’s Nature and The Central Park Conservancy. Christo and his wife make their money from people who shell out as much as $500,000 for one of his original drawings. So in a way Christo and Jeanne-Claude in a way are having the last laugh at the art world: real people get to experience the art for free, the city gets an economic boost, and the wealthy elite who give art a bad name are stuck with the bill.

I love the fact that such a grand and unusual vision could come to life. It was a triumph to all weird dreamers everywhere: no idea is too unusual to voice, no dream to strange to come true. Christo and Jeanne-Claude are people with big ideas and big dreams and have been working on The Gates since I was in the second grade. They are leaving New York a richer place.

Please Don’t Fuck Up Hell’s Kitchen

Right now officials of the Olympic Games are touring New York City to assess its viability to host the 2012 Olympic Games. Our Mayor Bloomberg is campaigning hard to bring the games to the Big Apple. The problem is that his plan to bring the Olympics here hinge upon his ability to build a sports stadium on the West side of Manhattan.

Even if you think the stadium idea is a good one (it isn’t – it will destroy more good than it brings), consider this: do you think that $600 million of our tax dollars should go to this? At a time that the city has threatened to lay off cops and can’t afford to put toilet paper in public school restrooms, Bloomberg and the pro-stadium forces want to sell the MTA’s property for a pittance and build a stadium for the New York Jets.

In Brooklyn, residents of Prospect Heights are fighting their own battle against such a robbery. Under the guise of bringing the Nets to Brooklyn, billionaire and political influence peddler Bruce Ratner will destroy one of that borough’s finest neighborhoods. If there is a Hell, there is a special section reserved for people like Ratner.

I support bringing the Jets back to New York City, but I oppose robbing the city to the tune of $600 million, especially when we won’t even get free Jets tickets.

R.I.P. Hunter S. Thompson

Hunter S. Thompson killed himself yesterday at his home on Colorado. There’s not a respectable writer in America today who doesn’t admire Hunter S. Thompson.

Five years ago, two friends of mine managed to meet Thompson and hang out with him as they drove across the country. Read about their adventures on The Black Table. They encountered an egomaniacal cokehead who liked to have his own decades-old words read back to him by his admirers, which is somewhat pathetic. I hope I don’t get like that when I'm 67, but if I do, I hope I'd have the good sense to kill myself like HST.

There’s snow again here in New York. I have the day off from work because it’s President’s Day, but I should be getting separate days off for Lincoln’s birthday and Washington’s birthday. We should have a lot more federal holidays. For some suggestions, read this.

Meeting New York's best clergywoman, Reverend Jen

Riding the subway yesterday, I was caught on a train that was going local rather than express. The A train, one of the worst train lines in the city in my opinion, was slugging along down the West Side of Central Park. Hordes of tourists and others babbled on in their clueless white language of annoying small talk. An old man nearly fell on top of me when the train lurched forward (yes, I offered him my seat but he didn't take it).

At one stop who should sit next to me but Reverend Jen, the Lower East Side's greatest advocate and artistic saint. I have read poetry at some of her anti-slams, and she somewhat remembered me. She was heading back home from shopping for more shelves for her apartment/troll doll museum, which you can visit if you have an appointment.

Jen's weekly anti-slam is an interesting event to attend, and I should go there more often. One gets to do whatever one wants to for six minutes, rather than the normal three minutes. The anti-slam venue, a theater and art space called Collective Unconscious, has moved away from Rev. Jen's beloved Lower East Side to Tribeca, due to greedy real estate developers buying up and demolishing buildings to put up luxury apartments. Rev. Jen and others are fighting what is often an uphill battle to preserve the character of the Lower East Side. She and I lamented the demise of the Freakatorium, a museum of the freakish and the unusual that formerly resided on Clinton Street.

I promised the good Reverend I would stop by her anti-slam at its new location. You should too.

Latest 'Notes from a Polite New Yorker' is now online

My latest 'Notes from a Polite New Yorker' column is now online at GetUnderground.com. Click here to read it.

The column is entitled 'Death by Cubicle' and its part muck-raking anti-corporate diatribe, part escapist fantasy. It documents and discusses the travails of being stuck behind a desk all day. When I was unemployed, I couldn't wait to get back into writing financial news, now I'm thinking about being a bounty hunter, dog catcher, pimp or bank robber, anything that will get me out from behind this desk.

I hope this column doesn't get me fired. If I do get fired from my job, I would want it for be for something I wrote. For a writer, being fired for one's writing is the third greatest compliment, the first two being having one's books burned and being jailed.

And speaking of jailing writers for what they write, it can happen here.

New York is (usually) for Valentines like (not) me...

While my girlfriend and I have been together for a while now (don't ask me exactly how long - over a year by far), I'm still not accustomed to having a girlfriend during Valentine's Day and other holidays. I'm still too accustomed to being alone. So maybe my Valentine's Day for my girlfriend was not all it should have been, but she seemed to enjoy it.

My girlfriend is a big fan of Hell's Kitchen and lived there for a while, so we met at Kennedy's on 57th Street for drinks before going to dinner. We saw John Mahoney, the actor most well known for playing Frasier's father on the show 'Frasier.' Declan, the bartender, pointed out that a recent visitor to Kennedy's included Nobel Peace Prize winner John Hume. His picture graced the wall. Kennedy's is a good place for celebrity watching, so long as you don't gawk or act like a fool. My girlfriend, who is still pretty much a regular there even though she moved away from Hell's Kitchen, drank with Lawrence Fishburne on her birthday a few years ago. It's a bit pricey to eat there regularly and the drinks are slightly above regular prices, but it's a good place. It's very nice and clean but not pretentious, and they've got good craic (Irish for celebratory spirit or ambiance, I think).

Then it was on to Ralph's, an Italian restaurant on the corner of 56th St. and 9th Ave. Like all New York restaurants, it was too crowded and there was no waiting area. We were seated pretty quickly though, and the food was very good. The service was pretty good too for such a small and relatively inexpensive place. Thanks again to my awesome girlfriend for picking the place out.

We took a cab home, with the corner of my raincoat caught in the cab door and getting a rough ride up the West Side Highway. My girlfriend got me some very nice gifts.

Shameless Self Promotion: Check out today's Black List on The Black Table at www.blacktable.com

Today's Chinese Cookie Wisdom: "An hour with friends is worth more than ten with strangers."

Welcome to my Blog

Yes, I'm jumping on the blog bandwagon. This will be my forum to vent at the frustrations of life and to shamelessly promote myself. Welcome.